Control Arms

There are currently no legally binding, international rules regulating the arms trade.

National controls are rife with gaps and loopholes, making it all too easy for weapons to end up in the hands of those who use them to abuse human rights.

This unregulated arms trade has catastrophic results:

• In an average year, small arms kill around a third of a million men, women and children - and leave hundreds of thousands more injured, disabled, traumatized and grieving
• 2,000 people die each day from armed violence, and hundreds of thousands more are displaced, maimed or loose their livelihood.

This must, and can, be stopped.

What is Oxfam doing about it?

Through the Control Arms campaign which we run jointly with IANSA and Amnesty International, we are calling for a global, legally-binding Arms Trade Treaty, to control this deadly trade. Over one million people have signed our Million Faces Petition, which was presented to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in 2006. In 2009, work began in earnest on developing a treaty. We are continuing to keep the pressure on to make sure it is effective in saving lives.

How you can help

The Million Faces petition is still going strong, with supporters adding their faces every week. Add your face at www.controlarms.org and send a message to world leaders that we need an effective Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) now.

Campaign successes so far

At the UN General Assembly in December 2006, a huge majority of 153 governments voted in favor of developing an Arms Trade Treaty. The following year, after pressure from Control Arms, over 100 governments responded to a UN Consultation on the ATT.

Three years later in 2009, after pressure from the Control Arms campaign, 153 countries again voted to start negotiations on the Arms Trade Treaty, and to conclude negotiations in 2012. This historic step is a major achievement for the millions of campaigners across the world who were asking for negotiations to start immediately.

Despite this success, some governments want to weaken the treaty. We need to keep the pressure on to make sure that they don’t succeed.

Read more

Blog: World’s biggest arms traders promise global Arms Trade Treaty