by Katherine Prizeman, Global Action to Prevent War
On Thursday afternoon, the delegate of
the United Kingdom presented a statement on behalf of the five permanent UN
Security Council members (P5) calling for
reorganization of the treaty text, in particular regarding the
implementation section. This statement represents an unfortunate movement
backwards in the path towards a robust and strong ATT that provides for clear international parameters for arms
transfers.
During Thursday morning’s committee
meeting on criteria and parameters, the Russian Federation first introduced the
proposal that the criteria section be moved to the implementation section as
part of national risk assessment and that such criteria “should not function in
a legal, prohibitive nature.” Subsequently, the P5 statement reinforced this
position in the afternoon asserting, a “practical proposal would be to move the
Criteria or Parameters section and the Enforcement section to within National
Implementation.” Movement of the criteria to the implementation or “national
enforcement” section undeniably has both a legal and political effect on the
robustness of the future ATT. The legal status of national implementation
measures is surely different than standalone parameters and such a shift will
have both an unfortunate and far-reaching effect on the treaty’s implementation.
This is a dangerous shift in the
interpretation and approach to formulating strong, legally-binding criteria
based on violations of human rights, international humanitarian law,
gender-based violence, socioeconomic development, and organized crime among
others. By placing under ‘national implementation’ the list of criteria
required for states to use when assessing a transfer authorization moves us further
away from the main purpose of the treaty—to develop international standards to regulate the arms trade to prevent,
combat, and eradicate the illicit and irresponsible trade in conventional arms.
Interpretation of the “criteria” would be left entirely to states parties under
their own national mechanisms. This is insufficient. Such decisions to
authorize must strive for the highest levels of accountability and transparency.
States parties must be held accountable to an agreed upon, concrete list of
parameters to prevent application of purely subjective criteria based on
national interest for authorizing transfers. Without a clear distinction
between parameters and implementation, there would be little difference between
the manner in which the arms trade functions now without an ATT and how it
would function with such a weak formulation of “commonly agreed international standards”
hidden away in the national implementation section.
Codifying circumstances that would
require the denial of arms transfers, in addition to those already required
under international law such as arms embargoes, is essential in order for the
legal framework provided for in the ATT to have a meaningful, significant impact
on international peace and security. The criteria must function in a legal
manner. As noted by several delegations during the committee discussion on
criteria and parameters, this section is the cornerstone of the text and lies
at the heart of what the ATT is trying to accomplish. Weakening its status as
an independent, stand-alone set of parameters against which authorizations must
be judged, and assuming it instead into national implementation would lead to a
serious decline in ATT effectiveness. If the ATT is to have an impact on the
lives of many suffering from the unregulated, irresponsible, and diverted arms
trade, authorizations must be carried out with the highest levels of
accountability and transparency assessed against a clear, consistent, and
strong set of legally-binding criteria.
Regulating the arms trade through a list
of items to ‘bear in mind’ in national implementation measures when conducting
arms transfers is not enough. While states will maintain the
right to exercise authority over decisions regarding whether a transfer may or
may not be denied, there must be a clear, legal definition of criteria that
must be used to judge that decision such that the rationale for such decisions is
not left exclusively to national interpretation. The goal of an ATT is not to endorse
any particular national parameters
for the arms trade, but to establish universally-accepted international parameters.
