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Shopping for warfare

Where can you buy a bulletproof car, night vision goggles and missile launchers? Photographer Andri Pol took a peek inside Europe's largest arms trade fair, the Eurosatory, held bi-annually in Paris.

The trade and trafficking of arms and light weapons leads to 200,000 deaths every year, according to the United Nations. At present, the arms trade is largely an unregulated business with a blurry line between legal and illicit transfers. In July 2012 the international community gathered at a UN conference on the Arms Trade Treaty in order to decide on a binding legal framework. The conference and potential treaty is the result of a process initiated back in 1997, when a campaign for civil society awareness and advocacy demanded that the international community address the issue of arms trade regulation through international law. (All images by Andri Pol)

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SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR