United Nations Approves Arms Trade Treaty

[ProSense]

United Nations Approves Arms Trade Treaty

By Hayes Brown

The United Nations General Assembly voted on Tuesday morning to approve the final text of the world’s first treaty regulating the trade of arms between countries, despite pressure from the National Rifle Association to have the United States kill the measure.

In passing the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) — with a vote of 154 in favor to 3 with 23 abstentions — the General Assembly has finally completed work that has gone on for years, including two rounds of strenuous negotiations, and two incomplete conferences. The latest attempt to pass the document via consensus was blocked at the last minute through the combined efforts of Iran, North Korea, and Syria. Following that setback, more than one hundred countries — including the United States — co-sponsored the ATT to move forward in the General Assembly, which is made up of all 193 members of the U.N., resulting in today’s vote.

The legal arms trade, comprised of both the import and export weapons, constitutes around $70 billion annually. Attack helicopters, tanks, and other larger arms are covered under the treaty, as well as small arms and ammunition for these weapons. Under the terms of the treaty, states are required to determine whether the shipment of arms to a second country would be used to commit atrocities or violate human rights or if they could diverted for such a purpose, and report back to the U.N. Secretariat on their efforts. Counter to the right-wing fear-mongering in the United States, primacy of national legislation is recognized in the treaty, forgoing any possibility of a government “gun grab.”

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That pledge of careful consideration hasn’t done anything to lessen NRA opposition. On Friday the NRA’s action wing referred to the ATT as an “undead” treaty...the ATT is already facing heavy opposition in the U.S. Congress, including the efforts of Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) to pass a concurrent resolution to keep President Obama from signing the text. But given that Democrats hold the majority in Senate Foreign Relations Committee, however, it is unlikely Moran’s resolution will pass. Unfortunately, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) did manage toslip an item into the FY 2014 Budget that would create a fund to block implementation of the ATT.

http://thinkprogress.org/security/2013/04/02/1808661/un-nra-att-passes/

[ProSense]

1. Kick! n/t

[polly7]

2. UN Passes Historic Arms Trade Treaty to U.S. Media Silence

AlterNet / By Alexander Zaitchik 3 COMMENTS

No major broadcast network has made even passing mention of a treaty that curtails trafficking to war-torn nations.
April 3, 2013 |

THE UNITED NATIONS – On the day the Arms Trade Treaty was scheduled to face a consensus vote by 193 countries, ending the years-long process to establish an international agreement to curtail arms trafficking to nations torn by conflict, I listened to a member of the Liberian delegation explain his country’s concerns. “We wanted a much tighter treaty,” he said, referring the large group of African countries most affected by the global black market arms trade. ”Those of us who live in countries devastated by civil war very clearly understand the need for a strong regulatory framework to deter non-state actors from getting weapons. This is why we wanted a mechanism for risk-assessment, and why we wanted penalties.”

The attempt to tame the raging bull that is the $70 billion global arms trade all but guaranteed disappointment. Understanding why begins in the Security Council, where the countries with the most clout in the closed sessions where treaty language is crafted also happen to be the world’s biggest arms exporters. Like all states, the Big Five use weapons sales to strengthen strategic industries, and as tools of foreign policy and national security. The major exporters were never likely to hand significant oversight powers to a U.N. monitoring body. The same is true at the other end of the trade, where a wide range of arms importing states formed a “skeptical” bloc and expressed concern that exporting countries would wield the treaty as a political tool and constrain their access to weapons. In their statements rejecting the treaty last Thursday, Iran, Syria, and North Korea expressed this fear with bombast, but it was hardly a fringe view. With the major exporters and the skeptical states working against a strong treaty, it fell mostly to a coalition of African countries and civil society groups to agitate for something resembling the original “robust” vision for the treaty including strict monitoring, risk-assessment criteria, and penalties.

The NRA’s efforts to thwart what it calls the “U.N.’s never-ending mission to disarm the American people” dates to the first Clinton administration. As Media Matters recounted in its report on July’s ATT talks, the NRA became interested in the U.N. with the establishment of the U.N. Panel of Governmental Experts on Small Arms. To maintain a presence in the process, it set up an umbrella group called the World Forum on the Future of Sport Shooting Activities and gained observer status for the Small Arms Panel and a subsequent series of regional U.N. workshops across Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

This is around the time Wayne LaPierre began fundraising off loud warnings about “global gun grabbers.” In 1996, the NRA’s lobbying arm publically called on Senator Jesse Helms to deny funds to any U.N. program related to “small arms used by the civilian population in the United States.” This included weapons destruction programs in war-torn regions in Africa and the Balkans. When the U.N. Small Arms panel published its first major report in 1997, the NRA warned its members, “A multi-national cadre of gun-ban extremists is lobbying the United Nations, demanding [a] virtual worldwide ban on firearms ownership… What would happen if the UN demands gun confiscation on American soil?” These hysterics continued into the Bush years, and by 2006, LaPierre merely had to cull a decade’s worth of NRA fax and email alerts for his book, The Global War on Your Guns: Inside the UN Plan To Destroy the Bill of Rights.

Full Article: http://www.alternet.org/world/un-passes-historic-arms-trade-treaty-us-media-silence?paging=off

[ProSense]

3. The MSM can't

allow anything to disrupt the NRA spin.

Texas Attorney General Admits Arms Treaty Doesn’t Violate Second Amendment

By Hayes Brown

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott made clear on Fox News on Wednesday that he is firmly opposed to a new United Nations arms treaty — even while admitting that it doesn’t infringe on the Second Amendment.

The United Nations yesterday finally passed the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), laying out new regulations of the $70 billion trade of arms between countries. In doing so, the U.N. has once more drawn the ire of conservatives, including those who believe that the treaty could infringe on Americans’ Second Amendment rights. Abbott sent a stern letter to President Obama, urging him not to sign the treaty, claiming it “does more than trample Second Amendment rights.”

Echoing that letter, Abbott admitted on Fox today that nothing in it as written has the ability to violate the Second Amendment:

KELLY: There may be some gaps, there may be some things that the U.N. tries to control that our law hasn’t specifically gotten to yet. And so, it could lead to more gun control here in the United States that the U.N. would have to oversee.

ABBOTT: Precisely, this is a step in a very dangerous direction, and that is the argument could be made, the treaty is worded so vaguely — there is no specific violation of a Second Amendment right, a Second Amendment right right now. However, there could be a violation later on depending upon the way that the United Nations applies and interprets this treaty at a future date.

Watch the interview here:

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http://thinkprogress.org/security/2013/04/03/1818141/abbott-att-second-amendment/