Reinvigorating the Narrative: the broader benefits of the Arms Trade Treaty (original) (raw)

Implementing the Arms Trade Treaty and the UNPoA: A Guide to Coordinating an Effective Arms Control System

The Centre for Armed Violence Reduction (CAVR) focuses on preventing the flow of illicit conventional arms. This is the second edition of our Implementation Guide for the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) and the UN Small Arms Programme of Action (UNPoA). Launched at the United Nations in New York, the Guide is used around the world at international meetings and distributed to government officials. Our aim is to help governments develop an effective interagency coordinating mechanism, to adopt the Arms Trade Treaty and to speed implementation of the UNPoA.

The Arms Trade Treaty from a Global Civil Society Perspective: Introducing Global Policy's Special Section

Global Policy, 2014

The 2013 Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) offers the first comprehensive, global and legally binding standards on the trade and transfer of conventional arms. The idea for the treaty was conceived not in the boardrooms of weapons manufacturers, nor in the assembly halls of statecraft, but rather by civil society activists and Nobel Laureates – practitioners, academics, survivors and researchers and advocates. And its robust provisions on human rights, humanitarian law and gender were championed by states often marginalized by traditional arms control. The resultant treaty is a sort of ‘platypus’ of international law – simultaneously an arms control regime, an instrument of human rights and humanitarian law and a trade agreement. Given its widespread acceptance and likely rapid entry into force, it could have a wide-ranging impact on global policy making in many issue areas. But as with any new framework of global policy, the ATT represents a compromise, recognizing the legitimacy of states' rights to trade in weapons. This special section on the ATT, written from the perspective of scholars and practitioners associated with the civil society campaign that championed the treaty, reviews the ATT's normative implications, role of NGOs and implementation challenges.

The Road Forward for the Arms Trade Treaty: A Civil Society Practitioner Commentary

Global Policy, 2014

Civil society – particularly the Control Arms coalition – played a pivotal role in imagining and campaigning for the 2013 Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), the first comprehensive global regulations on the trade and transfer in conventional weapons. To consider this ‘road forward’ for the ATT and civil society’s involvement in it, we have convened a conversation with three activists – from different organizations, different continents and differing points of view – who have been involved in the campaign for a robust treaty for many years.