Calls grow for International Small Arms Treaty by ABC Online 11:10am 16th Apr, 2007   May 2007 (Extract)    Illegal weapons that are manufactured in western countries are being used by rebel groups, bandits and terrorists worldwide and have prompted increasing calls for a United Nations treaty governing the international sale of arms.    800 million small arms are in the hands of rebel groups. That extraordinary total is fuelling the push by the United Nations for a treaty which will regulate the production and sale of small arms. The only country which opposed last year''s resolution kick-starting the treaty process was the United States.    For Australia, the problem is closer to home than many realise, with Australian supplied arms falling into the hands of criminals and mercenary gunmen across the Pacific, after being stolen from defence and police authorities.    In fact in Papua New Guinea alone, one expert says that the Australian SLR''s remains the experienced criminal''s assault weapon of choice, with only a quarter of those delivered to the PNG Defence Forces since 1971 still in stock.    In Darfur, Sudan, hundreds of thousands have been killed, millions displaced. It''s a conflict in one of the poorest parts of the Third World, fought largely by weapons supplied by the developed world.    Phillip Alpiers, a gun policy expert: "When the Berlin Wall fell there were millions of guns suddenly on the loose, unguarded and for sale and those guns moved largely into the Middle East, Africa and countries...anybody who wanted them cheap. There were times in Africa where you could guy an AK 47 for the price of a couple of chickens".    In the movie Lord of War, Nicholas Cage''s character makes his fortune as an arm''s dealer, selling weapons to different factions fighting each other in Africa.    And the reality is not much different. The world is awash with millions of small arms. Weapons manufacturers and traffickers are making billions by selling the rifles, hand guns, rocket launchers and landmines used to fight regional conflicts.    In recent years, Somalia, Darfur, Liberia and the Democratic Republic of Congo are some countries ravaged by internal conflict. Phillip Alper says some of the weapons survive for decades and move from conflict to conflict. He says small arms are a lethal export.    "The problem is that the five largest manufacturers of small arms in the world are also the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. So you''re up against a rather large lobby. These are the people who feel that they have the right to give as many guns as they like to whatever allies or countries that they like".    Former British politician and distinguished war correspondent Martin Bell has seen the harm caused by war first hand. He says developed countries need to be held accountable for who they sell arms to.    "Can we be indifferent from where these conventional weapons come from and the extent and ease with which they circulate and fall into the hands of armies, of militias, of armed bands of whomever? All of the limitation treaties such as they are have tended to be about nuclear weapons. What about the weapons killing people? All over the world they''re entirely conventional weapons.    Mary Robinson is the former United Nations high commissioner for human rights and the former president of Ireland. She is now the Honorary President for Oxfam International and she heads the Ethical Globalisation Initiative.    Last year on the 58th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights she led the call for the creation of a new international arms trade treaty, one that closes the loop holes that allow small arms to flood conflict zones, and hold the supplier of those weapons accountable.    Mary Robinson; "The reality that many guns that are supplied legally, in the sense of going to a legal government, if they are not properly secured very quickly get into the hands of bandits, gangsters and rebel groups and that''s one of the problems in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, that the guns are not manufactured locally, they come in and they come from Australia, from the United States, often starting in legal supply.    Having said that, I''m very glad that Australia is one of the co-sponsors of a resolution that was passed last December in the United Nations where 153 countries voted positively and as you''ve said, only one country, sadly the United States, voted against a resolution for an arms trade treaty.    I was in the United Nations building here in New York very recently for the next stage, which is that governments are making submissions which will be gathered in and form the basis of a text to be provided for an arms trade treaty.    So Australia and New Zealand in that region have an opportunity for very strong submissions. Because you have the problem that this is what is causing the kind of insecurity currently both in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. These guns that have been provided. The assault weapons, the conventional weapons killing people, that are causing such distress to women and the elderly in these communities.    Darfur is another dreadful situation. In fact, I know from my Oxfam colleagues from Save the Children and others, the situation in Darfur is worse than we read about and it''s getting worse because the humanitarian agencies are not able now to reach huge sections of the population in Darfur. There is the rule of the gun and people feel they must protect themselves, they must have their own AK 47''s and assault rifles and it''s really very sad to see whether it''s in Darfur or in the Pacific Islands that there is a greater proliferation.    So that''s precisely why we need to control and need to have an arms trade treaty, to regulate these small arms that have become the weapons of mass destruction. I''m very glad that Oxfam and Amnesty International for the first time ever have combined with a range of small NGO''s and I heard recently that non governmental organisations in Papua New Guinea are working closely with the support of Oxfam to build up a civil society determination that we must have regulation and then we can begin to redress a situation that should never have happened.    It''s the largest and most powerful countries, the so called P5 countries that are the major manufacturers and suppliers of small arms. Sudan has been supplied by different large countries. By Russia, by the United States, by other countries. China is now very much involved in Sudan. The situation is one where because the land scarcity problem, the economic problems of drought manifested themselves and worsened the situation between the tribunal groups and the population in Darfur, and because there was no sense of zero tolerance of gender based violence.    I''m acutely aware that part of the real problem that arose is when women were killed and raped. Nobody shouted, "Stop, this can''t go on," the guns were available, the roaming militia had been able to get women in the camps and when they go out for firewood, when they go out for water. And it is shocking. There is no excuse for it and it is because these weapons have been so widely available. The end of the Cold War meant that there was a kind of free for all of these weapons being available and as I said, they are causing great problems to the neighbours of Australia and New Zealand in the Pacific Islands and in Papua New Guinea. This is why I''m glad that both Australia and New Zealand are strongly behind the arms trade treaty. We have to counter these weapons which are the weapons that kill, the weapons that cause women to be raped at the barrel of a gun.    I certainly was very aware in my travels to places of conflict as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, be it Sierra Leone, be it various parts of the Congo, of this dirty arms trade and it''s linked to the smuggling and trafficking of people. It''s linked to the drugs trade.    I''m not an absolute expert on it, I just saw the results on the ground and these are criminals who enforce their terrible dark rule with guns. So whether they are trafficking people, whether they are trafficking drugs or trafficking guns, they themselves use guns to enforce their terrible slaughter and their terrible criminality.    The world has a criminalisation that is made worse in a way by some of the trends of globalisation. We need to counter that and we need to regulate and control the arms trade. We must do it by first of all having an arms trade treaty as is now proposed. We must ensure that we redress a situation we have allowed to get out of control.    There must bean onus on the supplier countries and on the end use countries. Suppliers should not go to countries where there is no protected armouries properly secured, where there''s a whole leakage.    The responsibility is on supplier countries not to supply without ensuring that there was proper security of the armouries on end user countries. That certainly must be part of an arms trade treaty.    There must be more ways of tracking where the arms are going and ensuring they don''t get into the hands of rebel groups, gangster groups, of the criminals that are part of the huge illegal arms trade.    But my understanding from the campaign is that most, the vast majority of the arms start off in legal trade and then leak into or through corruption and other means get into the illegal arms. Those are the issues that have to be addressed. That''s why the current submissions of governments are so important and indeed the way in which the civil society with this huge campaign of Oxfam, Amnesty and the local non governmental organisations is so important.    It is a huge pity the United States has not aken part to date, it is both an enormous manufacturer and exporter of small arms and also a major country on this or any other issue.    I haven"t given up yet on the United States.    Indeed based here in New York I saw the huge trauma of the killing in West Virginia Tech, the outpouring of a community and we saw the biographies, the life stories of those who were killed, all 32 of them. Think of the thousand people killed every day who are anonymous, who are never written up. The United States has this complex, constitutional right to bear arms that has become very much a lobby that is very effective and powerful in Congress.    But I think the United States is learning that it is paying a deep and high price internally, domestically for the availability so easily of arms, that somebody with mental problems can go and buy a gun and kill students and their teachers. I hope that will give some empathy to the need to control. The United States after all is very much involved in countries where the availability of arms illegally is fermenting the conflict, whether it''s in Iraq, whether it''s in Afghanistan and US Defence personnel are being killed and that''s a huge issue here in the United States and I hope that there will be a kind of learning from the influence of other countries where you had 153 countries voting yes, and now being engaged in a strong process that may influence the United States.    The United States needs to be part of and indeed play a strong role in a global campaign for an enforceable well regulated arms trade treaty, as I hope we will get it as soon as I said, as 2010.    We should work really hard and concentrate on the importance of this because it''s shocking that a thousand people are killed every day, that there are more guns and bullets than the population of the world. It''s just not acceptable. It''s so contrary to human rights and to human dignity and respect and it''s happening in the smallest countries where they''re not manufacturing the arms, but they are available because they have come in by legal and illegal means and it must be controlled. Visit the related web page
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