UK 'risks letting UN arms treaty fail'

26 July 2012

The UK must get "off its backside" to save negotiations for a United Nations arms trade treaty or risk seeing them collapse, former foreign secretary David Miliband has warned.

Writing in The Guardian, Miliband said that with arms treaty negotiations reaching a "crunch" point; the British government risked "betraying the original spirit that animated it".

"Seventy-four countries took to the floor of the UN last Friday to issue an appeal to save the treaty," he wrote. "They recalled the humanitarian and development principles that we sought to put at the heart of this treaty, and warned that these principles are being lost. But the UK stood aside.

"The private rationale was about 'building consensus'. That can be noble, but not if it involves abandoning principle. The danger is that in keeping quiet to seek an agreement; we end up with a deal so weak that it is not worth the paper it is written on."

"…It is no good saying you favour a strong treaty but backsliding when the going gets tough," he said.

Miliband added that the regulation of arms would help address "the under-reported but nonetheless deadly fact that up to 1,000 people a day – mostly women and children – are killed by such arms, often in the world's poorest countries. These weapons are used against UN peacekeepers from all round the world, as well as in inter-communal violence."

The conference produced a draft treaty suggesting that governments should not sell arms to countries where there is a "substantial risk of a serious violation" of human rights. Whilst the treaty would not ban arms exports, it would require arms exporters to meet a list of criteria, and prevent transfer where the result would be violations of international law.