The United Nations General Assembly in New York has passed the world’s first global arms trade treaty, seeking to regulate the industry thought to be worth over $70 billion.
The treaty, passed earlier on Tuesday, regulates conventional weapons, ranging from small arms and light weapons to warships, missiles and combat aircraft. It prohibits sales of weapons in violation of arms embargoes or if those weapons were to be used for acts of terrorism, war crimes, and crimes against humanity or genocide.
The resolution was approved by a vote of 154 to 3 with 23 abstentions.
The United States, the world’s largest arms supplier, voted for the resolution. Other major arms producers such as Russia and China abstained, along with other mainly Latin American countries such as Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua.
The 3 countries who voted against the resolution were Iran, Syria and North Korea.
Iran stated the treaty had “loopholes” and was "hugely susceptible to politicisation and discrimination", while North Korea complained that it arms to those with a legitimate right to self-defence would be restricted.
Syria also stated the treaty failed to include an embargo on weapons being supplied to "to terrorist armed groups and to non-state actors" adding that countries backing the treaty were "fully engaged in supplying terrorist groups [in Syria] with all kinds of lethal weapons".
NGOs meanwhile welcomed the treaty, with Amnesty International stating those who abstained had “abysmal human rights records, having even used arms against their own citizens".
The head of Amnesty International’s Washington office, Frank Jannuzi, stated the treaty was not perfect, but commented,
“To the extent that there’s any enforcement mechanism in this treaty, it’s an actual benchmark in which we can judge states’ behavior, whereas before it was extremely subjective… Now there’s a process. So that’s a step forward. For all those unlicensed exports that end up fueling violence, this treaty begins to get a handle on that through much more rigorous licensing and reporting.”
Raymond Offenheiser, the president of Oxfam America, also added,
“The Arms Trade Treaty provides a powerful alternative to the body-bag approach currently used to respond to humanitarian crises… Today nations enact arms embargoes in response to humanitarian crises only after a mass loss of life. The treaty prohibits the weapon sales in the first place.”
