Treaty Conference Seeks to Regulate Global Arms Trade | Voice of America - English
Ministers and civil society leaders from 18 African countries, U.N. disarmament officials, and arms-control advocates are meeting in the Kenyan capital Nairobi to try to form a united position on a proposed treaty to regulate the global arms trade.  As VOA Correspondent Alisha Ryu reports from Nairobi, the arms treaty is viewed as a critical element in international efforts to reduce the human and economic cost of conflicts, especially in Africa.
Speaking at the opening ofthe arms treaty conference on Wednesday, Kenya's Assistant ForeignMinister Richard Onyonka urged quick ratification of the Arms TradeTreaty, saying that unregulated weapons sales posed one of the biggestthreats to long-term development in Africa. "Development andreduction of violence go hand-in-hand. Long-term development isimpossible without long-term security. The linkage could not find abetter context than the situation in Africa. The cost of armedconflicts and violence, as well as the concomitant human tragedy herein Africa, is conservatively estimated at $18 billion annually," hesaid. The cost is mostly through lost human and economicpotential and it is roughly equivalent to the amount of aid that thecontinent receives from donor nations each year. The proposedtreaty would not to ban the sale of conventional arms. But it wouldestablish common standards that all nations would have to abide by,including prohibiting the transfer of weapons if they are likely to beused to violate human rights and humanitarian law or if they could fuelan existing conflict or hinder development. The head of theU.N.'s Conventional Arms Branch for Disarmament Affairs Daniel Prinstells VOA that such standards are urgently needed because the globalarms trade is believed to be adding eight million more guns a year tothe 650 million in circulation around the world. And 60 percent ofthose guns are in the hands of civilians, most of them in developingcountries. "Many states do not have a framework of rules underwhich they would export or import weapons and that is very much neededbecause we see that the old structure in the world, where you have afew producers and many recipients of arms, do not count anymore. Forinstance, we see in the field of small arms that there are now morethan 100 countries that produce arms," he said. At the U.N.General Assembly two years ago, 153 states voted in favor of the ArmsTrade Treaty, 24 states abstained, and the world's largest armsexporter, the United States, voted against it. The Bush administrationwas criticized for arguing that the treaty was unnecessary because theUnited States and other major exporting countries have strict nationalrules governing arms exports. Ambassador Philip Richard Owadefrom the Permanent Mission of Kenya to the United Nations in Genevasays he believes it is up to countries that suffer the most from armsproliferation to show unity in favoring the passage of an arms treatyand help move the process toward a global consensus. "As you know,treaties quite often do not have to be universal from the word, 'go.' Those who are willing would go ahead and then develop norms that wehope in the end, even those who are against it would be able toembrace," he said. Under the treaty, governments would also berequired to report their arms transfers to an international register, amove which arms control advocates say will lead to greater publicscrutiny and confidence.