The following statement was delivered a short while ago
by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein to the Security
Council
Small arms: the human cost of illicit transfer,
destabilizing, accumulation and misuse of small arms and light weapons
NEW YORK (13 May 2015) - "I am grateful for the
opportunity to address the Council on the human cost of the illicit transfer,
destabilizing accumulation and misuse of small arms and light weapons.
The bloodshed and devastation caused by these weapons
never fails to elicit unanimous declarations of dismay.
But when the international community is
called upon to control more effectively the production and trade of small arms
and light weaponry, States push for loose definitions, as well as numerous exclusions
and loopholes, and enforcement remains weak.
The reason is clear: the trade in small arms is a multi-billion-dollar
business.
And yet the human and economic cost of armed violence
also runs into the hundreds of billions of dollars. These are the weapons of the easy kill: the
most portable, most easily accessible, most casual instruments of death – even
a small child can, with its tiny muscles, vanquish a life. In war, however, appallingly, it is often
the child that receives the bullet.
The vast majority of victims are not the live version of
the silhouetted man on a white sheet of paper holding a gun, what law
enforcement and militaries the world over use for target practice.
The live version is very different.
The majority of bullet-ridden and
mortar-blasted humans are ordinary people, not combatants in armed
conflict.
They tend to be among the
poorest or most vulnerable members of society: older people, women, children,
people with disabilities.
Frequently,
they are the "left-behinds", people who cannot flee when danger
looms, because they have nowhere to go or because they are not physically able
to move.
Many are killed; countless
others are maimed, and may be permanently disabled.
If they were to reflect reality more closely, the
silhouettes used for target practice would not then be menacing gunmen, but
terrified people hiding under tables, or cowering in the corners of dark rooms
with their families, or lying face down in a ditch.
And why? Because
war is not just the clinical fulfilment of some military or strategic
objective, war, in the killing zone, often means a gruesome showcasing of human
cruelty, and for reasons we still do not yet properly understand. Why does it have to be so violent to
civilians and non-combatants?
The pathologies of human behaviour have yet to determine
why, but we do know: if the oldest companion of war is war crime; its bride is
the profiteer.
There are simply too many who will indulge in the
commerce of death, in the illicit business of arms transfers which is
undeniably damaging to human life, and yet we rarely see those responsible for
facilitating and abetting serious violations of human rights and international
humanitarian law held accountable in any way.
We must place the protection of human life and human rights at the
centre of this discussion.
The contrast is also breathtakingly stark between the
comfortable profits of the brokers of these weapons -- not to speak the
accompanying lifestyles of the more successful of them -- and the victims of
their use, who in the majority of cases are likely to find no recourse or
remedy for the torment and disabilities these arms and weapons have caused
them.
We are all aware small arms do not only make easy the
taking of lives, and the maiming of lives – they also kill economies, and the
social bonds on which every kind of collective institution and progress
rely.
Their ubiquitous availability can
contribute to the sustained denial of human rights, including to education and
health, the lethality of criminal behaviour; the breakdown of social
structures; illicit plundering of natural resources; decreasing trade and
investment; rising violence against women and girls; gang violence; the
collapse of rule of law; and a generalised sense of impunity, opening up in
many parts of the world completely lawless landscapes.
My office welcomes the convening of this meeting, and we
appeal to the Security Council to continue to build on Resolution 2117
(2013). We also note the upcoming second
open-ended meeting of the Group of Experts in a few weeks’ time, and hope it
will make serious progress.
The ATT’s recent entry into force is a real source of
hope, if more Member States ratify it, agree to implement it genuinely,
particularly articles 6 and 7, providing for the human rights safeguards that
are the treaty’s heart.
The Security
Council should continue to provide strong support to the ATT, and it should
mandate UN operations to build ATT implementation capacity into their regional
and national assistance, hand in hand with capacity-building for human rights
and rule of law institutions.
My predecessor, Navi Pillay, proposed to the Council in
August 2014 that, when it came to the ATT, and “where there exist concerns
about human rights in States that purchase small arms in large quantities, one
condition of sale would be they accept a small human rights monitoring
team.”
I too believe this form of
innovative thinking deserves further elaboration and urge the States Parties to
explore it, along with the distinguished members of the Security Council.
I thank you very much."
ENDS
For more information and media requests, please contact
please contact Rupert Colville (+41 22 917 9767 / rcolville@ohchr.org) or
Ravina Shamdasani (+41 22 917 9169 / rshamdasani@ohchr.org) or Cécile Pouilly (+41 22 917 9310 /
cpouilly@ohchr.org).
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