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Arms brokers and shipping agents
Speech by Michael Crowley
Feb. 14, 2001
Good morning. My name is Michael Crowley and I am from the
transatlantic weapons trade and security think tank, BASIC
- the British American Security Information Council. I will
address the issue of arms brokers and shipping agents.
Arms brokers and shipping agents play a central role in the
illicit trade in small arms and light weapons. Arms brokering
agents thrive on the lack of international controls on their
illicit activities by taking advantage of the lax legislation
that exists in many countries, arranging the transfer of arms
from third countries into regions of conflict and human rights
crisis zones.
And whilst the brokers reap the profits, the price of such
unregulated trade is often counted out in human lives.
In 1994 international networks of arms brokers and shipping
agents help provision the killers in Rwanda. Supplying the
genocidiaries, responsible for the deaths of up to one million
men, women and children, with small arms and light weapons.
Even when a UN arms embargo was belatedly enforced, the arms
continued to reach the killers. A UN Commission of Inquiry
systematically detailed the role of the brokers and shippers
in facilitating genocide. Yet despite this damning evidence,
none of those foreign traders, brokers and shippers responsible
for arming the genocidiaires were brought to justice. Not
one. Furthermore the international community failed to learn
the lessons of Rwanda, failed to close the legislative loopholes
which allowed the brokers to operate with impunity.
Instead the arms brokers and shipping agents were left free
to carry on business as usual: organising the transfer of
electroshock weapons to torturers, trafficking in anti-personnel
landmines, breaching arms embargoes with ease, shipping small
arms to human rights violators with impunity. And such activities
continue today.
In December 2000, the UN panel of experts investigating the
breaches of the UN arms embargo against non-governmental forces
in Sierra Leone, found unequivocal evidence that the Liberian
authorities had supplied arms and materiel to the Revolutionary
United Front (RUF). The panel further found that Liberia was
being supplied by an international network of arms brokers
and freighters.
On 13th March 1999, for example, a shipment of
68 tons of Ukrainian arms was flown from Ibiza, Spain, to
Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. The shipment, which contained over
700 boxes of weapons and cartridges, was flown in an Antonov
aircraft of a UK company, Air Foyle. The weapons were subsequently
trans-shipped to Liberia aboard a BAC-111 plane owned by an
Israeli businessman, Leonid Minin. From Liberia such arms
could then be easily shipped to the RUF forces waiting eagerly.
Now as the cases mount, as the evidence grows, at last the
international community seems to be taking this issue seriously.
The draft Programme of Action for the July UN conference calls
for the introduction of national and regional measures to
control arms brokers and for the negotiation of an international
convention to regulate their trade. These are important and
very welcome proposals. It is now vital that the UN conference
and subsequently the international community build on these
proposals and agree concrete and wide-ranging controls.
BASIC believes that, for such measures to be truly effective,
they should contain the following components:
1. A comprehensive list of activities to be controlled:
The buying, selling, negotiation, promotion, advertising,
marketing and transport of ALL military and paramilitary goods
and services should be controlled, as should the mediation
in or facilitation of such transfers. Furthermore the brokering
of equipment whose sole or primary practical use results in
serious violations of humanitarian or human rights law should
be banned. Brokering items such as anti-personnel landmines,
electroshock belts, leg irons, shackles and thumbscrews must
become a crime.
2. Registration/publication and information exchange:
In order to ensure effective regional and global co-ordination
of controls, all states should compile and publish a national
list of bona fide or "registered" agents. All those on this
list should publish their audited accounts relating to arms
trading. Brokers and shippers who break laws regulating arms
exports or deliberately supply misleading information should
be prosecuted and banned from any further involvement in arms
brokering. Resources for effective information exchange must
be provided so that details of such illicit brokers and traffickers
are circulated quickly to other governments, Interpol and
the World Customs Union, thus ensuring that such brokers do
not skip over the border and establish operations in another
country.
3. Licence each transaction: Each deal involving
arms brokering and shipping agents should require a licence,
issued by their national government. Licence applications
for arms brokering activities should be subject to rigorous
scrutiny to ensure they do not facilitate violations of humanitarian
or human rights law. Anyone who attempts to broker or ship
arms without first obtaining a licence should be subject to
criminal sanctions, whether or not the arms pass through their
country.
For the upcoming UN conference to be a success, for it to
bring forth truly effective measures to combat the scourge
of the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons, it must
address the issue of arms brokers and shipping agents. It
is a difficult issue. A complex issue. But if it is not attended
to, the illegal arms flows will remain unchecked, arms embargoes
will be breached and the guns will continue to be placed in
the hands of criminals, terrorists and human rights abusers.
Thank You.
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