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Asian countries hope to find solutions for illegal trade

The United Nations is urging all nations in the Asia region to implement concrete solutions to stop illegal trading in small arms and light weapons

Agnes Winarti (The Jakarta Post)
Denpasar
Tue, March 6, 2012

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Asian countries hope to find solutions for illegal trade

T

he United Nations is urging all nations in the Asia region to implement concrete solutions to stop illegal trading in small arms and light weapons.

“Over the past decades, trade has made this region grow so phenomenally. If you are a region where international trade is what makes you tick, you better also make sure that you are seen as doing trade in the right way,” UN disarmament affairs official Daniel Prins told reporters on the sidelines of opening the Asian regional meeting on the implementation of the UN Program of Action to prevent, combat and eradicate the illicit trade of small arms and light weapon in Bali on Monday.

“Important improvements need to be made in every region in the world, and certainly here, in getting your national legislatures to fully cover the international character of world trade, which include arms,” Prins said, citing for instance the urgency for each nation to have its own legislation on arms brokering to prevent the illegal trade of small arms and light weapons.

The two-day regional meeting, attended by representatives of 20 Asian countries, including India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Brunei, China, and Japan, aims to prepare Asia’s contributions for the upcoming Review Conference of the UN Program of Action on the illicit trade of small arms and light weapons in New York from Aug. 27 to Sept. 7.

It will be the first review conference on the issue since 2006.

The existence of the illegal trade in small arms and light weapons has been associated with the spread of terrorism and separatism in Asia and around the globe.

In 2006, Oxfam reported that the UN world conference on small arms collapsed without agreement, despite a majority of governments, including those of the European Union and many African and Latin American nations that backed tougher controls on the international trade in small arms and light weapons.

The report mentioned several countries, including the US, Cuba, India, Iran, Israel and Pakistan, that blocked global controls.

The urgency of preventing and combating the global illegal trade of small arms and light weapons was initially raised in 2001, when UN members agreed to implement a program of action in their respective countries.

“This program of action is only political-morally binding, not legally binding, as it is not a treaty or convention. We hope that this year’s review conference will not experience the same deadlock as happened in 2006,” Foreign Ministry multilateral affairs chief Hasan Kleib said.

Although declining to specify the Asian countries that needed to crack down on guns, Hasan said there was a problem. “There are some countries that are fighting non-state actors that operate with weapons. How do these people get their weapons, if not by illegal trading?”

Several South and Southeast Asian countries have been troubled by armed separatist conflicts in recent years, including Indonesia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Thailand, India and Timor Leste.

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