Canada and the arms trade treaty

0 Comments | Behind the Headlines, Nov, 2007 | by Ernie Regehr

The international arms trade has to date avoided serious international control measures, but in the fall of 2006 the UN General Assembly launched a process designed to bring the regulation of military exports into the arms control mainstream. The proposal for an Arms Trade Treaty, designed to make it more difficult to arm repression and fuel conflict, is about to be studied by a UN experts group, and even though formal negotiations are not imminent, the debate has already begun to articulate basic transfer principles and to point to changes in national export control systems that will become necessary. As a second-tier military exporter of some significance, and as an advocate of an arms trade treaty, Canada is in a position to promote controls based on agreed standards, transparency, and peer scrutiny and ensure that international well-being and respect for human rights will become the key test of responsible national export control policies and practice.

Le commerce international des armes a jusqu 'a present echappe aux mesures de controle internationales serieuses, mais l'Assemblee generale de l'ONU a, a l'automne de 2006, entrepris de ramener les exportations militaires dans le giron du controle des armes. Le projet de traits; sur le commerce des armes, qui vise a compliquer la tache aux fournisseurs qui alimentent la repression et les conflits, est sur le point d'etre etudie par un groupe d'experts de l'ONU et, meme si des negociations officielles ne sont pas imminentes, le debat a deja commence a articuler les principes de transfert fondamentaux et a degager les modifications des systemes nationaux de controle des exportations qui s'imposeront. A titre d'exportateur militaire de deuxieme volet d'une certaine importance et de defenseur du traite sur le commerce des armes, le Canada est en mesure de favoriser des controles fondes sur des normes acceptees, sur la transparence et sur l'examen attentif des pairs et de veiller a ce que le bien-etre international et le respect des droits de la personne deviennent l'epreuve cle de la politique et des pratiques responsables en matiere de controle des exportations.

FIRST STEPS TOWARD A TREATY

The military supply lines to Pakistan and Burma (Myanmar), two countries of current notoriety, run directly through the UN Security Council, with branch lines from Europe, Asia, and even Canada. China, France and the United States are the prime military benefactors of Pakistan, while China and Russia do the same for Burma. German); Sweden, Switzerland, the Ukraine, Indonesia, and Canada (more on Canadian-built Bell helicopters later) have at various times also tried to help satisfy Pervez Musharraf's prodigious appetite for military goods, while India, Serbia, and the Ukraine have done the same for General Than Shwe.

Arming the world is a big and largely unregulated business, a reality that any despot worthy of the name knows and exploits. But in the fall of 2006 the international community took a first small but formal step toward changing that. The United Nations General Assembly, with only one dissenting vote, agreed to explore the creation of "common international standards for the import, export and transfer of conventional arms." (1) The objective is to stop arming repression and exacerbating conflict, and the resolution preamble sums up the developing consensus that the absence of standards "undermines peace, reconciliation, safety, security, stability and sustainable development." (2) The proposed instrument is a treaty, and Canada's Ambassador for Disarmament told the Geneva-based UN Conference on Disarmament earlier in 2007 that "a comprehensive, legally-binding Arms Trade Treaty could provide important international and human security benefits, notably by curtailing the irresponsible trade in all types of conventional arms." (3)

Action in one sense has been a long time coming. Ideas for regulating arms transfers, long advocated by nongovernmental organizations, have been on the edges of UN disarmament discourse since its founding. But, given the economic, political, security, and regional interests that meet and compete in the global arms trade, the idea of an arms trade treaty (ATT) actually made it into the political mainstream with surprising speed after it was proposed in 1997 by Oscar Arias of Costa Rica and a group of fellow Nobel Peace Laureates.

A second step in the process has now also been taken. In 2007 the Secretary-General canvassed and reported on the views of UN member states regarding the feasibility of the treaty. And the third step has already been committed--in 2008 an international Group of Governmental Experts will study the feasibility and parameters of a treaty. (4) After that the steps will become rather more challenging as they pick their way through the maze of producers, sellers, buyers, brokers, and dealers that populate the buoyant and lucrative international arms trade.

THE INTERNATIONAL ARMS TRADE TODAY

World military spending reached about $1.2 trillion in 2006. (5) Some 20 percent of that, $200 billion plus, went to arms procurement. Most procurement is for the arsenals of advanced industrial states whose primary source is domestic production. Less than a fifth of world military procurement is from foreign sources--i.e. is traded internationally. The US Congressional Research Service (CRS), which annually tabulates global arms sales and deliveries, reports that in 2006 international arms deliveries reached a value of just under $30 billion, of which about two-thirds went to developing countries.