International code of conduct on arms transfers.

While worldwide military spending and the international trade in military equipment have declined significantly in recent years, both continue to fuel wars and rob current and future generations of the economic resources and social/political stability that many hoped would yield a post-Cold War "peace dividend." Any move toward military restraint by individual states is to be welcomed, but to turn the world persuasively from the continued pursuit of militarized stability toward genuine human security requires a collective international commitment to both regulate and restrict the resort to military force. One such important measure will be the development of collective restraint in arms transfers. A new proposal by a group of Nobel Prize winners, led by Oscar Arias of Costa Rica, outlines a Code of Conduct to guide and restrict military transfers. Ernie Regehr reports on the initiative.

Suppliers of military equipment are fond of arguing that they are merely in the business of supplying the hardware states need to give substance to the United Nations Charter's assertion of the right of all states to self-defence. But the rights of institutions and responsible individuals are linked to duties, and Article 51 is no exception. States are entitled, even obligated, to defend themselves inasmuch as they are instruments for the promotion of international peace and security, for serving the welfare of their citizens, and for protecting fundamental rights and freedoms. The legitimacy of states and the right to self-defence depend ultimately on the performance of these duties. Indeed, the preamble to the UN Charter provides "that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest."

There is no fundamental right of states to acquire whatever military capacity and hardware they please - all in the name of the right of self-defence. The Charter admonishes all states to spend as little as possible on military defence (Article 26), to promote rights and freedoms, and to refrain from threatening the use of force against other states, all in the context of the General Assembly's declared objective of general and complete disarmament. The Charter's guarantee of the right of self-defence is the right of legitimate states to defend themselves from armed attack - to acquire weapons to mount a defence against aggression and to contribute to collective security.

But, of course, much of the world's accumulation of military prowess has to do with the opposite - with states seeking the capacity to commit aggression and the means of repression to deny the basic rights of their citizens and to prevent democracy. All of this begs the question of how to distinguish effectively between legitimate self-defence needs and the illegitimate accumulation of weapons to undermine the objectives of the UN Charter. The exercise of restraint in the acquisition of military prowess requires the capacity, not to mention the will, to discriminate between legitimate and illegitimate acquisition of military hardware - which brings us to some welcome efforts to define an international code of conduct for the supply of military hardware, to an attempt to clarify and standardize the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate arms acquisitions.

Arms trade facts and figures

* In 1995, conventional arms deliveries to the developing world totaled over US$21 billion.

* Developed countries accounted for 93% of all weapons exports in 1994. The US alone accounted for well over half, at 56% of all arms exports.

* In 1993, the United States exported 73% of all arms to the developing world; of the recipients, 90% were not democracies, and over two-thirds were characterized by the US Department of State as human rights abusers.

* In 1994, the developing world military expenditures totaled US$242 billion. The portion spent on arms imports equaled over one third of all the bilateral and multilateral economic assistance from the developed world.

* Half of the world's governments spend more on defence than on health care.

* In the developing world, 1.3 billion people are unable to meet even their most basic needs, 2 million children die each year of preventable or curable infectious disease, 192 million children are malnourished, and 900 million people cannot read or write.

(Excerpted from: International Code of Conduct on Arms Transfers Factsheet, Arias Foundation for Peace and Human Progress, Apartado 8-6410-1000, San Jose, Costa Rica, phone: [phone], fax: [phone], e-mail: [e-mail])

To begin with, there already are some provisions in international law to declare some weapons as illegitimate by definition and thus not to be acquired by any state - chemical and biological weapons are a case in point; the current Canadian-led "Ottawa process" to outlaw anti-personnel landmines and add them to the list of certain conventional weapons that are unlawful in all circumstances is another case; and the acquisition of nuclear weapons is explicitly prohibited for all states party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, except for the five traditional nuclear weapons states, and the 1996 ruling of the World Court raises doubts about the legality of any nuclear weapons.

But aside from nuclear, biological, chemical, and certain inhumane conventional weapons, there is a vast, vast array of conventional weapons that are perfectly legal in and of themselves - however, as already argued, that does not mean that all states are entitled to acquire them, or to acquire them without restraint. Only some states under some conditions have a right to acquire weapons which are in and of themselves legal, and an international code of conduct for arms transfers is an attempt to define those states and conditions. Such a code would require certain minimal conditions and behaviours of recipient states before any otherwise legal weapons could be transferred to them (leaving aside for the moment the problem of states acquiring weapons for illegitimate purposes out of domestic production).

This is the approach of a group of Nobel Peace Prize Laureates in a proposed comprehensive new code that requires the following conditions in a recipient country before arms can be transferred to it: the country must respect international human rights standards, be in compliance with international humanitarian law, conduct itself as a democracy, respect international arms embargoes and military sanctions, report fully to the UN Arms Register, support regional peace and stability, oppose terrorism, and give priority to social spending over military spending. Covered by the code are conventional weapons and munitions, military and security training, and sensitive military and dual-use technologies (the detailed principles of the code are reproduced below).

The Laureates point out that weapons acquired through international transfers are frequently used to commit human rights abuses and to prevent democracy, frequently create international instability, and are frequently used to commit international aggression. Furthermore, even weapons that are not used unlawfully can still undermine social and economic development by consuming scarce resources.

In a stirring plea for sanity, the Nobel Laureates say:

The international community can no longer ignore the repercussions of irresponsible arms transfers. Indiscriminate weapons sales foster political instability and human rights violations, prolong violent conflicts, and weaken diplomatic efforts to resolve differences peacefully. Arms transfers often take place under a cloud of secrecy, and generally respond to the desires of a few while ignoring the needs and rights of the many . ... Our children urgently need schools and health centres, not machine guns and fighter planes. Our children also need to be protected from violence. The dictators of this world, not the poor, clamour for arms.

Their proposal calls on states to pass national legislation and regulations to ensure the effective implementation and enforcement of the Code. Notably, they call for mechanisms for public scrutiny of all proposed transfers in advance.

In addition to Oscar Arias, the Code is supported by Nobel Laureates the Dalai Lama, Jose Ramos-Horta, Elie Wiesel, Betty Williams, Norman Borlaug, Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Mairead Corrigan Magquire, Rigoberta Menchu, Joseph Rotblat, Desmond Tutu, and Lech Walesa. Other prominent sponsors include former US President Jimmy Carter, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, and former UN Under-Secretary-General Brian Urquhart.

The comprehensive code proposed by the Nobel Laureates will not find an easy consensus in the international community, but it is not as far ahead of the international consensus as one might imagine. Three informally adopted "codes" involving the major arms suppliers include several of the key concerns articulated here. The Permanent Five members of the UN Security Council (P-5) issued a joint "Guidelines for Conventional Arms Transfers" in 1991, the European Community (EC) issued a set of guidelines in 1991 and 1992, and in 1993 the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (now the OSCE) articulated a set of principles governing arms transfers. All three refer (sometimes obliquely) to respect for human rights, adherence to international arms embargos, opposition to terrorism, the promotion of international stability, and the economic impact of transfers as factors to be considered when contemplating arms transfers.

Notably absent from the criteria in the declarations of the major supplier states are requirements for democracy or transparency, and, of course, their commitments to give attention to human rights standards in recipient countries are far from firm. Nevertheless, the P-5, EC, and OSCE principles do reflect an emerging consensus that arms exporters have an obligation to require certain minimum standards of behaviour in recipient countries, and however often individual suppliers disregard such principles, the rhetorical commitment to them indicates that the more comprehensive norms advocated by the Nobel Laureates' proposal already enjoy a certain level of political currency.

What is needed now is the promotion of the comprehensive Code - a kind of "Ottawa process" - to follow up on the anticipated successful initiation of a comprehensive international convention to ban anti-personnel landmines with the adoption of an effective code to limit arms transfers, to ensure, as the Nobel Laureates put it, that "violence and its vestiges" become "a distant memory of the past."