The Amnesty Arms Trade Treaty Conference

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 20^th 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.