CAATnews June/July 2006 - Feature

Control arms?

2006 marks the climax of the campaign for an international Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), launched three years ago by Oxfam, Amnesty International and the International Action Network on Small Arms. Somewhat surprisingly, this Control Arms coalition – which includes CAAT – has recently been joined by the UK government, despite its unstinting support for massive arms exports, and the Defence Manufacturers Association, the representative body of the UK arms industry.

What should we think of this apparent conversion by some of the arms trade’s biggest participants and champions? And will a treaty supported by such bodies actually work? In a speech in early 2005, then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw insisted that the treaty would tackle some of CAAT’s central concerns. He said it would enshrine “core principles” prohibiting arms sales when “exports may be used to abuse Human Rights or breach International Law” and when “they may fuel internal or regional conflict or tension”. Straw also said it would limit sales to “developing countries who spend already over-stretched budgets on armaments for which they have no clear need [and] are bound to have too little left for health, education and vital infrastructure.”

Yet in January this year the Defence Manufacturers Association told its members that the Government had assured them that any eventual treaty “would not bring new obligations for UK industry”. This suggests that current UK arms exports provide a benchmark for the likely effectiveness of a treaty with government and industry backing. Unfortunately, the official record of UK arms exports in 2005 shows the UK arms trade in open and growing breach of the “principles” discussed above.

Human rights abuse
The Foreign Office’s 2005 Human Rights Report listed 20 “major countries of concern”. In the same year the UK licensed military exports to 11 of them. These included:

• The highest level of UK arms exports to Israel since 1999, despite ongoing occupation of and civilian killings in the Occupied Palestinian Territories
   
• Exports to Indonesia worth over £12.5m. Late last year CAAT exposed UK-made Tactica armoured vehicles being deployed against protestors in Papua
   
• A 25 per cent increase in arms exports to Saudi Arabia. In December 2005 Defence Minister John Reid signed an agreement paving the way for a new multi billion pound arms deal with the regime, including a new fleet of Typhoon fighter jets  

Conflict
Of the 17 countries involved in major armed conflict in 2005, the UK licensed military exports to 14 of them. These included:

• Assault rifle parts to Nepal, where both sides of the civil war have been accused of human rights abuses
   
• A 60 per cent rise in arms exports to Sri Lanka, where government bombing of rebel-held areas has escalated
   
• Military aircraft parts to Uganda, despite an international coalition of aid agencies accusing the Ugandan government of failing to “prioritise the protection of civilians over the annihilation of the Lord’s Resistance Army”  

Poverty
In 2005 the UK sold significant quantities of arms to ten countries in the bottom third of the UN’s Human Development Index. These included:

• At least £18.1m of arms sales to Pakistan, which spends more on its military than on health and education combined
   
• At least £31m to Nigeria, the world’s 20th least developed country  

With the UK government already backing the initiative, CAAT has not made the ATT part of its core work this year. Unless a treaty goes further than government and industry currently allow, it may prove a dangerous whitewash – an ostensible solution to the repression, bloodshed and poverty fuelled by the arms trade that, in fact, provides cover for continued indiscriminate arms sales around the world.

MIKE LEWIS