Montana Model UN High School Conference General Assembly First Committee Topic Background Guide Topic 2: Controlling the Arms Trade1 25 July 2014 Oxfam International is an international non-governmental organization based in the United Kingdom, whose mission is to promote development and human rights worldwide via humanitarian efforts including increasing public awareness of the causes of poverty and human rights like war.2 According to Oxfam, The irresponsible, excessive proliferation of arms and ammunition fuels and exacerbates conflict and armed violence. This is why arms control initiatives have major implications for the processes of socio-economic development. By implementing social and economic policies, as well as those relating to poverty reduction, development, security sector and arms control, governments can create the necessary environment to access essential services and enable people to make the choices and decisions that affect their daily lives. The poorly regulated trade in arms and ammunition weakens the ability and willingness of governments to create these enabling environments. Development gains are reversed as communities are paralysed; closing schools, placing immense strain on health systems, discouraging investment, and undermining security.3 Oxfam is not alone. Many development and human rights groups call attention to the direct costs in deaths and destruction caused by international and civil wars, as well as the indirect or “opportunity costs” caused by replacing economic and social programs with military spending. Amnesty International notes that a number of atrocities, such as war crimes and human rights abuses, occur as a result of the “wide range of weapons, munitions and military and security equipment” that are “ provided to perpetrators in almost unlimited supply.” According to the organization, much of the fault lies with “governments [that] continue to license irresponsible arms flows that are used in human atrocities and abuse.4 As noted by Sofia Borges, on behalf of GA President of the 68th session John Ashe, “partnerships are needed at the global and regional level to address external stressors that fuel instability and conflicts such as ... arms trade and trafficking.”5 Recently the potential for a “global partnership” has manifested in the form of the UN Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). According to Anna Macdonald, Director of the Control Arms Coalition, the ATT “will reduce human suffering, promote development and help tackle the inescapable link between poverty and armed violence. It can help reduce the suffering that women and children in particular experience during armed conflict.”6 1 This background guide was written by Nicholas Potratz, Teaching Assistant, with contributions from Samantha Schorzman and Karen Adams, Faculty Advisor. Copyright 2014 by Karen Ruth Adams and Nicholas Potratz. 2 Oxfam, “Our Work,” accessed 27 July 2014, http://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/our-work. 3Oxfam, “Armed Robbery: How the Poorly Regulated Arms Trade is Paralysing Development,”13 June 2012, available at http://oxf.am/JxB; and “Shooting Down the MDGs,” 8 October 2008, available at http://oxf.am/ZrF. 4 Amnesty International, “Arms Control and Human Rights,” 2014, available at http://www.amnesty.org/en/campaigns/control-arms. 5 Sofia Borges, Remarks at the Thematic Debate of the General Assembly on “Ensuring Stable and Peaceful Societies,” 25 April 2014, available at http://www.un.org/en/ga/president/68/pdf/statements/ 04252014Stable%20and%20Peaceful%20Societies_Closing_final.pdf. 6 Anna Macdonald, “Statement to First Committee on the Arms Trade Treaty and on Small Arms and Light Weapons,” 29 October 2013, available at http://www.un.org/disarmament/special/meetings/firstcommittee/68/pdfs/NGO-29-Oct_CAC_IANSA.pdf. Montana Model UN High School Conference Many states share the conclusion that the ATT will have a positive result on individuals’ lives. According to Ambassador E. Courtenay Rattray of Jamaica, [o]ur sense of urgency is borne of a firm conviction that this Treaty can contribute significantly to the suffering of many Jamaicans and countless people around the world, especially women and children, who are living daily under the deadly and devastating impact of the illicit trade in arms and ammunition... As is widely known, per capita murder rates in the Caribbean are among the highest in the world... While we do not manufacture these weapons or import them in any significant quantities, our region has been dispro- portionately affected for far too long by the disastrous impact and tragic consequences of the illicit trade.7 Almost eight years after the GA first called for the development of an Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), it remains unclear what kind of impact, if any, it will have once it enters force. The arms trade remains a $70 billion industry that has thus far been poorly regulated at the international level.8 What can the General Assembly first-committee do to enhance the provisions of the ATT and ensure that arms are not used against people or limit development? History and Current Events In recent centuries, efforts to control the arms trade (as opposed to arms control measures that limit the production, stockpiling, deployment, or use of weapons) originated with the Brussels Act of 1890. While a number of states ratified the document,9 however, it did not contain provisions for global arms control (or arms trade control). The Act merely regulated exports to some African territories under colonial occupation.10 Others efforts at controlling the arms trade were developed during the interwar period, but did not have enough support to enter into force. The most prominent example was a draft for arms regulation put forward by the US to the League of Nations (the predecessor to the UN). This was the first proposed international, as opposed to regional, measure for regulating arms trades. The outbreak of WWII, however, precluded the possibility that states would accept the convention.11 In the Cold War era, the two superpowers, the US and the Soviet Union, guided arms controls measures. As a result, most arms control treaties during this era sought to abate the potential negative ramifications of a nuclear arms race between the states by limiting the testing and deployment of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, though states did agree to limit chemical and biological weapons.12 Little progress occurred in limiting conventional weapons, and there were no efforts to limit the trade and transfer of arms globally. During this time, states only adopted instruments to regulate trade between members within each of the superpowers’ blocs (e.g. the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls, or COCOM).13 By contrast, after the Soviet Union collapsed, the international community created a number of controls on the conventional weapons trade. For instance, many states negotiated and joined the Convention on the Prohibition 7 E Courtenay Rattray, Statement on The Occasion of the Opening for Signature of the Arms Trade Treaty, 3 June 2013, available at http://www.un.int/jamaica/sites/www.un.int/files/Jamaica/ATT.pdf. 8Neil MacFarquhar and Rick Gladstone, “U.N. Close to Curbing Arms Trade with Treaty,” New York Times, 27 March 2013, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/28/world/un-close-to-curbing-arms-trade-with- treaty.html. 9 Mark Bromley, Neil Cooper, and Paul Holtom, “The UN Arms Trade Treaty: Arms Export Controls, the Human Security Agenda and the Lessons of History,” International Affairs, 88:5 (17 September 2012), pp. 1031-1033. 10 “The Slave-Trade Treaty,” New York Times, 12 January 1892, available at http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive- free/pdf?res=9405EEDA1631E033A25751C1A9679C94639ED7CF. 11 Bromley, Cooper, and Holtom, “The UN Arms Trade Treaty,” pp. 1031-1033. 12 Encyclopedia Britannica, “Arms Control.” 13 Bromley, Cooper, and Holtom, “The UN Arms Trade Treaty,” pp. 1033-1034. 2 Montana Model UN High School Conference of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction, which banned the use and trade of land mines, and sought to eliminate remnant mines from past wars.14 Efforts on the trade and transfer of weapons during this era extended beyond the traditional focus on national security (e.g. maintaining “peace and security” and reducing international tensions) to “human security,” which recognized that arms could affect, or cost, people their lives, rights, and liberties. Still, most of the UN strategies for dealing with the issue were limited in scope (e.g. the Program of Action on small arms and light weapons (SALW) – which merely covers the illicit transfer of SALW), were merely guidelines instead of binding agreements, or were developed solely at the national or regional levels (e.g. the EU requires its members to report to each other on conventional arms exports).15 Despite the progress on regulating the arms trade in recent decades, the international community has yet to fully implement a universal agreement to solve poorly regulated arms transfers. This continues to have devastating consequences for people worldwide. According to the UNODA, [t]he human cost of the consequences of the poorly regulated global trade in conventional arms are manifested in several ways: in the killing, wounding and rape of civilians—including children, the most vulnerable of all—and the perpetration of other serious violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law; in the displacement of people within and across borders; and in the endurance of extreme insecurity and economic hardships by those affected by armed violence and conflict. As UNODA notes, armed violence, fueled by the poorly regulated arms trade, has lead to the displacement of millions of individuals. At the end of 2011, there were 42.5 million displaced individuals, mostly due to armed conflict.16 According to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, armed violence kills approximately 500,000 people per year, of which 66,000 are women and children.17 The negative consequences of the poorly regulated arms trade extend beyond human, national, and regional security; it also impacts states’ economies.