A long week at the United Nations is over. The morning was spent in the back of the conference room listening to the diplomats adjusting typos and commas and unsuccessfully seeking substantive changes to the chair’s final report of the meeting.
Again, the representative from Nigeria described the feeling in the room the best when he said that the report was being adopted by all with “even distribution of dissatisfaction”. A new negotiation model, he said he wanted to chair with his former International Relations professor.
So what does it all mean? On the positive side, the report adopted by all states today marked that for the first time all governments agreed that international action is needed to address the problem of the unregulated arms trade. In contrast to the last Open-Ended Working Group in March 2009, this week almost no States seriously questioned the merit of developing international regulations and a majority of the countries urged that negotiations begin on an Arms Trade Treaty. A clear message was given that a small number of States must no longer block the desire of the overwhelming majority for a legally binding Arms Trade Treaty.
In response to our campaign and targeting lobbying, the US which has previously opposed discussions on a future Arms Trade Treaty, now showed willingness to fully engage in the debate.
It was also particularly great to hear a number of powerful interventions by States from many regions of the world affected by conflict and armed violence, including: Côte d’Ivoire, Guatemala, Liberia, Mexico, Kenya, Nicaragua, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.
Some big arms exporters. Including Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, South Africa, UK, and Ukraine, also delivered some strong statements. Finally, I’d like to highlight supportive interventions that helped build momentum for an effective Arms Trade Treaty from Australia, Netherlands, New Zealand and Norway.
But let’s not forget that whilst momentum is building Control Arms activists from every part of the world came to the United Nations to campaign for the strongest possible treaty. That’s one that will control transfers of all arms and ammunition with tough criteria to stop them from getting into the wrong hands. And we’re not there yet.
With 2000 people dying every day from armed violence, Member States must agree to begin negotiations when they reconvene in October. We’ll be there in October and will be calling on you for your support.
Oistein
