Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: arms trade

  • The World Is Over-Armed and Peace Is Under-Funded

    This article was originally published by Eurasia Review.


    Ban Ki-moonLast month, competing interests prevented agreement on a much-needed treaty that would have reduced the appalling human cost of the poorly regulated international arms trade. Meanwhile, nuclear disarmament efforts remain stalled, despite strong and growing global popular sentiment in support of this cause.


    The failure of these negotiations and this month’s anniversaries of the atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki provide a good opportunity to explore what has gone wrong, why disarmament and arms control have proven so difficult to achieve, and how the world community can get back on track towards these vitally important goals.


    Many defence establishments now recognize that security means far more than protecting borders. Grave security concerns can arise as a result of demographic trends, chronic poverty, economic inequality, environmental degradation, pandemic diseases, organized crime, repressive governance and other developments no state can control alone. Arms can’t address such concerns.


    Yet there has been a troubling lag between recognizing these new security challenges, and launching new policies to address them. National budget priorities still tend to reflect the old paradigms. Massive military spending and new investments in modernizing nuclear weapons have left the world over-armed ― and peace under-funded.


    Last year, global military spending reportedly exceeded $1.7 trillion ― more than $4.6 billion a day, which alone is almost twice the U.N.’s budget for an entire year. This largesse includes billions more for modernizing nuclear arsenals decades into the future.


    This level of military spending is hard to explain in a post-Cold War world and amidst a global financial crisis. Economists would call this an “opportunity cost.” I call it human opportunities lost. Nuclear weapons budgets are especially ripe for deep cuts.


    Such weapons are useless against today’s threats to international peace and security. Their very existence is de-stabilizing: the more they are touted as indispensable, the greater is the incentive for their proliferation. Additional risks arise from accidents and the health and environmental effects of maintaining and developing such weapons.


    The time has come to re-affirm commitments to nuclear disarmament, and to ensure that this common end is reflected in national budgets, plans and institutions.


    Four years ago, I outlined a five-point disarmament proposal highlighting the need for a nuclear weapon convention or a framework of instruments to achieve this goal.


    Yet the disarmament stalemate continues. The solution clearly lies in greater efforts by States to harmonize their actions to achieve common ends. Here are some specific actions that all States and civil society should pursue to break this impasse.


    Support efforts by the Russian Federation and the United States to negotiate deep, verified cuts in their nuclear arsenals, both deployed and un-deployed.


    Obtain commitments by others possessing such weapons to join the disarmament process.


    Establish a moratorium on developing or producing nuclear weapons or new delivery systems.


    Negotiate a multilateral treaty outlawing fissile materials that can be used in nuclear weapons.


    End nuclear explosions and bring into force the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.


    Stop deploying nuclear weapons on foreign soil, and retire such weapons.


    Ensure that nuclear-weapon states report to a public U.N. repository on nuclear disarmament, including details on arsenal size, fissile material, delivery systems, and progress in achieving disarmament goals.
    Establish a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.


    Secure universal membership in treaties outlawing chemical and biological weapons.


    Pursue parallel efforts on conventional arms control, including an arms trade treaty, strengthened controls over the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons, universal membership in the Mine Ban, Cluster Munitions, and Inhumane Weapons Conventions, and expanded participation in the U.N. Report on Military Expenditures and the U.N. Register of Conventional Arms.


    Undertake diplomatic and military initiatives to maintain international peace and security in a world without nuclear weapons, including new efforts to resolve regional disputes.


    And perhaps above all, we must address basic human needs and achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Chronic poverty erodes security. Let us dramatically cut spending on nuclear weapons, and invest instead in social and economic development, which serves the interests of all by expanding markets, reducing motivations for armed conflicts, and in giving citizens a stake in their common futures. Like nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, such goals are essential for ensuring human security and a peaceful world for future generations.


    No development, no peace. No disarmament, no security. Yet when both advance, the world advances, with increased security and prosperity for all. These are common ends that deserve the support of all nations.

  • Curb This Deadly Trade

    As the UN general assembly opens this week, it has its best opportunity in years to make a life-saving difference to people all over the world. An opportunity to stop human rights abuses, limit the threat of terrorism, and reduce suffering for millions. The opportunity is a draft resolution for an international arms trade treaty that would place tough controls on sales.

    The treaty would make it illegal to sell weapons to human rights abusers; make it harder for weapons to end up in the hands of criminals and terrorists; and help regulate a trade that is spiralling out of control – $900bn spent on defence versus only $60bn on aid. Every day over 1,000 people lose their lives through armed violence.

    We have seen the appalling consequences recently in the Middle East: the Israeli army flattening civilian targets with precision-guided 1,000lb “bunker-buster” bombs and forcing almost a million people to flee their homes; Hizbullah rockets fired into civilian areas in northern Israel, killing people and forcing others to leave. Both are war crimes, and largely perpetrated with weapons imported from other countries.

    Israel’s military hardware, including its deadly cluster bombs, is overwhelmingly American-made. And hi-tech British components were used in the Apache helicopters that have fired rockets at cars on crowded streets, and the F-16s that devastated southern Lebanon. For its part, Hizbullah doesn’t manufacture the Katyushas or Khaibar-1 missiles it fired indiscriminately into Israel.

    Six-year-old Abbas Yusef Shibli picked up a cluster munition while playing with friends because it looked “like a perfume bottle”. When it exploded in his hand, he suffered a ruptured colon, a ruptured gall bladder, and a perforated lung.

    Nicaragua, my birthplace, is still awash with weapons, the legacy of a bloody conflict – fuelled by the US arming the Contras – in which more than 40,000 civilians were killed. Nicaragua is now one of the poorest nations in the western hemisphere.

    For decades, the US provided millions of dollars in military aid to oppressive governments in Latin America; many of those countries now have high levels of armed violence. As a human rights campaigner, I have advocated on behalf of countless victims of conflict, from Latin America to the Balkans to the Middle East. I can attest to the devastating effect on the civilian population, particularly on women and children.

    Some nations still try to block the treaty’s progress – though their arguments are flawed. The resolution from Britain, Finland, Japan, Argentina, Australia, Costa Rica and Kenya, would not undermine states’ sovereignty or ability to lawfully defend themselves with force. It would not hamper law enforcement to provide security for their citizens. Arms importers and exporters would simply have a clear set of rules to abide by, rather than the current hotch-potch of uneven and conflicting regulation.

    The treaty would promote real security. It would help to stop armed groups that pay no heed to international law equipping themselves. An Amnesty International report last year detailed shipments of more than 240 tonnes of weapons from eastern Europe to governments in Africa’s war-torn Great Lakes region, and on to militias involved in massacres, mutilation and mass rape.

    More than 50 countries have voiced support for an arms trade treaty, but to make it happen we need a majority of the 192 member states. Today Britain hosts a meeting of diplomats to discuss tougher arms controls. For once the international community can act pre-emptively to prevent carnage, not be forced to mop up afterwards. It is an opportunity that the UN must seize.

    Bianca Jagger is goodwill ambassador for the Council of Europe

  • The Modern Successor to the Slave Trade

    For many years, I’ve been involved in the peace business, doing what I can to help people overcome their differences. In doing so, I’ve also learnt a lot about the business of war: the arms trade. In my opinion it is the modern slave trade. It is an industry out of control: every day more than 1,000 people are killed by conventional weapons. The vast majority of those people are innocent men, women and children.

    There have been international treaties to control the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons for decades. Yet, despite the mounting death toll, there is still no treaty governing sales of all conventional weapons from handguns to attack helicopters. As a result, weapons fall into the wrong hands all too easily, fuelling human rights abuses, prolonging wars and digging countries deeper into poverty.

    This is allowed to continue because of the complicity of governments, especially rich countries’ governments, which turn a blind eye to the appalling human suffering associated with the proliferation of weapons.

    Every year, small arms alone kill more people than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki put together. Many more people are injured, terrorised or driven from their homes by armed violence. Even as you read this, one of these human tragedies is unfolding somewhere on the planet.

    Take the Democratic Republic of Congo, where armed violence recently flared up again, and millions have died during almost a decade of conflict. Despite a UN arms embargo against armed groups in the country, weapons have continued to flood in from all over the world.

    Arms found during weapons collections include those made in Germany, France, Israel, USA and Russia. The only common denominator is that nearly all these weapons were manufactured outside Africa. Five rich countries manufacture the vast majority of the world’s weapons. In 2005, Russia, the United States, France, Germany and the UK accounted for an estimated 82 per cent of the global arms market. And it’s big business: the amount rich countries spend on fighting HIV/Aids every year represents just 18 days’ global spending on arms.

    But while the profits flow back to the developed world, the effects of the arms trade are predominantly felt in developing countries. More than two-thirds of the value of all arms are sold to Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.

    In addition to the deaths, injuries and rapes perpetrated with these weapons, the cost of conflict goes deeper still, destroying health and education systems.

    For example, in northern Uganda, which has been devastated by 20 years of armed conflict, it has been estimated that 250,000 children do not attend school. The war in northern Uganda, which may be finally coming to an end, has been fuelled by supplies of foreign-made weapons. And, as with so many wars, the heaviest toll has been on the region’s children. Children under five are always the most vulnerable to disease, and in a war zone adequate medical care is often not available.

    The world could eradicate poverty in a few generations were only a fraction of the expenditure on the war business to be spent on peace. An average of $22bn is spent on arms by countries in Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa every year, according to estimates for the US Congress. This sum would have enabled those countries to put every child in school and to reduce child mortality by two-thirds by 2015, fulfilling two of the Millennium Development Goals.

    This year, the world has the chance to finally say no to the continuing scandal of the unregulated weapons trade. In October, governments will vote on a resolution at the UN General Assembly to start working towards an Arms Trade Treaty. That Treaty would be based on a simple principle: no weapons for violations of international law. In other words, a ban on selling weapons if there is a clear risk they will be used to abuse human rights or fuel conflict. The UN resolution has been put forward by the governments of Australia, Argentina, Costa Rica, Finland, Japan, Kenya, and the UK. These governments believe the idea of an Arms Trade Treaty is one whose time has come.

    I agree. We must end impunity for governments who authorise the supply of weapons when they know there’s a great danger those weapons will be used for gross human rights abuses. Great strides are being made towards ending impunity for war criminals. It cannot be acceptable that their arms suppliers continue to escape punishment. No longer should the peace business be undermined by the arms business. I call on all governments to put the control of the international arms trade at the top of their agenda.