Arms Trade Treaty

Nia Griffith Excerpts

Thursday 12th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Martin Caton]

I completely agree; my hon. Friend has made it unnecessary for me to give part of my speech, but I will mention an alternative option, if the worst comes to the worst, for trying to get something really valuable.

I am chair of the newly formed all-party group on weapons and protection of civilians. We have made it our first priority to work for an arms trade treaty that is robust and workable. We were persuaded to do so by the group of non-governmental organisations that make up the Control Arms Coalition—organisations that have been working for many years to try to achieve the objective of such a treaty.

What do we mean when we call for a robust and workable arms trade treaty? We can achieve it by bringing together countries’ existing obligations and commitments, and other widely accepted norms of state behaviour, under international law and applying them to the trade in conventional weapons.

In practice, that means establishing in international law a binding obligation to prevent transfers of weapons if the arms would pose a substantial risk of being used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international human rights law or international humanitarian law, or to undermine socio-economic development and poverty reduction goals. States should be required to conduct rigorous case-by-case assessments of all proposed imports, exports and international transfers of conventional arms to enable them to prevent those that breach the criteria of the treaty.

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. I know that he recognises the excellent work done by NGOs on this issue. Does he agree that any treaty needs to address the whole issue of resale? An awful lot of arms get transferred to countries that use them inappropriately.

[Martin Caton]

That is absolutely right. As I am sure that the Minister will report, there is a real danger in negotiations at present; some states are trying to reduce various things that should be covered. We want a comprehensive treaty.

The treaty needs to cover all types of conventional weaponry, munitions, armaments and related articles used for potential lethal force in military and law enforcement operations, as well as their parts and accessories, machines and the technologies and expertise for making, developing and maintaining them. It must have strong and effective implementation systems, including a public and transparent reporting mechanism, good monitoring, reporting and verification procedures, and provisions for settling disputes over suspected violations of the treaty. To achieve that, the treaty must also provide institutional support and periodic review for those states that do not have experience of enforcing a high standard of arms transfer control. That will require both resources and technical assistance.

The treaty must create an international framework of legal obligation, but it must be implemented nationally. Arms transfer decisions will still have to be decided by national Governments, but under the treaty they will be obliged to deny any transfer that breaches the arms trade treaty criteria.

When the all-party group decided to prioritise securing the treaty, we set ourselves the task of convincing the UK Government to fight for the sort of robust agreement at the UN that I have just described. We secured a meeting with the Minister, who is leading on the issue, and his diplomatic team, along with the NGOs that I have mentioned. We were very pleased to learn at that meeting that we did not have to convince the Minister or his team; it became apparent that their objectives for a strong, effective treaty mirrored ours pretty well. That has been further confirmed at a joint public meeting in Westminster, at which the Minister spoke, organised by our all-party group and the all-party United Nations group, chaired by Lord Hannay of Chiswick.

The Governments of some other nation states are, however, either opposed to such a comprehensive treaty or, at best, sceptical about it. The objections and reservations vary from state to state, so there is a real and challenging job to be done at the UN in the next couple of weeks if we are to secure our shared, progressive objectives. Given the nature and structure of treaty conferences, it is difficult during the process to get an accurate overview to help to assess the prospect of a successful outcome, but from the reports that I have received, the signs appear to have been positive and less positive so far.

The Control Arms NGOs are pressing for what they describe as a bullet-proof treaty, and they have presented a 600,000-signature petition to Ban Ki-moon. Parliamentarians for Global Action has delivered a petition signed by 2,053 Members of Parliament from 96 countries, including, of course, from this Parliament. However, a small minority of sceptical states have managed to get the NGOs excluded from a substantial part of the conference.

The UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, showed appropriate leadership in his opening statement to delegates when he said:

“You will need to agree on robust criteria that would help lessen the risk that transferred weapons are used to commit violations of international humanitarian law or human rights. You will also need to define the scope of the treaty to cover an extensive array of weapons and activities and that leaves no room for loopholes. Our common goal is clear: a robust and legally binding ATT that will have a real impact on the lives of those millions of people suffering from the consequences of armed conflict, repression and armed violence.”