Governments sign historic global treaty to regulate the $85bn arms trade

The Arms Trade Treaty was adopted by majority vote at the General Assembly on 3 April. Three States voted against – Iran, Syria and North Korea, 156 states voted for and 22 abstained.    

The treaty will come into force 90 days after the 50th signatory state has completed the ratification process. The Control Arms Coalition is calling on states to urgently prioritise signing and ratifying as soon as possible.

The global arms market was valued at $85.3 billion in 2011 (Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 2004-2011, Richard F. Grimmett).

Jamaica, Colombia, Guatemala, Swaziland, South Africa, South Sudan (then included as part of Sudan), DRC and Brazil are all in the top 20 countries when ranked by violent death rate per 100,000 population, 2004–09 (The Global Burden of Armed Violence 2011, The Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Development).

By signing the treaty states commit to:

• Properly regulate all transfers of conventional arms, ammunition or parts and components.

• Ban the export of conventional arms, ammunition, or parts and components where there is knowledge the weapons would be used to perpetrate war crimes, genocide, attacks against civilians, and other grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions.

• Comprehensively assess the risk of any transfer to contribute to or undermine peace and security or to facilitate serious violations of international human rights or humanitarian law, terrorism, organized crime, gender-based violence or violence against women and children.

• Consider the risk that arms might be re-directed from the original recipient to another user – known as “diversion”.

• Submit annual reports on its international transfers and national implementation activities to the other States Parties, improving transparency in the global arms trade.