Anna Macdonald, Head of Control Arms, Oxfam International
Yesterday Control Arms and the 7 lead governments on the ATT (the coauthors of last year’s ATT resolution), Argentina, Australia, Costa Rica, Finland, Japan, Kenya and the UK, held a joint lunch meeting Next Steps Toward an Effective ATT. We discussed the next stage in making an ATT happen with the 40 odd other states who came along.
The campaign has been so hectic recently, and we have been working so intensely in our work at the UN, that there is rarely time to actually sit back and reflect on what has been achieved so far.
Yesterday as I sat in a packed conference room, on the panel with the coauthors, and listened to the Ambassadors one by one stress the importance of the ATT, of keeping up the momentum, of ensuring a strong link to human rights and international humanitarian law, and of ensuring the process remains open and inclusive, I thought back to when we launched the campaign just over 4 years ago. Then we had 3 governments who had publicly stated their support for an ATT. Since then the campaign has grown and grown, and now we have 153 governments in support, and regular events where we work alongside states to discuss the gradually developing ATT.
When you’re a campaigner, its difficult sometimes to see directly the results of what you work so hard to achieve. Those of us who have been at the UN this year have been lucky to really see that. We know that the People’s Consultations had real impact – over 100 governments have now sent in their views on what should be in an ATT, over 10 times the response rate the UN would normally receive.
We need an ATT in the world – and this year at the UN we have seen military leaders, war correspondents, armed violence survivors, an African President, and many governments share that call.
Sometimes you sit in the UN and listen to the endless speeches and discussions and wonder whether anything ever happens. And sometimes you have a moment when you think, actually things are moving here, and we’ve helped to make it happen.
Yesterday was one of those days – please keep on campaigning, what you do can and does make a real difference!
1 Comment
October 27, 2007 at 3:35 am
Congratulations for your struggle to make things happen, and for the continuity of your work explained in this blog! I write to you from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil…I can assure you that we know how it feels to live in a wonderful place that is being torn apart by uncontrolled war weapons, thought we are not at war, or so they say…