Illegal weapons that are manufactured in western countries are being used by terrorists worldwide and have prompted calls for a United Nations treaty governing the international sale of arms.

Transcript
TONY JONES: 800 million small arms are in the hands of rebel groups, bandits and terrorists worldwide.

That extraordinary total is fuelling the push by the United Nations for a treaty which will regulate the production and sale of small arms. The only country which opposed last year's resolution kick-starting the treaty process was the United States.

For Australia, the problem is closer to home than many realise, with Australian supplied arms falling into the hands of criminals and mercenary gunmen across the Pacific, after being stolen from defence and police authorities.

In fact in Papua New Guinea alone, one expert says that the Australian SLR's remains the experienced criminal's assault weapon of choice, with only a quarter of those delivered to the PNG Defence Forces since 1971 still in stock.

In a moment we'll cross to New York to talk to Mary Robinson, the former President of Ireland and now the Honorary President of Oxfam International, to discuss the issue.

But first, this report from Michael Edwards.

MICHAEL EDWARDS: Darfur, Sudan. Hundreds of thousands have been killed, millions displaced. It's a conflict in one of the poorest parts of the Third World, fought largely by weapons supplied by the developed world.

PHILLIP ALPERS, GUN POLICY EXPERT: When the Berlin Wall fell there were millions of guns suddenly on the loose, unguarded and for sale and those guns moved largely into the Middle East, Africa and countries...anybody who wanted them cheap. There were times in Africa where you could guy an AK 47 for the price of a couple of chickens.

ACTOR: These people are going to die.

ACTOR 2: It's not our business.

MICHAEL EDWARDS: In the movie Lord of War, Nicholas Cage's character makes his fortune as an arm's dealer, selling weapons to different factions fighting each other in Africa.

And the reality is not much different. The world is awash with millions of small arms. Weapons manufacturers and traffickers are making billions by selling the rifles, hand guns, rocket launchers and landmines used to fight regional conflicts.

In recent years, Somalia, Darfur, Liberia and the Democratic Republic of Congo are some countries ravaged by internal conflict. Phillip Alpers is an expert in small arms. He says some of the weapons survive for decades and move from conflict to conflict. He says small arms are a lethal export.

PHILLIP ALPERS: The problem is that the five largest manufacturers of small arms in the world are also the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. So you're up against a rather large lobby. These are the people who feel that they have the right to give as many guns as they like to whatever allies or countries that they like.

MICHAEL EDWARDS: Australia has also played an unwitting role as the armourer to various tribunal conflicts in Papua New Guinea and the South Pacific. Since 1971 Australia has supplied and PNG Defence Force with more than 7,500 rifles. Only 2,013 remain in stock.

PHILLIP ALPERS: The surprising thing about Papua New Guinea is that almost all the guns were supplied by Australia, and now Australia is in the situation where as it did in Solomon Islands where a peacekeeper was shot with an old Australian army rifle which was legally supplied to the Solomon Islands police many years ago now being turned back on the Australians.

MICHAEL EDWARDS: Former British politician and distinguished war correspondent Martin Bell has seen the harm caused by war first hand.

He says developed countries need to be held accountable for who they sell arms to.

MARTIN BELL, JOURNALIST: Can we be indifferent from where these conventional weapons come from and the extent and ease with which they circulate and fall into the hands of armies, of militias, of armed bands of whomever?

MICHAEL EDWARDS: Martin Bell is one of a growing band of people backing a United Nations' treaty which would regulate the proliferation of small arms worldwide.

MARTIN BELL: All of the limitation treaties such as they are have tended to be about nuclear weapons. What about the weapons killing people? All over the world they're entirely conventional weapons.

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Tony Jones speaks with president of Oxfam Mary Robinson
Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Broadcast: 07/05/2007

Reporter: Tony Jones

http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2007/s1916674.htm
 

Tony Jones speaks with the president of Oxfam, Mary Robinson, about illegal arms trade.

Transcript
TONY JONES: Mary Robinson is the former United Nations high commissioner for human rights and the former president of Ireland. She is now the Honorary President for Oxfam International and she heads the Ethical Globalisation Initiative.

Last year on the 55th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights she led the call for the creation of a new international arms trade treaty, one that closes the loop holes that allow small arms to flood conflict zones, and hold the supplier of those weapons accountable.

Mary Robinson joins us now from New York. Thanks for being here.

MARY ROBINSON, HONORARY PRESIDENT, OXFAM INTERNATIONAL: Pleasure to be here, I feel passionate about this issue.

TONY JONES: I'm so glad you've joined us then. Australia may not be dealing small arms as such but we did arm Papua New Guinea the Defence Force there and evidently more than 75 per cent of the weapons, 5,500 of them have literally gone missing and many of them are now in the hands of criminal gangs. Who do you hold responsible? Is it the arms supplier, Australia in this case, or the end user?

MARY ROBINSON: I think your report is bringing out the reality, which is very grim. The reality that many guns that are supplied legally, in the sense of going to a legal government, if they are not properly secured very quickly get into the hands of bandits, gangsters and rebel groups and that's one of the problems in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, that the guns are not manufactured locally, they come in and they come from Australia, from the United States, often starting in legal supply.

Having said that, I'm very glad that Australia is one of the co-sponsors of a resolution that was passed last December in the United Nations where 153 countries voted positively and as you've said, only one country, sadly the United States, voted against a resolution for an arms trade treaty.

I was in the United Nations building here in New York very recently for the next stage, which is that governments are making submissions which will be gathered in and form the basis of a text to be provided for an arms trade treaty.

So Australia and New Zealand in that region have an opportunity for very strong submissions. Because you have the problem that this is what is causing the kind of insecurity currently both in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. These guns that have been provided. The assault weapons, the conventional weapons killing people, that are causing such distress to women and the elderly in these communities.

TONY JONES: Mary Robinson, I'll come to the detail of the treaty, how it might work, the planned or proposed treaty. First, we've been closely following, for example, the crisis in Darfur which by all accounts is awash with small arms. Many of the reports say the people there now feel they need to arm themselves merely to stay alive. I'm wondering, how can you reverse a situation as dreadful as that? How can you take back what's already there?

MARY ROBINSON: It is a dreadful situation. In fact, I know from my Oxfam colleagues from Save the Children and others, the situation in Darfur is worse than we read about and it's getting worse because the humanitarian agencies are not able now to reach huge sections of the population in Darfur. There is the rule of the gun and people feel they must protect themselves, they must have their own AK 47's and assault rifles and it's really very sad to see whether it's in Darfur or in the Pacific Islands that there is a greater proliferation.

So that's precisely why we need to control and need to have an arms trade treaty, to regulate these small arms that have become the weapons of mass destruction. I'm very glad that Oxfam and Amnesty International for the first time ever have combined with a range of small NGO's and I heard recently that non governmental organisations in Papua New Guinea are working closely with the support of Oxfam to build up a civil society determination that we must have regulation and then we can begin to redress a situation that should never have happened.

TONY JONES: One of the things you confront is made rather typical by the case in Darfur, just who is supplying, for example, the Sudanese Government who in turn supply the militias who are doing most of the damage?

MARY ROBINSON: Well, it's the largest and most powerful countries, the so called P5 countries that are the major manufacturers and suppliers of small arms. Sudan has been supplied by different large countries. By Russia, by the United States, by other countries. China is now very much involved in Sudan. The situation is one where because the land scarcity problem, the economic problems of drought et cetera manifested themselves and worsened the situation between the tribunal groups and the population in Darfur, and because there was no sense of zero tolerance of gender based violence.

I'm acutely aware that part of the real problem that arose is when women were killed and raped. Nobody shouted, "Stop, this can't go on," the guns were available, the roaming militia had been able to get women in the camps and when they go out for firewood, when they go out for water. And it is shocking. There is no excuse for it and it is because these weapons have been so widely available. The end of the Cold War meant that there was a kind of free for all of these weapons being available and as I said, they are causing great problems to the neighbours of Australia and New Zealand in the Pacific Islands and in Papua New Guinea. This is why I'm glad that both Australia and New Zealand are strongly behind the arms trade treaty. We have to counter these weapons which are the weapons that kill, the weapons that cause women to be raped at the barrel of a gun.

TONY JONES: Grafted on top of the conventional arms trade by countries like Russia and China you, of course, have the illegal trade, the black market trade and you hear anecdotal stories of weapons which float between countries from conflict to conflict. How do you stop that?

MARY ROBINSON: I certainly was very aware in my travels to places of conflict as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, be it Sierra Leone, be it various parts of the Congo, of this dirty arms trade and it's linked to the smuggling and trafficking of people. It's linked to the drugs trade.

I'm not an absolute expert on it, I just saw the results on the ground and these are criminals who enforce their terrible dark rule with guns. So whether they are trafficking people, whether they are trafficking drugs or trafficking guns, they themselves use guns to enforce their terrible slaughter and their terrible criminality.

The world has a criminalisation that is made worse in a way by some of the trends of globalisation. We need to counter that and we need to regulate and control the arms trade. We must do it by first of all having an arms trade treaty as is now proposed. We could have it by 2010 if governments with leadership in countries such as Australia and New Zealand, Great Britain have been giving very good leadership on this. We must ensure that we redress a situation we have allowed to get out of control.

TONY JONES: Can you tell us how it would work. Would the onus be on the supplying countries to make sure exactly where their weapons go, or would the onus be on the end user countries? How would it work?

MARY ROBINSON: There would obviously be a big onus on the supplier countries and on the end use countries. Suppliers should not go to countries where there is no protected armouries properly secured, where there's a whole leakage and that happened both in the Solomon Islands and in Papua New Guinea.

The responsibility was there on a country like Australia not to supply without ensuring that there was proper security of the armouries, and that didn't happen. That certainly must be part of an arms trade treaty. There must be more ways of tracking where the arms are going and ensuring they don't get into the hands of rebel groups, gangster groups, of the criminals that are part of the huge illegal arms trade.

But my understanding from the campaign is that most, the vast majority of the arms start off in legal trade and then leak into or through corruption and other means get into the illegal arms. Those are the issues that have to be addressed. That's why the current submissions of governments are so important and indeed the way in which the civil society with this huge campaign of Oxfam amnesty and the local non governmental organisation social security so important.

TONY JONES: Why do you think the United States has stood out virtually alone against such treaty? What effect does that have on other countries considering whether or not to sign up to one?

MARY ROBINSON: It is a huge pity because the United States is both an enormous manufacturer and exporter of small arms and also a major country on this or any other issue.

I don't give up yet on the United States. Indeed based here in New York I saw the huge trauma of the killing in West Virginia Tech, the outpouring of a community and we saw the biographies, the life stories of those who were killed, all 32 of them. Think of the thousand people killed every day who are anonymous, who are never written up. The United States has this complex, constitutional right to bear arms that has become very much a lobby that is very effective and powerful in Congress.

But I think the United States is learning that it is paying a deep and high price internally, domestically for the availability so easily of arms, that somebody with mental problems can go and buy a gun and kill students and their teachers. I hope that will give some empathy to the need to control. The United States after all is very much involved in countries where the availability of arms illegally is fermenting the conflict, whether it's in Iraq, whether it's in Afghanistan and US Defence personnel are being killed and that's a huge issue here in the United States and I hope that there will be a kind of learning from the influence of other countries where you had 153 countries voting yes, and now being engaged in a strong process that may influence the United States.

I hope it will and I hope Australia which has a relationship with the United States that could be turned to advantage here, will speak frankly about the need for the United States to come on board. If not, like the land mines convention, it must go ahead anyway.

TONY JONES: I'm sure you'd be aware the United States argues that may have strong control over weapons transfer and the treaty would weaken control over American weapons going overseas. Bearing in mind that America is the biggest supplier individually of weapons to the world?

MARY ROBINSON: It's blatantly not the case that America has these very strong controls. We see where the weapons that start all in legal sale then very quickly leak into there isn't proper security, there's corruption, bribery et cetera. The United States needs to be part of and indeed play a strong role in a global campaign for an enforceable well regulated arms trade treaty, as I hope we will get maybe as soon as I said, as 2010.

We should work really hard and concentrate on the importance of this because it's shocking that a thousand people are killed every day, that there are more guns and bullets than the population of the world. It's just not acceptable. It's so contrary to human rights and to human dignity and respect and it's happening in the smallest countries where they're not manufacturing the arms, but they are available because they have come in by legal and illegal means and it must be controlled.

TONY JONES: Mary Robinson, a final quick question if I can on a related subject. Australia is now agonising over what to do about Zimbabwe, its cricket team is due to go to Zimbabwe.

We've seen dreadful violence there of a type we've seen in other countries like in Africa, in other parts of Africa, I should say. Do you have any thoughts on that? Is it effective to stop sporting teams going to countries like that?

MARY ROBINSON: It's a difficult issue, I know what a great sporting nation Australia is and indeed I know how proud Zimbabweans are of their sporting time. I actually feel that the situation Zimbabwe has got so bad that we have to think of it in terms of something akin to the devastation that apartheid caused in South Africa.

I'll actually be going to South Africa later this month and meeting with Nelson Mandela and Graca Michelle. We're worrying about Zimbabwe and what we can do. I don't have a hardline, I haven't thought greatly about it. I do know we must address the situation. It is a huge human rights travesty that is happening, and it is the poorest blacks affected. The many who try to get across the borders now, to Botswana, to South Africa, because they can't live in a country where inflation is so rampant, where there's a cronyism of the few and devastation and terrible poverty and terrible, terrible concern about hyperinflation for so many. It has to be tackled.

Maybe a sporting route is one way of tackling it. I hope this is bringing home to the population in Australia that there needs to be political pressure, there needs to be UN pressure. There needs to be much more attention and especially from the neighbouring African countries who can actually bring the most effective pressure of all on Zimbabwe and on President Mugabe who has betrayed his people having been at one time a leader who brought them their freedom.

TONY JONES: Mary Robinson, I'm sure that anyone who's seen you talking tonight will appreciate the passion you bring to both of these issues. We wish you luck in South Africa and with the arms trade treaty, thank you very much for coming to join us.

MARY ROBINSON: Thank you, appreciate it. (Emphasis added)