UN Agency Chiefs Call for Comprehensive and Robust Arms Trade Treaty

The following statement is issued on behalf of Valerie Amos, United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator; Helen Clark, Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme;
António Guterres, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees; Mr. Anthony Lake, Executive Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund; and Navi Pillay, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

(New York, 16 February 2012) As States meet this week in New York for the final preparatory meeting ahead of July’s United Nations Diplomatic Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty, we would like to articulate the key elements that we, the heads of several United Nations humanitarian, development and human rights organizations with extensive operations in the field, believe must be included in such a treaty if it is to effectively address the human cost – that is to say, the appalling humanitarian and development consequences – of the poorly regulated global trade in conventional weapons.

We recognize that important efforts have been made at the national and regional level to regulate the trade in conventional weapons. These efforts are laudable and attest to the recognition by Member States of the need for regulation. However, the current patchwork of controls is simply not adequate. The human cost of such inadequate controls, and the corresponding widespread availability and misuse of weapons, is unacceptably high.

This manifests itself in several ways: in the killing, wounding, and rape of civilians – including children, the most vulnerable of all – and the perpetration of other serious violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law; and in the displacement of people, sometimes on a massive scale, within and across borders. At the end of 2010, an estimated 27.5 million people were internally displaced as a result of conflict, while millions more have sought refuge abroad. In many cases, the armed violence that drove them from their homes was fuelled by the widespread availability and misuse of weapons.

These millions of women, girls, boys and men are in desperate need of or dependent on food, shelter, medical and other forms of humanitarian and development assistance – the financial cost of which is borne by many of the Member States taking part in this week’s preparatory meeting in New York. In December 2011, the United Nations appealed for over US$7 billion to help 51 million people cope with humanitarian emergencies around the world this year, many of whom are affected by conflict and armed violence and subject to a range of human rights and humanitarian law violations. The value of the global authorized trade in small arms and light weapons and their ammunition is also estimated at over US$7 billion per year.