International arms trade pact something worth celebrating

The world gave itself a little-noticed Christmas present this year: On Christmas Eve, the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on April 2, 2013, came into effect.

The treaty will not stop war, nor disarm the world, nor even make any particular weapons system illegal. However, it will move us further toward a norm that requires exporters to consider the human-rights implications of arms transfers and reduce the flow of arms to conflict regions and illicit users.

Reporting requirements on the import and export of conventional weapons will make the flow of arms more transparent, an important step toward control.

The treaty covers heavy weapons such as tanks, combat aircraft, warships, attack helicopters and missiles, as well as small arms and light weapons, of which there are an estimated 875 million, causing 90 million deaths a year.

It prohibits the transfer of conventional weapons in violation of arms embargoes, or if a state knows they will be used in genocide, crimes against humanity, attacks against civilians or war crimes.

It requires ratifying states to establish national regulations to control the transfer of conventional weapons and their components, and to regulate arms brokers.

The ATT builds on the U.N.’s 2001 Program of Action on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons and the 2001 Firearms Protocol of the Convention against Transnational Organized Crime.

The world today spends more on arms than during the Cold War. Arms sales are big business.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reported in 2013 that 55 countries were exporters of major weapons, with the top five — the U.S. (29 percent), Russia (27 percent), Germany (7 percent), China (6 percent), and France (5 percent) — accounting for 74 percent of exports. Yet 61 countries, including five of the world’s largest arms exporters — France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom — have ratified the treaty. An additional 130 countries have signed but not ratified it, including the U.S. Just signing the treaty does not bind the U.S. to it, but international law requires the signer of a treaty not to act counter to the treaty’s purposes.The Obama administration can be congratulated for its work on negotiating the treaty, which took almost a decade.

This December’s Hawaii Model U.N. debated both small arms and nuclear nonproliferation, educating high school and college students on these and other issues. Let us hope that our U.S. Sens. Mazie Hirono and Brian Schatz will continue their support of international diplomacy and arms control — on both conventional weapons and on nuclear nonproliferation — and come out strongly in favor of ratification. Diplomacy is working, both on small arms and on nuclear nonproliferation.

The ATT deals only with trade; it reaffirms "the sovereign right of any State to regulate and control conventional arms exclusively within its territory."

Our domestic laws still do not adequately protect us from gun violence. The U.S. has high rates of gun homicides, in both gang violence and intimate relationships. Ninety-five percent of perpetrators are male, 79 percent of victims male, but two-thirds of those killed in intimate relationships are female.

Hawaii’s laws controlling guns are among the strictest in the country, and our deaths from gun violence are among the lowest.

As we see more shootings in our country, by both individuals and police, we can be thankful that our laws and norms of aloha keep gun violence low.

Last year, we celebrated Syria’s September 2013 ratification of the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention; today we can hope that the ATT will reduce the casualties from small arms in Syria and other conflicts.

Let us work in the new year, in legislative settings and grassroots action, on strengthening both domestic and international law that will help reduce gun violence.