Ms. Caroline Dumas Ambassador

French Embassy

Túngata 22
101 Reykjavík                                                        Reykjavík 14.05.2010

 

 

Your Excellency Ms. Caroline Dumas

 

As your government prepares for the first Preparatory Committee to deliberate on the content of an international Arms Trade Treaty in July 2010, we write to stress the urgent need for an effective treaty that will stop irresponsible arms transfers and help stop abuse, save lives, and protect livelihoods. As a globally important participant in the international arms trade, France has a particularly significant role to play in these Treaty deliberations. We urge you to use this role to respond to the needs of those who bear the human cost of the irresponsible arms trade, and to build on existing commitments which France has made in this area.

 

This week from 10th to 16th May, civil society organisations in over 110 countries are reminding governments that the poorly regulated global trade in conventional arms and ammunition has an enormous human cost. As the government of France has recognised in its robust statements on the Arms Trade Treaty, thousands of people are killed, injured, raped and forced to flee from their homes as a result of conflict, armed violence, and human rights violations and abuses perpetrated using conventional arms. Inadequate and loophole-ridden regulation of international transfers of conventional arms permits such weapons, equipment and munitions to be supplied to those violating human rights: destroying lives and threatening livelihoods. The accompanying document provides a short overview of this ongoing human cost.

 

The Arms Trade Treaty will address a glaring gap in international law.  While there are treaties to regulate the international trade of many products, from bananas to dinosaur bones, there are no global rules for the trade in conventional weapons: products specifically designed to kill and injure. We welcome France’s efforts to finally address this gap. 

 

Amnesty International believes that a “strong and robust” treaty with “the highest possible common international standards”, as mandated by UN General Assembly resolution 64/48, must be one that prevents international transfers of conventional arms where there is credible and reliable information indicating a substantial risk that the intended recipient is likely to use those arms to commit or facilitate grave harm, including:

 

- serious violations of international human rights law or international humanitarian law,

- acts of genocide or crimes against humanity;

- terrorist attacks;

- gross and systematic armed crime and violence; and

- actions that seriously undermine poverty eradication objectives.

 

The treaty must require states to undertake a rigorous risk assessment when considering transferring weapons to another state.  Where the risk of human harm is too high, the transfer must be prohibited.

 

In this regard, we are concerned that some States may propose an ATT rule which would merely require states to “take into consideration” or “take into account” a number of “factors” including respect for human rights, international humanitarian law (IHL), terrorism, organised crime; rather than a robust parameter, consonant with existing European law, which would prevent, suspend or deny a licence for an arms transfer where there is a clear or substantial risk that the arms are likely to be used for serious violations of international human rights law or IHL, or other serious crimes and harmful practices. We urge France to press for such robust criteria at the ATT Preparatory Committees.

 

We welcome France’s statements at the UN in recent years in support of regularisation and transparency in the international arms trade, as well your calls in the July 2009 Open Ended Working Group on an Arms Trade Treaty, and the 2009 sessions of the 1st Committee of the General Assembly, for anti-corruption measures, import controls, and international cooperation and assistance. We urge France to build upon these commitments in the ATT deliberations.

 

We also welcome the French government’s submission to the 2007 UN Secretary General’s consultation on the feasibility of an Arms Trade Treaty, which stressed the importance of comprehensive scope in an Arms Trade Treaty. To be effective the Arms Trade Treaty must regulate the global trade of:

·        all types of conventional military, security and police armaments, weapons and related materiel, including small arms and light weapons;

·        conventional ammunition and explosives used for the aforementioned;

·        weapons, ammunition and equipment deployed in the use of force by police and security forces;

·        components, expertise and equipment essential for the production, maintenance and use of the aforementioned; and

·        dual-use items that can have a military, security and police application.

 

To avoid loopholes, the Treaty must also regulate all types of international transfer (import, export, transit, gifts, loans and other transfers) and the transactions essential for a transfer in each case (including brokering activity).

 

Transparency in the international arms trade must be enhanced through robust reporting and record keeping provisions.  To ensure effective implementation, the Treaty should enforcement and dispute resolution mechanisms, and procedures for international cooperation and assistance.

 

We would like to call on the government of France to use the opportunity of the forthcoming UN Preparatory Committee (PrepCom) meetings in July to signal the French government’s intent to negotiate an Arms Trade Treaty with these essential elements.

 

Finally, we urge you to ensure that this first PrepCom goes beyond discussing relatively unproblematic or administrative aspects of the Treaty. As you are aware, the scheduled PrepComs currently provide only 120 hours to develop a highly complex international instrument. The first session, from 12-23 July 2010, constitutes half of the total time available to develop the Treaty before the final Treaty negotiation. In order to develop a robust Treaty, the available time must be used to the fullest effect. We therefore urge you to be ambitious about the progress of this PrepCom, and to ensure that substantive text on key elements of the ATT is discussed, rather than simply dealing with preliminary 'easy' areas.

 

 

Yours sincerely,

 

 

 

Jóhanna K. Eyjólfsdóttir

Director

Amnesty International Icelandic Section