Sir, - This month the United Nations holds a conference on the illicit trade in small arms. It is a first attempt to gain global control over an evil and dangerous illegal activity that causes enormous suffering and misery in poor countries. It must be supported.
The scale of the problem is almost impossible to imagine. According to UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, small arms kill more people every year than died in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings. Parts of Africa are awash with cheap, illicit weaponry, and prices are falling all the time. For example, in north-east Kenya an AK-47, which cost 10 cows in 1986, is now only two cows. In Sudan, the same gun can be had for a chicken. Despite these low prices, the trade is worth US$1 billion per year. There are 100 million illegal guns in Africa, 96,500 million worldwide.
Sophisticated automatic weapons have replaced spears, bows, and arrows in traditional feuds and cattle rustling. The vicious, and largely unreported, civil wars have as their currency guns manufactured in the rich nations and paid for in diamonds and oil. For the boy soldiers of Sierra Leone, Uganda, and elsewhere, the weapon of choice is the AK-47. The result is 5 million people killed in the last decade, 1.5 million in Sudan over 15 years, 30,000 annually in Colombia, and millions displaced.
While all countries have the right, indeed obligation, to enforce peace and civil order within their borders, the illicit trade in small arms is a pestilence that must be eliminated. The UN conference is an opportunity for decisive action.
Effective global regulation is needed to deal with this global menace. The conference must produce concrete proposals to establish, within a given time, legally binding rules. These should include a ban on selling arms that will violate human rights and humanitarian laws, controls on the conduct of arms brokers (such as already exist in Sweden), and effective marking and record-keeping so that arms can be traced.
Ireland, as a recently elected member of the UN Security Council, can play a leadership role in bringing about meaningful, beneficial change in this important area. - Yours, etc.,
Dr Brian Scott, Executive Director, Oxfam Ireland, Dublin 2.