The small arms trade has widespread repercussions, especially in poor countries with weak infrastructures, Amnesty and Oxfam say.
Weapons in the wrong hands prevent access to hospitals, markets, schools, and productive land. Poverty fuels conflict and vice versa, says the report. The problem is compounded by corrupt, poorly trained, badly paid, and often scarce official security forces.
Weapons have permeated daily life to such an extent that in northern Uganda AK-47s are replacing spears; in Somalia some children are now named AK.
Most of the estimated 639 million small arms in the world are in private hands. And the problems facing countries after an armed conflict often overwhelm them, leading to more violence. "Half of newly pacified countries revert to war within a decade," adds the report.
The launch of the arms control campaign follows mounting concern also about Britain, where the use of firearms in violent crime grew by 35 percent last year.
The campaign also launched a petition gather one million signatures supporting the draft arms treaty. Showing the cost in human lives, 300 model gravestones were erected in Trafalgar Square, London, each with the slogan "One person every minute killed by arms."
British Foreign Office minister Mike O'Brien welcomed the report but added: "Britain has been in the forefront of efforts to improve arms controls and we have one of the toughest export control systems in the world."
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