POLITICS: No Deal on Illegal Gun Trade

Haider Rizvi

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 7 2006 (IPS) – A major United Nations conference ended here Friday without agreeing on a document to push for stronger international efforts to curb the illegal trade in guns and other small weapons around the world.
After two weeks of tough negotiations, delegates who participated in the review conference on illegal guns said they were close to reaching a consensus, but talks broke down at the last minute on issues related to the follow-up procedures.

Many diplomats blamed the United States for the failure because Washington s delegation insisted that there was no need for any further international review conference on the issue of illegal gun trade.

In 2005, small arms alone were responsible for the deaths of over half a million people 10,000 per week.

The U.S. suggested that such meetings should rather be held at regional levels, but a vast majority of delegates supported the view that the issue needs attention at the global level.

We had come here with high expectations, a diplomat from Kenya told delegates at the end of the meeting. We feel profound disappointment at the failure of this conference to endorse the outcome document with consensus.
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Delegates from Guatemala, Japan, Australia, France, Pakistan and many countries also expressed their dissatisfaction with the final outcome of the meeting, though they all voiced their hope that the international efforts against the illicit gun trade would continue. The document has been sent to the First Committee of the 191-member U.N. General Assembly for its consideration and further action.

The review meeting was held to assess progress made by the international community on implementation of the U.N. Programme of Action, which was adopted by all member states in 2001, with commitments to collect and destroy illegal weapons, curb their trafficking, regulate the activities of brokers and impose import and export controls.

Since its adoption, the programme has stimulated a wide range of initiatives at the national, regional and international levels, with more than 50 countries strengthening their laws to control the illegal trade in guns.

But at the beginning of the review conference, many diplomats and U.N. officials agreed that while some progress has been made since 2000, still more remains to be done.

The problem remains grave, said U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan at the beginning of the conference last month. Small arms are easy to buy, easy to use, easy to transport and easy to conceal.

Their continued proliferation exacerbates conflict, sparks refugee flows, undermines the rule of law and spawns a culture of violence, he added.

According to the Small Arms Survey, an independent research project at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland, about 25 percent of the four-billion-dollar annual global trade in small arms is illicit, or not recorded as required by law.

The institute estimates that worldwide, between 80,000 and 108,000 people were killed as a direct result of armed conflicts in 2003.

While U.N. officials tried hard to maintain that the conference was not negotiating a global ban on guns, nor did it wish to deny law-abiding citizens their right to bear arms, the gun manufacturers supporters in the U.S. portrayed the conference as opposed to the legal business in guns.

When asked if the U.S.-based National Rifle Association (NRA) had any role in the failure of the review conference, Prasad Kariyawasam, president of the conference, said the Yes, the NRA was there (in the meeting), but I don t know what role they played.

Kariyawasam, who is also Sri Lanka s ambassador to the U.N., disagreed with those who described the conference as failure, arguing that the participation by ministers and other high-level officials from around the world suggests that the issue of small arms is on the front burner.

Asked about the U.S. role in the outcome of the meeting, he replied: The U.S. views on follow-up (to the conference) are very different. Their position was unique. It focused more on regional action.

Kariyawasam said even if there was more time available for negotiations, he did not believe that there would have been a consensus. I don t think we have would have agreed, he said.

Some observers also named India, Pakistan, Russia, Cuba and Iran as countries that obstructed global principles on arms transfers.

International civil society groups, such Amnesty International, Oxfam and the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA), said they were extremely unhappy with the final results of the meeting.

More than 12,000 people have been killed in the world since this conference began, said Anthea Lawson of IANSA. It s ludicrous that they have missed the opportunity to save millions of lives.

At the beginning of the conference, IANSA and other groups said they seemed hopeful about the outcome of negotiations, but towards the end they were perplexed when negotiations went nowhere.

>From the start, they were particularly concerned about omissions of references to human rights, development and gender issues in the document. Now, they are simply frustrated and angry.

This conference has been held hostage by a minority of member states, said Lawson, as she alluded to the presence of NRA members in the U.S. delegation.

Despite the lack of consensus, Kariyawasam still sounded optimistic. I don t think this conference is a failure, he said. We have things to follow up. We worked hard. We worked tirelessly.