MISSING PIECES - Inter-Parliamentary Union

MISSING PIECES
Civil society has played an important part in mobilising the UN to action
on the small arms issue. The New Zealand delegation to the Review Conference
was strengthened by the participation of three different NGO representatives.
The Government greatly values the contribution NGOs make in
drawing global attention to the suffering inflicted by small arms.
There are also important reasons for governments to adopt a prohibition
of arms transfers to a ‘peaceful’ country where the local authorities are
unable to rein in private individuals and groups who act with impunity.
When exporting nations realise that guns and ammunition provided legally
are being diverted and used in deadly crime, they likewise should act to
avoid complicity in bloodshed. In 1996, for example, the US barred gun
exports to Paraguay when it was discovered that many guns used in violent
crime in neighbouring Brazil were US-sourced, transferred legally to Paraguay
and then illegally trafficked over the Brazil–Paraguay border. This
policy seems to have led to changes: in 2000, after negotiations with the
Brazilian government, Paraguay committed itself to a three-year moratorium
on all firearm imports. 6
The UN Protocol against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in
Firearms, Their Parts and Components, and Ammunition (Firearms Protocol),
which entered into force on 3 July 2005, provides that legal transfers
of guns require agreements between the governments involved. 7 (See
Annex 3 for information on ratifications and signatures). Yet the Firearms
Protocol also embodies some of the weaknesses of efforts targeting only
‘illicit’ transfers: it only covers commercial transfers, thereby exempting
state-to-state transactions, and it does not specify the criteria against
which arms transfer decisions should be weighed. Further, it is limited to
barrel firearms, which means that some weapons categorised by the 1997
UN Panel of Governmental Experts on Small Arms as ‘small arms and
light weapons’, such as explosives and landmines, are not covered. 8
NGOs have taken the lead in pushing for international criteria to govern
arms export. The Control Arms Campaign, launched in October 2003
by the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA), Oxfam, and
Amnesty International, advocates for an ‘Arms Trade Treaty’ (ATT) prohibiting
transfers when the guns and ammunition in question are indiscriminate,
of a nature to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering, or
when there is knowledge that arms will be used for breaches of the UN
Charter or for serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian
law (IHL). 9
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