The "war on terror" has weakened national arms controls and fuelled the proliferation of conventional weapons, a coalition of leading human rights charities warned Thursday. Launching a global campaign to regulate the arms trade, Amnesty International, Oxfam, and the International Network on Small Arms, said that on average 500,000 people were killed each year by armed violence -- roughly one victim a minute.
Existing arms control laws, including those in Britain, are riddled with loopholes, the agencies claim, and what is needed is a common approach similar to the initiative that produced the 1997 Ottawa treaty banning landmines.
The charities' proposed international arms trade treaty would outlaw weapons sales involving exportation for use entailing "violations of international human rights or humanitarian law." The plan will be presented to a UN conference on small arms in 2006.
"A new urgency has been created by the so-called war on terror," said Irene Khan, the secretary general of Amnesty. "This is fuelling the proliferation of weapons rather than combating it. Many countries, including the US, have relaxed controls on sales of arms to allies known to have appalling human rights records.
"In the past two years, the US has increased arms sales to [such states] and Britain has followed suit. British arms sales to Indonesia [the second highest recipient of UK overseas aid] rose from ?2 million in 2000 to ?40 million in 2002."
Shipments of arms had been delivered on the basis that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," despite knowing that one-time allies, such as Iraq, could become future dangers, said the charities. In June 2003, there were thought to be 24 million guns in Iraq -- enough to arm every man, woman and child. The charities describe small arms as the true "weapons of mass destruction," which are claiming hundreds of thousands of lives, destabilizing countries and prolonging conflicts.
Britain, the second largest exporter of arms, is urged, in a report entitled Shattered Lives, to sign up to the arms trade treaty. It is criticized for military aid and arms sales to Pakistan and Uzbekistan, which soared after the Sept. 11 attacks on the US.
Shipments of weapons to Saudi Arabia, where thousands of religious and political activists are detained arbitrarily, and Jamaica, where the police have killed more than 600 people in the past four years, are also highlighted.
Britain's recently introduced arms control legislation is blamed for failing to outlaw the activity of British arms brokers who work outside the UK, despite an earlier manifesto commitment.
The report notes that in 2002 the G8 group of leading industrialized countries allocated $US20 billion to a program designed to prevent terrorists acquiring nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. But "the G8 failed to address the proliferation of conventional weapons, including small arms, to states and armed groups that they know will abuse such weapons to terrorize."
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has said the death toll from small arms "dwarfs that of all other weapons systems, and in most years greatly exceeds the toll of the atomic bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In terms of the carnage they cause, small arms could well be described as weapons of mass destruction, yet there is no global non-proliferation regime to limit their spread."
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