Bearing a message from the Russian who invented the world’s most common assault rifle, activists will press governments at a United Nations conference on small arms to ensure such weapons are not used to trample human rights.
The groups and some officials attending the conference that begins on Monday advocate a fundamentally new approach for trade in the light arms that are said to kill 1 000 people a day: governments must take responsibility for all weapons they sell, even after the deal is done.
Such a philosophy applies to weapons of mass destruction, but not to small arms, and it will be the focus of much debate at the two-week conference.
”It’s a bit of a challenge for governments, because they haven’t been previously thinking about it in that way,” said Rebecca Peters, director of the International Action Network on Small Arms, which joins Oxfam and Amnesty International in proposing the so-called ”Global Principles” for small arms sales.
Britain’s government has made a similar proposal and 11 African nations signed on in a meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, in April. The United States, China, Russia, Egypt, India and others have not explicitly endorsed it.
The US says it supports the British idea in principle. But US ambassador John Bolton made it clear Washington does not want the conference to go beyond a programme adopted in 2001 to curb the illicit sale of pistols, assault rifles, machine guns and other light weapons.
”We don’t see any need for treaties or agreements coming out of this,” Bolton said.
Many governments agree illicit arms traders have exploited loopholes in the programme and delegates need to come up with new ways of reinforcing it.
Global trade in small arms is worth about $4-billion a year, of which a fourth is considered illegal, according to the annual Small Arms Survey, an authoritative report on such weapons. The arms cause 60% to 90% of all deaths in conflicts every year.
”We are often concerned about weapons of mass destruction, and yet most of the killing taking place today, whether in Darfur or Congo or elsewhere, is done by small arms,” UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said on Friday.
Gun control advocates got a boost from Mikhail Kalashnikov, designer of the assault rifle that bears his name, who sent a statement to the conference expressing dismay that the weapon he invented is the weapon of choice in conflicts around the globe.
In a report released on Monday, the advocacy group Control Arms — an umbrella group that helped develop the ”Global Principles” — said the Kalashnikov assault rifle is the most widespread weapon in the world, with 50-million to 70-million in circulation.
Production of the AK series in factories in several countries has made it easily obtainable for ”unscrupulous arms dealers, irresponsible armed forces and non-state groups”, the group said.
In a statement accompanying the report, Kalashnikov called for stricter controls of arms sales. ”When I watch TV and see small arms of the AK family in the hands of bandits, I keep asking myself: how did those people get hold of them?” he wrote.
The National Rifle Association (NRA) and other gun-rights groups fear the conference could serve as a springboard to an international treaty to curb private ownership of small arms.
They also believe it will embolden regimes that violate human rights to disarm their citizens and make popular uprisings against oppression impossible.
”Ultimately, they’re offering a form of government support that makes government the only way citizens can seek protection, and Americans choke on that,” said Wayne LaPierre, NRA executive vice-president.
The NRA website is hosting a campaign that erroneously claims the conference will take place July 4 (the UN will be closed that day) and that it aims to take away their guns. The meeting’s agenda relates only to the illegal trade in small arms.
Human rights advocates hope the conference will build momentum for a treaty to apply the ”Global Principles” to trade in all weapons, including warplanes, tanks and attack helicopters.
However, they deny any grand conspiracy, saying the conference will help governments in Latin America and Asia that have no gun laws think more responsibly about the small arms trade.
The principles would be nonbinding, but would enable governments and civic groups to call violators more easily to account, said Colby Goodman, an advocate for Amnesty International USA. – Sapa-AP