LONDON: Weapons merchants are profiting from the lack of an international judicial framework to supply arms to individuals with few human rights scruples and to states under embargo, a new report said on Monday.
The globalisation of the weapons industry has shed light on the shortcomings of existing legislation to control it, according to the report “Arms without Borders,” published jointly by Amnesty International, Oxfam International and the International Action Network on Small Arms, an umbrella organization of 600 NGOs.
“This report reveals a litany of deficiencies and of destroyed lives,” said Jeremy Hobbs, director of Oxfam International. “Weapons companies are globalising, but the legislation is not, and the result is the arming of regimes guilty of abuse.”
The three organisations have formed a coalition arguing for an international treaty to regulate the weapons trade.
The report outlines how American, European and Canadian companies bypass laws regulating weapons trade by selling arms in detached pieces or by subcontracting their activities to local businesses.
“Europe and North America are rapidly becoming the Ikeas of the arms industry, supplying people guilty of human rights abuses so that they can assemble weapons back home,” Hobbs continued.
“It’s time for a treaty to regulate the arms trade,” he added.
The report highlights two loopholes in international legislation on the arms trade. While it is illegal to sell assembled armaments to countries under embargo, it is possible to sell components that can then be used to build weapons in the countries concerned.
The European Union, for example, currently has an embargo on arms sales to China, while both the US and Canada refuse to sell helicopters to Beijing.
Yet, say the critics, China’s new Z-10 helicopter could never have been developed without European, US and Canadian technology.
The second way the report said arms suppliers get around the ban was illustrated by the case of British four wheel drive vehicle maker Land Rover, who’s vehicles were used by the Uzbek army in a violent crack down on protestors in 2005.
The Land Rovers used were first shipped to Turkey as civilian vehicles.
Once there however they were transformed for military use, without the British government being able to intervene, before being shipped on to Uzbekistan.
“The legislation concerning the arms trade is so outdated that the sale of soldiers helmets is better regulated than the sale of components that can be made into deadly weapons,” said Amnesty International Director-General Irene Kahn.—AFP
