Nations look to limit law of the gun

Communities need incentives to be gun-free, says the UN Keystone

Representatives of 42 countries meeting in Geneva have adopted a declaration aimed at limiting the impact of weapons in their societies.

The conference on Wednesday was called to highlight the damage caused by armed conflict to the economies of poorer countries.

Hosted by Switzerland and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the meeting signed the “Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Development”, committing signatory countries to concrete action on reducing gun use.

One aim is to restrict small arms that are responsible for at least 300,000 deaths a year.

Ministers and officials were joined by representatives from the World Bank, UN agencies, the International Committee of the Red Cross and non-governmental organisations.

Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey opened the conference, saying the most pressing issue is stemming the smuggling of light weapons.

“This reduction is absolutely necessary if the international community wants to reach its development goals,” she said.

According to the UNDP, per capita gross domestic product falls by 15 per cent and the number of people living below the poverty threshold rises by a third when armed conflict breaks out.

“If you look at the effect of armed violence, it’s a major obstacle to development,” Jean Fabre, deputy director of the UNDP in Geneva, told swissinfo.

Concrete action

The Swiss foreign ministry said one intention was to build on December’s adoption by the UN General Assembly of an international agreement on the marking and tracing of small arms and light weapons.

The meeting also came ahead of a major UN conference in New York later this month to assess progress on efforts to combat the illegal trade in small arms.

Keith Krause, programme director of the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey, said Wednesday’s meeting marked an important step towards bridging the gap between security and development.

“I think it’s a very important initiative and a crucial step towards consolidating international efforts in dealing with security and development issues in a coherent manner,” he said. “The declaration is quite distinctive, and I think it’s an action-oriented agenda.”

Guest list

Countries invited to Geneva included Britain, France, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guatemala and Afghanistan, but neither the United States nor Russia was on the guest list.

The UNDP said participants were either countries gravely affected by small arms or those that had shown “high levels of commitment” to working on armed violence and related development issues.

Krause said the logic behind the Geneva Declaration was “to start small and grow around a strong agenda”.

“I think the meeting marks the will of a group of states to work together beyond just the UN process,” he said. “The UN process is important but there are other issues that concern the humanitarian and development community, which need to be dealt with in a flexible and coherent way.”

Fabre echoed this view, saying a whole range of issues needed to be addressed from gun control and conflict prevention through to the promotion of human rights and the social conditions that drive people to acquire weapons.

“In a post-conflict situation, you want to disarm factions that were at war with each other,” he said. “If you don’t manage to ensure people hand in their arms and dedicate themselves to something else, they will go back to armed violence because it’s their only way of surviving.”

swissinfo, Adam Beaumont in Geneva

Key facts

The UNDP says small arms such as handguns, assault rifles and grenades are responsible for up to 500,000 deaths a year.
It estimates there are more than 600 million small arms in circulation around the world, with 60 per cent of them in the hands of civilians.
One-third of the 160 countries served by the UNDP are in crisis, recovering from crisis or about to fall into crisis.
The agency says half the countries that escape conflict see a return of armed violence within five years.