NationStates Jolt Archive

Please consider my Arms Treaty proposal.

Delegates, cast your votes.

A resolution to tighten gun control laws.

Category: Gun Control

Description: Pass legislation to stop arms transfers to gross abusers of human rights.

The uncontrolled proliferation and misuse of arms by government forces and armed groups takes a massive human toll in lost lives, lost livelihoods, and lost opportunities to escape poverty.

The abuse of arms fuels conflict, poverty, and violations of human rights.
The 'war on terror' should have focused political will to prevent arms falling into the wrong hands. Instead, some suppliers have relaxed their controls in order to arm newfound allies against 'terrorism', irrespective of their disregard for international human rights and humanitarian law.

Despite the damage that they cause, there is still no binding, comprehensive, international law to control the export of conventional arms.

At the same time, guns are becoming an integral part of life - and therefore an increasingly common instrument of death - in more communities and cities around the world.

Every government in the world has a responsibility to control arms - both their possession within its borders, to protect its own citizens, and their export across its borders, to ensure respect for international human rights and humanitarian law in the wider world.

All U.N. governments must cooperate to control and limit the flow of arms and the spread of arms production. At the very least, arms-exporting countries must not supply arms where there is a clear danger that they will be used for violations of international human rights and humanitarian law.

The largely unregulated global trade in small arms and light weapons continues to provide abusive governments and armed groups with easy access to the arms most often used to commit gross human rights abuses.

The International Arms Trade Treaty also calls on all governments to enact careful regulation of domestic, or local, firearms sales in order to ensure to the greatest extent possible that people in their country are not harmed by gun violence.

Approvals: 0

Status: Lacking Support (requires 147 more approvals)

Voting Ends: Tue Feb 8 2005

The proposal asks that governments not sell arms to unsuitable parties, but does not set down any strict guidelines as to who is it appropriate to sell to, and who not. I think there should definitely be more clarity in this issue. The only rule you set down is that they should not be sold to people i who intend to use them to violate human rights. How can this be ascertained? Who decides who is allowed to be sold arms? And how do they decide?

The proposal asks that governments not sell arms to unsuitable parties, but does not set down any strict guidelines as to who is it appropriate to sell to, and who not. I think there should definitely be more clarity in this issue. The only rule you set down is that they should not be sold to people i who intend to use them to violate human rights. How can this be ascertained? Who decides who is allowed to be sold arms? And how do they decide?

See I would say less clarity is better, because if you make it too prescise it will either stop anyone selling to anyone (which might not be a bad thing) or will open up far too many loopholes and make the proposal worthless.

But at present it leaves every nation to decide for itself who it can and can't sell arms to, and so long as they are not *currently* committing genocide, etc, then they can legally sell arms to them. Which is not placing much limits on the trade.

Not that I'm complaining, Gwenstefani's 2nd largest industry is the arms manufacturing trade, and the less regulations for us the better. But I do feel this proposal is a bit toothless so far, arguing that guns are bad, but offering no suggestions of what to do about it. It calls for regulations, but doesn't say what these should be, so they could be anything.

This proposal doesn't do anything.

The proposal asks that governments not sell arms to unsuitable parties, but does not set down any strict guidelines as to who is it appropriate to sell to, and who not. I think there should definitely be more clarity in this issue. The only rule you set down is that they should not be sold to people i who intend to use them to violate human rights. How can this be ascertained? Who decides who is allowed to be sold arms? And how do they decide?

Thanks for the feedback. The proposal does say to 'stop arms transfers to gross abusers of human rights'. How about if it stipulates illegalizing 'arms sales and transfers to nations with human rights records up to, but not including, a 'below-average' rating'?

Does that make it specific enough? Any loopholes I'm not seeing?
Do you (or does anyone) have any other ideas?

Thanks for the feedback. The proposal does say to 'stop arms transfers to gross abusers of human rights'. How about if it stipulates illegalizing 'arms sales and transfers to nations with human rights records up to, but not including, a 'below-average' rating'?

Does that make it specific enough? Any loopholes I'm not seeing?
Do you (or does anyone) have any other ideas?

The problem with that though is that while a country may have a very poor human rights record, this does not mean that they are using the weapons against their own people. Perhaps they just have very few civil rights due to being extremely religious, or whatever. Do these countries have no right to national defence?

i disagree much control yes but not now

I've another Proposal , why the Nation that have Good Human Right Leves don create a delegations for the COntrol of Arms

Doesn't this already exist in some form already in the Resolutions???