WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Amnesty International and Oxfam, among several other global groups, are calling on the United Nations to urgently adopt a legally binding system that will make it possible to trace the origin and transfer of millions of small arms, light weapons, and ammunition that are traded worldwide.

In a report released Monday, the two groups, as well as the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA), say that the small arms trade is making it impossible for nations to enforce UN arms embargoes--or hold violators accountable --against governments, warlords or rebel movements responsible for the killing of thousands of people each year.

"It is outrageous that you have more chance of tracking a GM (genetically modified) tomato or a suitcase than you do an AK47 or rocket launcher," said Jeremy Hobbs, Oxfam's director. "A piece of lost luggage can be tracked from San Francisco to Sierra Leone within hours, yet deadly weapons disappear without trace on a daily basis."

The report, 'Tracing Lethal Tools' was released to coincide with the UN conference on Marking and Tracing Arms in New York. Its task--mandated under the 1991 Program of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms--is to make recommendations about how arms can most effectively be tracked around the globe, from the place of manufacture to the final user. More than eight million small arms are manufactured in different countries each year.

"The illicit arms trade fuels human rights abuse on a massive scale," said Amnesty's secretary general, Irene Khan. "Every year thousands of people are killed, tortured, raped and attacked with guns that cannot be traced. Millions more are deprived of the right to a decent standard of living, health services, and education because funds are diverted to buy illegal weapons."

"It is time the world had a way to clearly identify those behind this cynical and deadly trade and bring them to justice," she added.

The tracking system will be used to identify arms brokers who violate national or international laws, and enforce arms embargoes--such as those imposed by the UN Security Council against Iraq until the 2003 invasion, and against Cote dIvoire as well as other African countries that have been plagued by wars.

Supporters of an arms treaty and monitoring system with teeth include the governments of Britain, Finland, Cambodia, Kenya, Mali, Costa Rica, Iceland, and New Zealand. Control Arms campaigners are also mounting a major drive to secure backing for the treaty from France.

The idea for an international treaty to control the small arms trade was first put forward in October 1995 by former Costa Rican President and Nobel Peace laureate, Oscar Arias. With the help of several other peace prizewinners, he drafted a voluntary International Code of Conduct on Arms Transfers. The Control Arms campaign hopes to make it mandatory.

Some 20 Nobel laureates--both individuals and organizations--have signed on to the effort. In addition to Amnesty and Arias, they include the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), Norman Borlaug, the Dalai Lama, John Hume, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Mairead Maguire, Rigoberta Menchu, Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Jose Ramos-Horta, Joseph Rotblat, Aung San Suu Kyi, the Reverend Desmond Tutu, Lech Walesa, Elie Wiesel, Betty Williams, Jody Williams, Jimmy Carter, and the Albert Schweitzer Institute.

While many of the treaty's supporters have pointed out that the U.S. "war on terrorism" could benefit significantly from a global system of tracking small arms--such as pistols, land mines, assault rifles, grenades and grenade launchers--the Bush administration, fearful that a marking and tracing system could somehow undermine U.S. Constitutional guarantees regarding the "right to bear arms," opposes it.

At a July 2001 UN Conference on 'Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects,' Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, John Bolton, blocked consensus on the adoption of strict tracking systems for new weapons. Consistent with the position of the National Rifle Association (NRA), he argued that "the responsible use of firearms is a legitimate aspect of national life." Despite the subsequent launch of the "war on terrorism," the U.S. has not changed its view.

As noted at the time by the editor of 'Foreign Policy' magazine, Moises Naim, "national life is not very good for countries ravaged by armed conflict. In most of these countries 'responsible use of firearms' means killing as many enemies as possible."

According to the UN, small arms fuelled 46 of the 49 largest world conflicts of the past decade, and roughly half those weapons were obtained from illegal sources.

In a recent massacre of some 150 people in Gatumba, Burundi, for example, spent cartridges showed that the ammunition used in the attack was manufactured in China, Bulgaria and Serbia. But the lack of any tracing mechanism meant that it was impossible to prove how the ammunition got there.

Had a tracing mechanism existed, those who sold the ammunition would have been exposed, and future supplies could have been prevented, according to the new report.

"Eight million new weapons are manufactured every year and countless crimes and atrocities are committed against civilians around the world," noted IANSA director Rebecca Peters. "Yet there is precious little chance of prosecuting the perpetrators of violent crimes with no global system to prove the origin of weapons."

© 2005 One World US

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