iblog

The Control Arms Campaign, a campaign to stop the proliferation of small arms, supported by Oxfam and Amnesty International and myself for that matter is about to produce the required results. After three years and more than a million signatures it reached its target, lobbying the UN General Assembly to legislate for an International Arms Trade Treaty. In October the UN General Assembly will vote for a resolution to start work towards an Arms Trade Treaty .
It has also succeeded in securing strong backing by the Foreign Office. Last Thursday 13th September, Foreign Office Ministers received foreign diplomats in an attempt to persuade them to support the resolution in New York in October. The thorny issue in the text of the resolution seems to be the inclusion of the term ‘human rights’. Although Non Governmental Organisations and the Foreign Office are in favour of using the term, there is strong opposition by states that have a poor record on the subject. The Foreign Office, which co-authored the report, hopes to reach consensus so that the resolution can pass unanimously. If you would like to support this campaign, you can add your signature to the control arms petition. It’s definitely a worthwhile cause.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 21st, 2006 at 10:34 pm and is filed under Current Affairs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.