The Arms Trade Treaty: A historic and momentous failure | Ceasefire Magazine - 5 views
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One of the treaty’s core principles is “the respect for the legitimate interests of States to acquire conventional arms to exercise their right to self-defence… and to produce, export, import and transfer conventional arms”. It focuses specifically on stopping “illicit” trade. However, this distinction between the “legitimate” arms trade and the “illicit” arms trade is bogus
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The vast majority of international arms transfers, including those to human rights-abusing governments and conflict areas, are legal.
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the most important lesson, which had seemed self-evident to the treaty’s critics, is that if a piece of proposed arms control legislation has the support of the world’s biggest arms producing states and the support of the arms industry itself, then that’s a fair indication that the legislation will be useless or worse than useless.
