Illegal arms and UN reform

AMMUNITION: "Guns do not kill people. Bullets do," and bullets are available in abundance for those who want them. So freely available is this lethal "cargo" that every human on earth at present could be easily shot twice with the bullets thus at hand.

These, in essence, are the principal findings of a recent study conducted by Oxfam on the current availability of ammunition and its sources of supply. In other words, the illegal ammunition trade is growing worldwide with hardly any curbs preventing its deadly spread.

Underscoring the magnitude of this problem is the Oxfam finding that a human life in Baghdad could be estimated in monetary terms at little over two US dollars at present, computed on the basis of the cost of a bullet which is just a few cents and only some eight to 12 bullets are needed in the Iraqi theatre to end the life of a human being.

Underlining the severity of the crisis of uncurbed global arms and ammunition sales is an Amnesty International report which says that world arms shipments are now well out of control of states and global regulatory bodies.

"Arms supply chains are becoming increasingly sub-contracted and completely out of control. They are talking about curbing brokering but they haven't even got round to transport," Amnesty's arms expert Brian Wood was quoted saying.

In other words, arms suppliers - both state and non-state - and gun-runners are having almost a free-run of current arms markets. The present legal and regulatory regime as regards the arms trade, is seen as so weak and marred by loopholes that illegal arms sales are veering completely out of control.

Coming in the wake of a major UN conference on the small arms trade, these findings should jolt the world community into recognizing that it cannot stand idly by any longer and allow the illegal trade in these instruments of death to go unchecked.

While it is superficially correct that although guns by themselves cannot end lives only humans could do so, it is the easy availability of arms and ammunition which facilitates bloodshed, war and destruction.

Accordingly, if some armed conflicts are proving difficult to end today, this should not come as a surprise, considering that the instruments of war are easy to come by.

It is important that the world community keeps these unpleasant truths in focus in this year of UN reform.

The UN needs to be reformed to make it a truly multilateral body which fosters collective thinking and decision-making by the international community but it is also important to render the UN sharply sensitive and responsive to crises such as the global, illegal arms trade which has burgeoned out of the control of the world's prime deliberative and decision-making body which is the UN. In other words, formal, structural changes to the UN just would not suffice.

The UN needs to be empowered and invested with the capability of controlling menacing, global problems, such as the illegal arms and ammunition trade, which impacts decisively on the twin issues of war and peace.

Rendering the UN a truly multilateral decision-making body and the issue of ending the root causes of war, such as the illegal arms trade, could be found to be closely linked because it is the world's biggest military powers which currently wield a decisive influence within the UN.

IT is these powers which are the world's number one arms manufacturers. Therefore, to the extent to which the influence of such powers could be curbed within the UN, the illegal arms trade could be brought within the regulatory control of the UN.

Accordingly, democratizing the UN and making it truly representative of all sections of the international community emerges as a key to controlling the factors that precipitate war and destruction. These are prime among the issues crying out for the attention of UN chief Kofi Annan who has made UN reform one of his chief concerns.