2012 has been hailed as a potential landmark year in the push for greater regulation of the global trade in conventional arms. After more than a decade of advocacy to this end, negotiations took place throughout July towards the world’s first Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which is intended to establish the highest possible common international standards for the transfer of conventional weapons.  However, although significant progress was made during the month of intense negotiations, the ATT is not yet open for signature. The future of possible work towards a treaty now lies with the First Committee of the UN General Assembly, as discussions continue about the possibility of a second round of negotiations. As the Committee’s session nears an end, this article explores what role a potential treaty – if reopened for further negotiation – could play in a move towards sustainable security.

The scale of the arms trade is significant; it’s impact, devastating in many parts of the world. From 2006-10, the top five arms exporting countries – the United States, Russia, Germany, the United Kingdom and France – delivered nearly 92 million major conventional weapons* . The recipients of arms transfers include countries such as Sudan, Yemen, Egypt and Libya, where the use of government stockpiles against civilians over the past two years has been particularly abhorrent. However, even as the volume of international transfers continues to increase – by 24 per cent from 2002-2006 to 2007-2011 – there is still no overarching global regulation of the trade. Instead, there exists only a patchwork of national laws and regional agreements that fail to impose any consistent international standard of trade.

This lack of comprehensive global standards to regulate transfers of conventional arms – which range from battle tanks, combat aircraft and missile launchers to small arms and light weapons – has allowed a flow of weapons to actors who use them in contravention of international humanitarian and human rights law, including terrorist groups and human rights abusers. This in turn prolongs conflict, undermining stabilisation and development efforts. Indeed, as 30 high-profile Oxfam and Amnesty International supporters stated in a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon in at the start of the July’s negotiation conference:

Every year an average of two bullets for every person on this planet is produced. With so few global rules governing the arms trade, no one really knows where all those bullets will end up – or whose lives they will tear apart. Under the current system, there are less global controls on the sales of ammunition and guns than on bananas and bottled water. It’s a ridiculous situation. The deadly and poorly regulated trade in arms leads to serious human rights abuses, armed violence, conflict, poverty and organized crime around the world. The lack of clear binding principles governing decisions on international arms transfers combined with patchy, diverse and poorly implemented national regulations are inadequate to deal with the increasingly globalised nature of the arms trade. As a result, irresponsible users are allowed to violate international humanitarian and human rights law.

If negotiated, the ATT would establish much needed internationally agreed norms of responsible state behaviour with regards to arms transfers; with criteria that aims to prevent the transfer of weapons to the aforementioned irresponsible actors.

What would this mean in practice? An ATT would act to ensure that arms-exporting states have an obligation to conduct comprehensive risk assessments in line with international humanitarian and human rights law before approving international transfers of arms. In so doing, an ATT would provide a crucial delineation of the circumstances under which transfers should not be allowed.

This has important implications. For example, following a government review of arms exports to the Middle East and North Africa in 2011, the United Kingdom revoked 158 licenses because the exports were found to violate two main criteria for the UK’s Consolidated Criteria for arms exports: respect of human rights and fundamental freedoms, and risk that the exported weapons might be used for internal repression. The impact of certain earlier UK export decisions had become clear in Bahrain in February 2011, when a British-supplied arsenal of crowd control weapons – including stun guns, shotguns, crowd control ammunition and canisters of teargas – was reportedly used by security forces in a brutal crackdown against popular protests**. Although some licenses were revoked, the UK has a further 600 extant licenses to countries such as Syria, Bahrain and Yemen, where rights abuses are notoriously continuing. The aim of the ATT is to ensure that exporting countries consider the dangers to civilians and human rights while deciding whether or not to transfer arms and to prevent transfers where abuse is likely. An ATT is therefore hoped to help stem the flow of arms to actors – state and non-state – who use violent action to undermine rule of law and the international humanitarian laws that seek to protect civilians and sustain security.

The consequences of irresponsible arms transfers reverberate further than governmental misuse. For example, the 2008 Final Report of the UN Panel of Experts on Sudan stated that arms originating from the stockpiles of Sudan, Chad and Libya had been used in attacks by the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) forces in Sudan, a militia group included in the UN Security Council arms embargo on Sudan (Darfur region) from 2005 onwards. In the case of JEM attacks on the city of Omdurman in 2008, chain-of ownership tracing by the Panel identified numerous weapons manufactured in Spain, Belgium and Bulgaria, which had originally been legitimately shipped to Libya . Although many of the weapons were formerly exported to Libya in the early 1980s, the report stood as a clear sign of the danger of legitimately transferred arms leaking into the illicit market from irresponsible end-users. By assessing the responsibility of end-users before transferring arms, the ATT might go some way towards encouraging states to stem the flow of weapons to illicit markets from the back-doors of irresponsible end-users. In turn, it is hoped that it will work against the militarisation of societies that threatens the stability of the majority of civilians.

Treaty negotiations keenly acknowledged the disproportionate impact of small arms and light weapons (SALW) on civilian populations during and after violent conflict and accordingly, SALW are covered in the scope of the treaty. As noted by the UN office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) ‘small arms are cheap, light, and easy to handle, transport and conceal. A build-up of small arms alone may not create the conflicts in which they are used, but their excessive accumulation and wide availability aggravates the tension. The violence becomes more lethal and lasts longer, and a sense of insecurity grows, which in turn lead to a greater demand for weapons…They are the weapons of choice in civil wars and for terrorism, organized crime and gang warfare.’  Including these weapons type in the treaty’s scope – and therefore extending beyond the UN Register of Conventional Arms – will increase the number of disarmament tools available to tackle the prolific spread of these weapons and their devastating impact and threat to sustained security during and following armed conflict.

Each of these aims seeks to counter a pattern of increasing spread of arms and trend towards militarisation which, far from protecting societies, drives insecurity around the world. This is true for states – with the aforementioned trend towards increased spending for conventional arms and annual increases in world military expenditure from 1998-2010 – but also for civilian society. Around the world, millions of people face the direct and indirect consequences of increased militarisation on a daily basis, whether living under the constant threat of weapons held by local gangs or criminals, or direct trauma, injury or fatality as a result of use of weapons in conflict or terrorist action. In the face of these situations, both where the state abuses civil rights or where the state is unable to protect communities from armed non-state groups, communities often choose to seek further weapons as a means of protection, and so cycles of increased militarisation and violence continue to threaten the stability of societies. By stemming a downwards flow of weapons, and making assessments about the likelihood of irresponsible or abusive use of transferred arms, a treaty of this nature may serve to prevent violent conflict and/or help to make conflict less deadly.

The current draft text does much towards these goals, by including provisions related to record keeping, international assistance and implementation, as well as creating a Secretariat to help signatory states implement the treaty, especially those who may lack the bureaucratic capacity to do so right away. More importantly, it clearly outlines the obligations that signatories would have to conduct comprehensive risks assessments in line with IHL and IHRL before approving transfers and effectively underlines the circumstances in which transfers should not be made.

However, there are still a number of issues with the draft treaty, which at present leaves loopholes in regulation that would allow for on-going abuses as a result of arms transfers if it is used as a base for further negotiations. As outlined efficiently in Control Arms’ recent briefing ‘Finishing the Job: delivering a bullet-proof ATT’ , at present the draft treaty text falls short in a number of ways. Necessary improvements to the draft include: addressing the exclusion of ammunition from the scope of the treaty; the lack of a provision that requires state reports on transfers to be publically available; lack of provisions for states to consider risks that transferred arms may be diverted or used for corruption, against development or in gender-based violence; and current ambiguity about controls when dealing with states not party to the treaty. It will also be vital for key exporting nations such as the United States to be on board with the treaty for it to be effective. If negotiations are re-opened, negotiators must once again carefully navigate the need to sharpen the treaty scope and criteria with a need to have the participation from a majority of states.

There is clearly quite some way to go before the treaty could come into force and be implemented effectively. The ATT clearly cannot act as a panacea for conflict-affected countries, nor will it hinder inter-state arms trade or domestic controls. However, if successfully negotiated and implemented, it could be an effective filter to curb the worst of irresponsible and illicit arms trading. The ATT may currently seem abstracted from the real impact of the arms trade, but in the end, as stated by the Control Arms Campaign, ‘the ATT will be judged according to its success in preventing transfers that risk contributing to or facilitating human suffering’. As UK Ambassador Jo Adamson said at the opening of the First Committee session, with the ATT ‘we have a real live example of where we can make a real difference in the real world to real people.’

*(data on conventional weapons exports and military expenditure derived from SIPRI Yearbook 2012: http://www.sipri.org/yearbook/2012/06)
**All information in this paragraph can be found in the UK Parliament Committees on Arms Export Controls report ‘Scrutiny of Arms Exports (2012)’  http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmquad/419/41902.htm 

Zoë Pelter is a Research Officer of Oxford Research Group’s (ORG) Sustainable Security Programme. 

Image source: Oxfam

The world is witnessing unprecedented forced displacement due to conflict, persecution, and human rights violations. The conflict in Syria has been a major source of this displacement, producing over 7.6 million internally displaced persons and over 4.8 million refugees. The escalation of armed conflict in Iraq since 2014 has also contributed to a dire humanitarian and displacement crisis, and recent data indicate that Iraq is one of the three main origin countries—along with Syria and Afghanistan—for asylum seekers and migrants arriving in Europe. The conflicts in Syria and Iraq have been characterized by mass atrocity crimes including war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possible acts of genocide. As the death tolls and casualties associated with attempts to flee these conflicts continue to rise, the failure of the international community to adequately protect civilian populations targeted by violence underscores concerns regarding the international norm of Responsibility to Protect (R2P). Over ten years after its acceptance by all member states at the United Nations World Summit, the framework for collectively responding to mass atrocities when states have manifestly failed to protect their populations remains weakened by critiques of selective use and by its conflation with coercive humanitarian intervention in the aftermath of its application in Libya. R2P’s association with controversial coercive measures threatens to undermine its legitimacy and overlooks important non-coercive opportunities for implementing the human protection principles that are at its core. In particular, in the wake of mass atrocity situations, facilitating access to asylum and other forms of protection for refugees and displaced persons represents an essential step towards fulfilling R2P.

 Linking the Responsibility to Protect and Refugee Protection

Za’atari refugee camp, Jordan. Image by DFID via Flickr.

There are strong foundations for emphasizing R2P as refugee protection. First, the international norm is intended to apply to mass atrocity situations where there is evidence of war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, or genocide. The refugee crises associated with World War II, the Vietnam War, the Rwandan genocide, and the Balkans conflicts of the 1990s underscore the connection between mass displacement and mass atrocity crimes. International indifference or opposition to collective refugee burden-sharing in these cases frequently resulted in further victimization. In his study of mass killings, Benjamin Valentino argues that greater international response to refugees could have helped reduce the death toll of many of the 20^th century’s worst genocides.

An emphasis on R2P as refugee protection also bolsters the non-coercive and non-violent aspects of the human protection norm at a time when significant criticism surrounding the third pillar of the framework regarding forceful intervention threatens to erode its legitimacy and global consensus. Humanitarian interventions raise concerns about selectivity and often pose significant risks with regard to civilian harm. These risks are compounded by the power asymmetries and realpolitik dynamics that typically characterize coercive interventions. Further associations of R2P with forceful interventions will understandably trigger greater contestations of the norm and undermine the potential for its evolution into meaningful legal obligations. As an alternative to the use of force, states can respond to mass atrocity situations with mechanisms of refugee protection like facilitating access to asylum, granting temporary protection, and upholding the principle of non-refoulement, thus addressing R2P’s call for collective international response in a timely and decisive manner to protect civilian populations and prevent further victimization.

Allocating Responsibility for Refugees

While there are robust foundations for connecting the human protection norm to mass displacement and refugee response, the implementation of R2P as refugee protection faces significant impediments both in Europe and the United States. One major obstacle is refugee burden-sharing. The 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol do not specify how, in the face of major refugee crises, states should equitably allocate legal, financial, or physical responsibilities for protection. While states are obligated by the principle of non-refoulement not to contribute to refugees’ harm by returning them to their place of persecution, international law grants states the right to retain control over their sovereign borders. As such, states are not compelled to grant asylum. A related problem is that the existing refugee protection regime relies on post-World War II assumptions that forced displacement is a temporary phenomenon and refugees will be able to return to their country of origin following the resolution of the conflict. Despite data indicating that displacement has become increasingly prolonged, the repatriation of refugees to their home countries remains more heavily promoted than their resettlement or local integration in host countries.

To date, neighboring states in the Middle East have absorbed the vast majority of refugees fleeing atrocities in Syria and Iraq. This disproportionate burden on states in the region is in line with global trends in the distribution of refugees. Because proximity to place of origin has been a key determinant of distribution, developing countries that can least afford to host refugees have assumed the overwhelming responsibility for them. This inequality in refugee burden-sharing emerges not only due to geographical proximity, but also reflects the increased ability of developed countries to prevent refugees from arriving on their territories. In the ongoing crisis, inequitable burden-sharing is also apparent on a regional level within the European Union (EU), as southern European states have continued to bear the primary responsibility for screening and processing asylum claims. While other EU members have partially shared the burden by committing financial resources to assist Greece and Italy and by hosting some refugees through relocation frameworks, as of November 2015 only three states—Germany, Austria, and Sweden—fulfilled their committed quotas for relocating refugees.   Debates over refugee burden-sharing in Europe have underscored tensions between EU principles and individual member states’ willingness to implement norms of equity in refugee protection.

While discussions of refugee burden-sharing have largely focused on capability—that is, states’ relative capacities to assist refugees based on factors like economic development, population, and territorial size—the criteria that ought to govern the allocation of refugee responsibility remain ambiguous. The EU plan for distributing asylum seekers approved in September of 2015 utilized economic strength, population, unemployment, and the number of asylum applications approved in the last five years as criteria; however, this resettlement plan has faced opposition from central and eastern European states, and Poland announced that it would not participate. Complicating the task of determining how refugee protection responsibilities should be allocated is the notion that a country’s culpability in the creation of the displacement might also shape its obligations to respond.

The Securitization of Refugees

Even if consensus can be reached at the international level regarding principles of equitable refugee burden-sharing, policymakers can increasingly expect resistance from their domestic publics rooted in logics that link refugees to fears of terrorism and perceptions of foreigners as threatening. The implementation of R2P as refugee protection thus faces significant hurdles related to the securitization of asylum seekers—particularly those from Muslim-majority countries—as threats to both national security and cultural values in the United States and Europe. Increased fears of terrorist infiltration via refugee flows have produced calls to round up Syrian refugees and resulted in the U.S. House of Representatives passing H.R. 4038, the American Security Against Foreign Enemies (SAFE) Act. Opposition to refugees at the domestic level has also manifested in arson attacks against refugee shelters in Germany and violence against refugees in France. As refugees are increasingly conflated with migrants, and the current crisis emanates largely from the Middle East, perceptions of asylum seekers have become linked to broader debates about immigration and Islam. In this context, domestic political forces in Europe and the US have framed the refugee crisis in ways that undermine the potential for R2P to be successfully reoriented as refugee protection.

Navigating these obstacles requires grappling with representations of refugees in social and political discourse, as well as articulating how refugee burden-sharing can serve states’ national interests. Organized and predictable responses for allocating refugee responsibilities could, for example, support greater international stability and reinforce principles of cooperative security. In an increasingly interdependent global environment, fulfilling R2P through refugee protection could arguably compliment counterterrorism policies and contribute to an international protective infrastructure that facilitates better coping with transnational threats and humanitarian emergencies.

Alise Coen is currently Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Sheboygan, USA. Her article, ‘R2P, Global Governance, and the Syrian Refugee Crisis’ was recently published in the International Journal of Human Rights. She is on Twitter at @alise_coen