Govern Global Arms Trade

In the present scandal of the attempt to ship tonnes of arms and ammunition to Zimbabwe, it is the Chinese who have spoken the most sense. China’s foreign ministry said the country’s shipment of mortar shells, rockets and bullets was perfectly normal trade.

It certainly is. Shipping arms to African governments who could use them to abuse their own people is an abhorrent but almost daily occurrence. And at present there is nothing the international community can do about it because there are no effective global control on arms trade.
If you want to export weapons to a country that commits gross abuses of human rights, then you can. If you want to sell expensive kit to governments struggling to feed or educate their people, it’s really no problem. You might have to use a few tricks to get around the flimsy patchwork of controls that presently exist but it’s easy and it’s done all the time.
The case of the An Yue Jiang and its cargo is different because it happened at a politically fraught time, for both Zimbabwe and China, and because the whole world has heard about it. Originaly only the vigilance of the South African transport workers’ union stopped the shipment being unloaded in Durban. The blocking of a shipment that could have had such a catastrophic impact on so many lives shouldn’t be down to the sharp eyes and strong principles of a stevedores’ union. This is a systemic failure, but entirely predictable because of the lack of transparency in shipping arms.

The dockworkers alerted the world to the danger the An Yue Jiang and its contents posed. Then there was the unedifying sight of the international community scrabbling around trying to prevent the ship from docking and the weapons getting through to Zimbabwe.

The US in particular worked hard to stop the shipment, but it had to resort to diplomatic pressure because there are no effective rules covering who can sell arms to whom. Despite a record of human rights abuses Zimbabwe isn’t presently under a UN arms embargo. This would be a welcome first step. But it’s not enough in itself: there are ways round embargoes, such as routing the weapons through a third country.

At the moment the UN is working on an arms trade treaty that could stop weapons transfers such as this one to Zimbabwe. If a strong treaty eventually becomes law, then an arms exporter will have to block the sale if there is evidence the weapons are likely to be used to commit serious violations of human rights law. If they went ahead with the sale, then civil society in the exporting country or other countries would be able to challenge this decision, as they would certainly have done in this case. Common agreement on tough standards for the arms trade also would make it harder to ship weapons through a third country, which wouldbe legally obliged to prevent dubious arms shipments passing through their territory. Under an effective arms trade treaty, human rights would not be the only criteria used to assess a weapons sale. The effect on development would also be included.

According to research, armed conflict costs Africa $18 billion a year in lost economic opportunities. On average, a war, civil war or insurgency shrinks an African economy by 15 per cent. More than 95 per cent of Kalashnikov rifles, the weapon of choice in so many African conflicts, come from outside the continent. So do the bullets, mortars and other ammunition on which warring armies depend. A strong treaty should include ammunition as well as the weapons themselves. In a conflict situation it is impossible to sustain fighting without a steady stream of ammunition. Of course, legitimate uses such as defence or policing won’t be affected by an arms trade treaty. Governments that treat their people well have nothing to fear from a treaty, and neither will legitimate arms producers.

In fact there is support from many arms manufacturers for a treaty: they want their business recognised as legitimate and the crooks banned fromoperating.

In December 2006, more than 150 countries voted at the UN to work towards a legally binding arms trade treaty. This May the process continues as a group of experts from 28 countries are meeting to discuss taking the process forward.

Now that it looks like the ship and its contents are returning to China and civil society, trade unions, human rights groups and others can proclaim a momentary victory. But if the UN meetings do not come out in support of a tough treaty then this victory will be at best temporary, at worst meaningless.

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Photo:Archbishop Desmond Tutu at the Feb 20, 2006 press conference on church unity at the 9th Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

Desmond Tutu is the Anglican archbishop emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa, and winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize.