Time to end the civilian suffering fuelled by irresponsible arms trading

13/9/2017

This week diplomats meet in Geneva to discuss the progress of the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), the world’s first treaty regulating the international trade in conventional weapons. For people in countries like Yemen and Iraq where weapons are fuelling deadly conflicts, this meeting is nothing short of an emergency.

I was at the UN General Assembly when the ATT was adopted in April 2013 after two decades of sustained campaigning by Amnesty International and many NGO partners, and years of discussions and negotiations. The room broke out in emotional applause: finally, for the first time, states would have to put the protection of human rights at the centre of their decision-making when selling or transferring weapons to other countries. So far 92 states have joined the treaty and 38 states have signed it. This is rapid progress, but there’s a problem: some of these states are still authorizing irresponsible arms transfers, undermining one of the main purposes of the treaty: to reduce human suffering.

It was never going to be easy to rein in an industry as massive and secretive as the arms trade. About half a million people are killed every year by firearms, and arms transfers are at their highest volume since the end of the Cold War. We expected progress to take time. But four years on, the actions of some states who have joined the treaty have been almost brazen in their disregard for their obligations, and the consequences for civilians have been horrific.

The UK, a State Party to the ATT, was one of its most enthusiastic early proponents. When the UK ratified the ATT in 2014, it made a promise: it would not transfer weapons which it knew would be used in war crimes or could contribute to serious violations. It has broken that promise by continuing to export huge amounts of weapons to Saudi Arabia, which has committed a litany of serious violations of international humanitarian law, including possible war crimes, in Yemen since 2015. Just last month a single airstrike killed 10 people and injured 7 in Sana’a, including five children, while they slept in their homes. A recent UN report found that as of August 2017 at least 5,144 civilians, including more than 1,184 children, have been killed in Yemen and many more have been injured since the start of the conflict.

The UK’s dangerous liaison with Saudi Arabia and the coalition it leads has received plenty of attention but the facts bear repeating: the UK is required under international law not to supply weapons to known gross violators of human rights, and yet it goes ahead anyway. It is evading its legal responsibilities, and Yemeni civilians are paying the price. A UK court ruling in July that the government is entitled to continue authorizing arms supplies to Saudi Arabia was a deadly setback to Yemeni civilians and a deeply disappointing outcome, given the clear risk arms could be used to commit serious violations in Yemen.