Meeting on Arms Trade Treaty

Last Tuesday, December 16, Dr. Bob and I hosted a workshop on disarmament, "Towards a Common Understanding of the Arms Trade Treaty in Zambia." The meeting was spearheaded by Joseph Dube, African representative of the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA). Along with Mr. Dube, the Deputy British High Commissioner, Paula Walsh, and the Director of teh Zambia Anti-Personnel Mine Action Centre, Sheila Mweemba, gave speeches. The Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Fashion Phiri, was in attendance.

Joseph Dube and others are pushing for legally binding international law to control the proliferation and use of small arms. Unlike landmines and cluster bombs, small arms (which include simple firearms) will never be outright banned. There will always be a just and humanitarian need for small arms - for military use, personal security, and so on. The Arms Trade Treaty that advocates are pushing for will establish common standards and institutions to control small arms, making sure that they are produced, bought, sold and used legally. There is controversy over the scope of such a treaty, and the treaty is in its infancy, but the movement is there.

One cause for optimism, in my view, is the recent success of the cluster bomb campaign. While the two campaigns are different, to be sure, the world's success in banning cluster bombs, and landmines before them, breathed life into the disarmament campaign at large. In Zambia, we see Dr. Bob and Ms. Mweemba turning their energy to small arms without missing a beat. Indeed, Ms. Mweemba spoke specifically about lessons learned from the cluster bomb campaign, some of which were duly noted by Mr. Dube from IANSA - for example, the need for regions like Africa and Latin America, which contain many less powerful countries, to mobilize themselves and speak with one vice. In this way, African countries were quite influential in shaping the direction and scope of the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

I am actually no longer in Lusaka, having left for my holiday travels a few days ago. I'm writing from a hostel in Blantyre, Malawi. More on that soon. For now, here are pictures from the meeting I uploaded before I left.