This week, the United Nations holds the “UN Conference on Small Arms,” a much-anticipated gathering of government officials and civil society representatives who hope to curtail the proliferation of small arms and light weapons. However, with several procedural and substantive issues left unresolved, and vast disagreements still separating many of the participants, some observers fear the outcome of this event will be insignificant.
Michel Rocard, the former French primer minister who co-chairs the Eminent Persons Group on small arms, says he is concerned that the conference will not achieve its stated objectives. Rocard says his group has “already accepted that this conference will not produce a comprehensive decision.” However, Rocard notes that the conference is needed to “launch a process . . . that will lead to more political work.”
Negotiations during the ten-day conference will focus on refining the Draft Program of Action — the document to be issued at the end of the conclave. Critics claim the Program of Action has already been watered down by removing any legally binding language or calls for future action on legally binding agreements. The unresolved issues include whether to address both legal and illegal “licit” versus “illicit” transfers of small arms and light weapons; whether to address civilian weapons possession; and basic issues such as a definition of small arms and light weapons. Rocard says that on the licit/illicit question “some states are mixing national interest with logic and stupidity...It is clear,” he adds, “no one wants to ban licit arms transports.”
The US government has taken a cautious approach to the conference, pressing for a politically binding consensus document. A US government official familiar with the conference identified three areas the Bush administration would prefer the conference not address: Civilian possession of firearms, transfers to non-state actors and any infringement on licit arms transfers. The conference would be most successful, says the Bush administration official, if it produced a “really strong document that focuses on the heart of the problem: illicit transfers to countries in conflict.”
In the two and a half years, since the UN decided to convene a conference to address the impact of small arms and light weapons on international security, few members of the United States Congress or their staffs have been involved in the issue, and not once has Congress gone on record to support the aims of the UN’s effort to stem the worldwide proliferation of small arms.
Congressional indifference to the global small arms crisis is rooted in America’s general disinterest in international affairs. Furthermore — says one Congressional aide — small arms “are perceived by the American public as one component of the arms trade issue that potentially has a significant economic and political impact in member’s districts.” The aide also believes that few members of US Congress have the vision to take an active role on the small arms issue. Additionally, intense pressure from the National Rifle Association — a powerful lobbying organization whose membership is comprised of gun-owners — has probably scared many members of Congress away from the issue.
Despite widespread indifference by many people in Congress, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) has organized a briefing on small arms proliferation for Senators and their staff. In the past Feinstein has advocated ratification of the Organization of American States’ convention on illicit weapons trafficking. In March 1999, Feinstein and eight other Senators even took the step of sending a letter to then-Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Jesse Helms (R-North Carolina) asking that he endorse the trafficking convention. “The illicit global trade in light weapons is being increasingly recognized as a major problem with profound implications for US national security interests,” the Senators wrote. Despite their concerns, the Senate has not moved on the small arms convention and the House has been silent on the issue.
Worldwide interest in the UN effort to deal with the small arms and light weapons issue has grown largely from the success of the effort to ban landmines. The movement has also drawn interest from unusual alliances of countries. The United States, China and Russia — typically on opposite sides of the debate of international security issues — will likely form a coalition at the UN to oppose the effort.
Some loose blocks of countries will probably align in opposition to this Superpower threesome. Many countries in the non-aligned movement, particularly South Africa, Egypt and India, will try to retain the draft document, known as the “Program of Action,” without major changes. Countries that hope to strengthen the draft and create a strong follow-up mechanism include Canada, Norway, Japan, and the European Union. The unexpected parings are a result of the way the small arms issue affects countries.
China and Russia are concerned the conference will produce an internationally binding treaty that would inhibit their freedom action. Officials for the US government are adamant that the final document, be only politically binding and not address transfers to non-state actors or civilian possession of firearms.
Dr. W. James Arputharaj, Executive Director of South Asia Partnership International, says Europe is focused on the marking and tracing of small arms as well as stockpile management, whereas South Asian states are primarily concerned with transparency regarding the import and re-export of small arms.
Many states are pushing for a final document that all states can agree to. Owen Greene, with the Department of Peace Studies at Bradford University in the United Kingdom, says the European Union has been criticized for “disrupting an emerging consensus around weaker language,” by pushing for stronger commitments from states. Greene says a final consensus document could be so watered down that it will be nearly ineffective.
