Amnesty international on Monday urged world nations to address the poorly regulated global arms trade that fueled grave human rights abuses of tens of millions of people and claimed countless lives each year.
The London-based rights group's appeal came ahead of the opening of the United Nations' final conference on the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) at its New York headquarters.
Amnesty said the March 18-28 negotiations would provide an opportunity for states to agree rules to end irresponsible arms transfers across borders that fuel grave abuses of human rights. The U.N. conference is an acid test for states to demonstrate their commitment to human rights and humanitarian law, it said.
"It shouldn't take millions more dying and lives destroyed before leaders show some backbone and take action to adopt global standards to effectively control international arms transfers. They have this historic opportunity to save lives - they need to seize it and stop arms from fueling atrocities," Amnesty Secretary-General Salil Shetty said in a press release.
The nine-day ATT conference follows on from last July when U.N. negotiations ended without an agreement due to delaying tactics by a handful of states opposed to its goals. The U.S. was particularly reluctant to agree to a deal ahead of the presidential elections. Nevertheless, 157 states voted last November in favour of returning to the negotiating table this month to finalize the Treaty text.
Amnesty said previous attempts before World War II to forge an arms trade treaty collapsed partly due to the absence of such standards, noting that U.N. arms embargoes were currently imposed only after atrocities were documented.
"Because of the lack of agreed systems of regulating arms transfers, they mostly fail to stop the supply of weapons and munitions that continue to fuel atrocities and serious violations of human rights on a massive scale," Amnesty said.
The group said its delegation to the U.N. conference would press world leaders to agree to a treaty with arms transfer criteria to ensure respect for international human rights law and robust rules, including regulations on the trade of all type of conventional arms used in both military and law enforcement operations, controls on all aspects of the international arms trade and establishment of mechanisms to prevent the diversion of arms transfers to unauthorized end users.
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