Dying For Action
Control Arms
In three years, 2.1 million people worldwide have died as a direct or indirect result of firearms
Around eight million firearms are produced around the world every year and are often sold with little or no thought as to how they will be used or how much death or damage they will bring. As yet, no serious efforts have been made to limit the proliferation of small arms. In December 2006, the UN voted to begin putting together an Arms Trade Treaty to protect civilians all over the world from the ‘irresponsible’ spread of firearms. However, three years have now passed and no progress has been made towards a completed treaty, and now Oxfam has released a report entitled Dying for Action detailing that in those three years, 2.1 million people worldwide have died as a direct or indirect result of firearms.
According to Jeremy Hobbs, Executive Director of Oxfam International, 2.1 million people in three years (not including those injured, maimed or impoverished as a result of firearms) works out at 2,000 every day or, frighteningly, just over one person a minute. Of these millions, 700,000 were civilians killed as a result of armed conflict, citing the wars in Afghanistan, Somalia, Sri Lanka and the ongoing atrocities in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Hobbs went on to state that though eight out of every ten countries in the UN are in favour of arms control, efforts to establish it have been brought almost to a standstill by the other two out of ten countries and the tactics of the major arms exporters.
Oxfam demands that these delays should stop now and that the UN should vote by the end of the year to begin negotiations in 2010 and that the treaty should be completed by 2012. In the meanwhile governments all over the world should take a hand in their sales of weapons so they can reduce the number of casualties they cause. As for the content of the treaty, Control Arms, an international campaign run Oxfam, Amnesty International and the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) since 2003 has five essential rules for a treaty. They are that guns should not be sold to those likely to violate international law or human rights laws, if they have an impact on sustainable development or further corruption, if they start or continue armed conflicts, if they will be used in violent crime and if they might be diverted to be used for any of the previous purposes or for use by terrorists. Only if these principles are adhered to will any Arms Trade Treaty be effective and millions of people be safe from firearms.