Arms Trade Treaty at the top of UN General Assembly First Committee agenda

A resolution has been put forward by the ATT co-authors (United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, Kenya, Costa Rica, Finland, and Argentina), proposing a further Diplomatic Conference (DipCon) to run from 18-28 March 2013, and will be voted on at the end of First Committee this week.

The most controversial aspect of the resolution is its stipulation that the conference be held under the same consensus rule that led to collapse in July. Control Arms and many States expressed concerns about the consensus rule giving one or a small group of states veto power, and the Control Arms coalition lobbied for this to be changed. The co-authors, the United States, and France pushed hard to retain the consensus decision-making rules, and this aspect has not changed. However, the resolution also includes an operative paragraph which means that the General Assembly can take next steps "as soon as possible" should the consensus rule lead to a further failure in March, an important improvement to the resolution. Control Arms' other main focus has been on the improvements that are needed to the draft treaty text. Many of these were still being worked on in the final hours of the July DipCon, but were never resolved.

*This article was written prior to the November 7th vote in First Committee which adopted the resolution.

Control Arms leaders participate in high level panels at UN

 In advance of the debate in the United Nations General Assembly First Committee, where the Arms Trade Treaty has been widely discussed, leaders of the Control Arms campaign spoke at two high level panels at UN headquarters.

On 14 September, Jeff Abramson, Director of the Control Arms Secretariat, spoke about the ATT at the first ever High Level Forum on the Culture of Peace. In his address to delegates and global advocates, Abramson stressed the need for improvements in the draft text and how the ATT fits in with broader goals for a safer world. In October, he talked directly with seasoned and incoming diplomats at a special briefing on the work of the First Committee organized by the United Nations Institute for Training and Research and the Permanent Missions of Egypt and Indonesia (3 October) and participated in a panel discussion for Disarmament Fellows from 25 states, in which he was joined by IANSA coordinator Hector Guerra (18 October).

On 25 September, Anna Macdonald, Head of Arms Control for Oxfam International, discussed the Arms Trade Treaty as part of a high-level panel discussion on "Women, Disarmament, Non-Proliferation and Arms Control". The event was sponsored by the Permanent Mission of Trinidad and Tobago - a state that champions the inclusion of gender-based violence in the ATT. The panel included Ministers of Foreign Affairs from Australia, Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago and Norway, the former President of Finland, and the High Representative of the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs. During Macdonald's address, she drew attention to the importance of gender-based violence provisions in the criteria of the Arms Trade Treaty and spoke to the importance of women and girls in disarmament initiatives at a broader level.  

New Control Arms report highlights improvements needed in draft ATT text

 During the second week of the UN General Assembly's First Committee session in October, Control Arms released a new report titled "Finishing the Job: Delivering a Bullet-Proof Arms Trade Treaty." The report identifies key shortcomings of the current draft text of the ATT and makes the case for fixing them in order to preserve the humanitarian objective of the treaty. Areas for improvement include the absence of ammunition in the scope of the treaty, the lack of clarity on exactly what an "arms transfer" is, and the exemption of defense contracts from all treaty provisions. Many of these treaty elements were being negotiated during the last hours of the negotiating conference this past July when there appeared to be considerable resolve in favor of finding workable solutions so that a robust outcome could be achieved.