Report from Control Arms campaign: Oxfam International, Amnesty International and the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) – Kalashnikov assault rifles are the most widespread military weapons in the world. It is estimated that there are between 50 and 70 million of them spread across the world’s five continents. They are used daily by soldiers, fighters, and gang members to inflict untold suffering in many countries. The spread of these weapons continues largely unchecked by governments, threatening the lives and safety of millions as weapons fall into irresponsible hands. More than ever, the Kalashnikov rifle is the weapon of choice for many armies, militias, armed gangs, law enforcement officials, rebels, and other private actors who abuse fundamental human rights and operate beyond the international humanitarian law parameters laid down by the Geneva Conventions and other relevant international law.
The AK-47: the world's favorite killing machine
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Report from Control Arms campaign: Oxfam International, Amnesty International and the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA)
Kalashnikov(1) assault rifles are the most widespread military weapons in the world. It is estimated that there are between 50 and 70 million of them spread across the world’s five continents. They are used daily by soldiers, fighters, and gang members to inflict untold suffering in many countries. The spread of these weapons continues largely unchecked by governments, threatening the lives and safety of millions as weapons fall into irresponsible hands. More than ever, the Kalashnikov rifle is the weapon of choice for many armies, militias, armed gangs, law enforcement officials, rebels, and other private actors who abuse fundamental human rights and operate beyond the international humanitarian law parameters laid down by the Geneva Conventions and other relevant international law.
Although the United Nations and its member states have taken concrete action to limit the proliferation of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons of mass destruction through international treaties and monitoring organizations, the number one tool used for killing and injuring civilians today is small arms, including the assault rifle, which is reaching more countries than ever before. On 26 June 2006, the UN Review Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons begins in New York. At this conference, governments have an opportunity to agree effective and comprehensive controls to prevent the proliferation and misuse of small arms and light weapons, including assault rifles like the AK-47. In October 2006, at the UN General Assembly, governments should agree to negotiate a new global Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) to regulate international transfers of all conventional arms, including military assault rifles.
The proliferation of Kalashnikovs has resulted in such deadly weapons being used to massacre, maim, rape and abuse, torture, and fuel violent crime in countries as diverse as Afghanistan, Britain, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Iraq, Mexico, Sierra Leone, the USA, Venezuela, and Yemen. With no global treaty to regulate the sale of such weapons and no international organization to effectively monitor transfers of small arms and light weapons, Kalashnikov assault rifles are a truly global commodity now traded, warehoused, and produced in more countries than at any time in their sixty-year history.
The Kalashnikov assault rifle was designed during the Second World War and produced originally as the AK-47, for use against conventional armies by soldiers subject to military law. Since then the AK-47 has been diverted from its intended purpose and is now part of an often unregulated flow of assault weapons which has catastrophic consequences for civilian populations in the developing world.
‘People often ask me whether I feel guilty about human suffering that is caused by the attacks with AK-47. I tell them that I designed the gun to defend the Russian Motherland from its enemies. Of course I feel sad and frustrated when I see armed skirmishes with the use of my weapon also for conduct of predatory wars and for terrorist and criminal purposes. But it is not the designers who must ultimately take responsibility for where guns end up; it is governments who must control their production and export.’(2)
– General Kalashnikov, inventor of the AK-47 assault rifle
In late 1998, rebel groups in Sierra Leone holding assault rifles repeatedly raped Fatu Kamara at gunpoint. Her husband was tortured and killed in front of her and her daughter shot in the head. The most widely used assault rifle in the atrocities carried out in Sierra Leone and Liberia was the AK-47.(3)
‘My mother wanted me to leave her behind but I couldn’t, and I was sitting with her when a rebel grabbed me. I turned round and saw many of them surrounding me, all holding guns. There was an argument. Some said I should be killed, but one soldier was a man I recognised, and he asked them not to kill me...When they had finished raping me they took me out and I was sitting crying, and then suddenly they brought my husband and my daughter. I was so troubled that I even forgot my own pain.’
– Fatu Kamara, 39, from Foredugu in Port Loko District, Sierra Leone
Notes
1. The AK-47 is the model number given to the original assault rifle. It has been upgraded in Russia and produced as variants in many other countries in the world. Rifles in the AK family are often referred to as Kalashnikovs after the inventor of the AK-47, Lieutenant General Mikhail Kalashnikov.
2. Interview given to the Control Arms Campaign, June 2006.
3. See ‘The call for tough arms controls: voices from Sierra Leone’, Control Arms Campaign, January 2006.
