August 28, 2007...10:31 am
Control arms campaigners are back!
By Lina Holguin, Oxfam.
Once more Control Arms - Oxfam, Amnesty and IANSA - campaigners are present at a key international meeting on arms and I am very glad to be one of them. From August 27 to 31, we will be in Geneva taken part on the Informal Meeting on Transfer Control Principles for Small Arms and Light Weapons, organized by the Canadian government.
111 States, 5 UN agencies, and 24 human rights, development, disarmament and other non-governmental organizations - nearly 400 individuals in total- will be this week at the International Conference Center to discussing global standards for transfer controls of small arms and light weapons. This meeting provides a great opportunity for States to share information and learn from each other about how they are avoiding or intending to avoid arms exports/transfers falling in the wrong hands. But above all, it gives the states’ representatives the chance to raise their voices in favor of rules that all countries should respect when selling arms.
Sitting in this big, formal conference room, I am thinking of the thousands of people in my country Colombia who live in fear of armed violence; of the many women, girls, boys that have been raped at gunpoint around the world, of the millions of people who have been forced to abandon their homes due to conflict, I am thinking of the girls and boys that are holding a gun instead of a pencil….I hope all the men and women who are representing their countries at this meeting will also have in their minds the victims of armed violence.
Yesterday, several states and regional organizations (like the European Union,) spoke of their efforts to fight the illegal arms trade. But we also heard the Deputy Foreign Minister of Liberia saying that in spite of some national and regional efforts, arms from big exporting countries are still flooding his country as well as many others in Africa. I was glad when he brought this up. He was making the case for the need to deal with the loop-holes in existing regulations and for the need of Global principles for arms transfers. The NGOs were given the platform and Brian Wood from Amnesty International outlined our proposals for global principles to govern international transfers of arms. (See our global principles booklet).
Today Clare da Silva our NGO legal adviser will present relevant principles of international law. Our overall aim in the Control Arms Campaign is for states to agree on an international Arms Trade treaty (ATT).
If a great number of states here support the idea that states need tougher control for arms transfers and that everybody should play under the same rules (Global principles), this will hopefully increase the possibility of saving many lives.
Find out how you can support the control arms campaign visit www.controlarms.org
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