From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

5 THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM HUMANITARIAN RELIEFInternational efforts at arms control have long focused on nuclearand other sophisticated weapons systems, yet small arms and lightweapons are the true weapons of mass destruction, responsible forsome 300,000 deaths in 2003. 204 And these are unregulated by internationallaw. The UN has imposed arms embargoes but they are verydifficult to enforce, given the nature of the industry.Many weapons are now produced by global supply chains spreadacross a number of different countries, similar to those found in theelectronics industry. This enables companies to circumvent nationalcontrols on arms exports to human rights violators, an exercise inwhich governments North and South are colluding. Austrian pistolmakerGlock, for instance, plans to set up production facilitiesin Brazil, from where exports would not be subject to the EU’s Codeof Conduct on Arms Exports, while in 2002 the Indian governmentscrapped its ‘blacklist’ of countries barred from buying itsweapons. India has subsequently exported to Myanmar and Sudan,both of which, according to the UN and Amnesty International, systematicallyviolate human rights and are now subject to EU and UN armsembargoes. 205National governments by themselves have been unable or unwillingto rein in this deadly trade, not least because of the lobbying power oflarge arms firms, both in their home countries and in their mainmarkets. For most of the last century, the world’s major armsexporters were the USA, Russia, the UK, and France. In the pastdecade, however, the big four have been joined by China, India, Israel,South Korea, and South Africa.Arms firms are typically backed up by large public subsidies in theform of official ‘export credit guarantees’ against non- or late payment.In the UK, while arms deliveries made up only 1.6 per cent of allvisible UK exports from 2000–03, they accounted for 43 per cent ofthe government’s export credit guarantees. 206Collectively, countries in Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, andAfrica spent $22.5bn on arms during 2004, a sum sufficient to putevery child in school and to reduce child mortality by two-thirds by2015. 207 In the face of the extraordinary levels of death and waste,governments and citizens’ groups are increasingly taking action. InWest Africa in 2006, the 15 countries of the Economic Community of399