THE decision this week for a global treaty to ban cluster munitions in Dublin is a significant step towards reducing indiscriminate civilian deaths and making our world a safer place.
But the world needs to do much more if we genuinely seek to stop civilians dying from weapons designed for war.
This is because there is still a type of weaponry in the arsenals of every government on earth that continues to kill and maim civili
ans year after year. These weapons line more coffins than landmines and cluster munitions combined. They provide more mortuary business than any nuclear, chemical or biological weapon. And yet their trade is still not regulated by any international treaty. These weapons are small arms.
The impact that weapons such as handguns, assault rifles and machine guns have on people's lives is anything but small. About 1,000 people a day die from gunshot wounds and at least 3,000 are severely injured. If the death, injury and disability resulting from small arms were categorised as a disease, it would be viewed as an epidemic. And yet the international trade in these weapons positively blossoms.
Two months ago, China tried to deliver 70 tonnes of small arms, including three million rounds of ammunition, to the Zimbabwean government, a regime well noted for its disregard for human rights. The absence of any international treaty allowed South Africa to agree to facilitate the deal by transferring the weapons across its territory. It didn't happen this time – thanks to the South African trade unions – but ships and planes are supplying small arms to conflict zones or desperately under-developed countries all the time. And once there, they stay for decades, bypassing porous borders and facilitating different conflicts. So Soviet AK-47s that flooded into Africa after the Cold War were used by child soldiers in Liberia and then Sierra Leone. It is entirely possible that the very same guns are being used to carry out mass rapes in DR Congo.
The treaties on landmines and cluster munitions demonstrate that humanity can progress and can reject the devastating effects of modern warfare. But we will not see a less violent world until an arms trade treaty sits beside them.
