411: Arms Trade
Author: Control Arms
Wordwide one person every minute is killed by armed violence
ARMS FUEL POVERTY AND SUFFERING
Every day, millions of men, women, and children are living in fear of armed violence. Every minute, one of them is killed. From the gang violence of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and Los Angeles, California in the United States, to the civil wars of Liberia and Indonesia; arms are out of control.
The uncontrolled production and misuse of arms by government forces and armed groups takes a massive human toll in lost lives, lost livelihoods, and lost opportunities to escape poverty. An average of 22 billion (US) dollars a year is spent on arms by countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America - a sum that would otherwise enable those same countries to be on track to meet the United Nations? declared Millennium Development Goals of achieving universal primary education (estimated at $10 billion a year) as well as targets for reducing infant and maternal mortality (estimated at $12 billion a year).
ARMS ARE OUT OF CONTROL
The 'war on terror' should have focused political will to prevent arms falling into the wrong hands. Instead, since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001, some suppliers have relaxed their controls in order to arm newfound allies against 'terrorism', irrespective of their disregard for international human rights and humanitarian law. Despite the damage that they cause, there is still no binding, comprehensive, international law to control the export of conventional arms.
At the same time, we are seeing a long-term change, as guns are becoming an integral part of life - and therefore an increasingly common instrument of death - in more communities and cities around the world. The carrying and use of increasingly lethal weaponry is becoming the norm.
WHO GETS HURT IN THE ARMS TRADE?
It is men, especially young men, who are the most common perpetrators and the most common victims of gun violence, in times of both war and 'peace.' In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, young men are 24 times more likely than women to be killed by firearms; in Colombia they are 14 times more likely to die of gunshot wounds.
Nevertheless, women have been killed and injured in great numbers by shooting and bombing in armed conflict. Women and girls made up a high proportion of the victims when armed forces drove hundreds of thousands of refugees from camps in the Great Lakes Region (in Africa) in 1996 and deliberately executed refugees en masse.
The young are not spared. Children have become targets in drug wars, in political and gang-related killing, in civil and international wars, and as victims of police brutality. In Honduras, at least 1,817 street children have been killed over the last five years. 73 interviews with a group of Croatian refugee children in 1992 revealed that 85% had experienced shooting, 67% shelling, and 24% bombing.
