billion-dollar-a-year illegal trafficking of small arms - Brief Article

Humanist, Sept, 2001

* The first United Nations conference to curtail the billion-dollar-a-year illegal trafficking of small arms concluded July 21, 2001, with 189 nations agreeing to the watered-down version the Bush administration had been pressing for. The diluted plan makes no call to limit weapons sales or to restrict civilian gun ownership and left many Africans, Europeans, and human rights groups angry, protesting that the pact will neither control gun ownership nor block governments from arming guerrillas.

According to Dafna Linzer of the Associated Press, the United States refused to support "any measure that would bar governments from supplying small arms to rebel groups, noting that it would not forgo foreign policy options such as helping to overthrow a threatening regime." The resolution is not legally binding but is significant as a first global step toward eliminating the illegal trade in small arms--the "weapon of choice in forty-six of forty-nine conflicts fought during the 1990s, causing more than 1,000 deaths a day."