THIS ISSUE
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THE ARMS TRADE
MUST BE CONTROLLED..
There are around 639 million small arms and light weapons in the world today. Eight million more are produced every year.
50 days before the major United Nations arms conference in New York (June 26th), the steps of Stormont, home of the Northern Ireland Assembly, were turned into a graveyard as campaigners from Oxfam Ireland and Amnesty International called for political support for an international Arms Trade Treaty. Inside Stormont, in a meeting hosted by Carmel Hanna MLA (Chair of the Northern Ireland Assembly cross-party group on international development), politicians and campaigners heard why the Arms Trade Treaty is so desperately needed. Mark Davenport, BBC NI Political Editor, speaking in a personal capacity, told the gathering of his time reporting from Somalia in the 1990s, "I could clearly see emaciated and sick children and adults in the streets. But there were others - boys as young as 8, I would guess, and young men, who roamed around carrying Kalashnikovs and M16s - that made them the rulers of their particular street corners. During the cold war both the United States and the Soviet Union had flooded the Horn of Africa with arms as they backed their own sides in a string of proxy wars. Now, with the breakdown of law and order, those guns were in the hands of children". Oxfam Ireland's Colin Roche noted, "For every dollar spent in development aid, ten dollars is spent on military budgets. The amount that rich countries spend on fighting HIV/AIDS, a disease which claims 3 million lives a year, represents three days spending on military hardware. Global spending priorities need to be revised and an arms trade treaty can assist this process". Pupils from Rathmore Grammar went onto describe how they had got involved in supporting the campaign by collecting hundreds of faces for the Million Faces Petition. Join the petition now at www.controlarms.com
- Join the petition now at www.controlarms.com
