Although this is a little late, and much more serious than
my usual durge, here is my article-esque piece on the arms trade treaty
conference in Westminster:
The conference on the 20th June was certainly an
eye-opening experience for me. Before then it hadn’t occurred to me that the
global arms trade isn’t currently regulated at all by the UN, thus I was more
than supportive of a solid arms trade treaty (ATT) to be brought about. The
event, which included displays of other students’ campaigns for the ATT, really
inspired me to take a more active role in Amnesty events, making me more
determined to make RHUL a much more activist university.
The most emotional and attention-grabbing parts of the day
were the two speeches by David Grimason and Emmanual Jal. David lost his son as
a result of an argument in a Turkish café that got out of hand, a situation
that would have been much less likely to happen if arms trading was regulated
properly. There are around 8 million handguns in Turkey, yet only 1 million are
licensed. This fact surprised me, as even relatively developed countries such
as Turkey can still have such unnecessary brutality due to easily obtainable
and importable arms.
Emmanual Jal is an ex child soldier who has been writing and
performing music to raise awareness of the troubles in his country. His ideas
and definitions of peace and his experiences gave us a personal and deep
example of how a proper ATT could assist in preventing such abuses of human
rights.
The UN will meet for the majority of July in order to
discuss a new ATT in order to tackle the arms trade issue. I was proud to
discover that the UK at the moment is one of the leading countries in favour of
a full, ‘bulletproof’ arms treaty, giving the conservatives at least one thing
for me to be proud of them for. However, some countries are currently pushing
for ammunition to not be controlled, but this is ludicrous. If it weren’t for
the ammo, the guns would be nothing more than sculptures. This is why we as a
nation should really pressure our government into pushing forwards the best,
the most sound and the least loopholed ATT so that crimes against people such
as Emmanual and the Grimasons can be lessened significantly in the near future.
