The first Conference of States Parties (1CSP) of the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) was held from August 24-27 in Cancun, Quintana Roo, Mexico. The conference was attended by foreign ministers, senior officials from around the world, international organizations, regional organizations, civil society organizations, industry and academia, and by the former president of Costa Rica and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Oscar Arias Sanchez.

The estimated value of the global weapons trade is $100 billion. The ATT member states aim to implement regulation of this lucrative industry, which often features diversion of funds and weapons that end up in the hands of criminals and insurgents. Unfortunately, a key issue of the ATT, the transparent and open reporting of weapons transfers by major players such as the United States, has been postponed.

Following are some of the excerpts of the opinion delivered by former President Arias of Costa Rica to the ATT members:

Twenty-eight years ago this month, an indigenous woman stood in the plaza in Guatemala City, watching as the presidents of Central America walked out into the street after signing the Peace Accords that would end the civil wars in our region. When I reached her, she took both my hands in hers and said, “Thank you, Mr. President, for my child who is in the mountains fighting, and for the child I carry in my womb.”

 

I don’t need to tell you that I have wondered about that woman’s children ever since. I never met them, but those children of conflict are never far from my thoughts.

 

For the presidents who signed the treaty, achieving peace was the most important challenge of our lives. For those children, it was life or death.

 

But our victory for peace in 1987 did not fully safeguard those children, or millions more like them, because the weapons that had poured into our region during our conflicts did not disappear when the white flag was raised.

 

Throughout modern history, we have, in effect, told the children of the world that while we will regulate the international trade in food and textiles and any other product under the sun, we are not interested in regulating the international trade in deadly weapons, even when those weapons are being sold to dictators or other violators of human rights, or placed directly into the hands of child soldiers.

 

I urge the 72 nations that have ratified the treaty to define an alternative to consensus so that one party cannot paralyse implementation. The perfect is the enemy of the good – and in this case, with human lives depending on our swift resolution of pending issues, inaction would be anything but perfect. It would be a travesty.

 

As former President Arias was addressing the ATT Conference, children in regions impacted by armed conflict, such as Afghanistan, broke toy guns and buried them in a playful funeral. Writing for Pax Christi International, humanitarian Dr. Hakim commented:

I’m confident that the children of Afghanistan were also in [former President Arias’] thoughts, especially since he had a brief personal connection with the Afghan Peace Volunteers in 2014.

 

I thank Mr. Arias Sanchez for his important work on the Arms Trade Treaty, though I sense that an arms trade treaty isn’t going to be enough.

 

Afghan children are dying from the use of weapons.

 

To survive, they need a ban against weapons. Regulations about buying and selling weapons perpetuate a trade that is killing them.

 

Children shouldn’t have to pay the price for our usual business, especially business from the U.S., the largest arms seller in the world. U.S. children suffer too, with more U.S. people having died as a result of gun violence since 1968 than have died in all U.S. wars combined. U.S. weapon sellers are killing their own people; by exporting their state-of-the-art weapons, they facilitate the killing of many others around the world.