The need for greater transparency in the arms trade
- Author(s):
- Parliamentary Assembly
- Origin
- Text
adopted by the Standing Committee, acting on behalf of
the Assembly, on 17 November 2006 (see Doc. 11079, report of the Political Affairs Committee, rapporteur:
Mrs Ohlsson; and Doc. 11080, opinion of the Committee on Equal Opportunities for
Women and Men, rapporteur: Mrs Westerlund Panke).
- Thesaurus
1. Over the last decade, Council of
Europe member states have made progress in tightening up national norms
and regulations to control the arms trade and in improving international
co-operation in this field. However, the arms trade remains such
a secretive business, frequently involving a complex chain of transactions
and transfers, delocalised production, and sales through third countries
and use of intermediaries, that it is often impossible to understand
which weapons have been exported where and who the final users will be.
2. The Parliamentary Assembly considers greater transparency
in the arms trade as fundamental to ensuring good governance, accountability,
prevention of human rights abuses and violent conflict and minimising
the risk of weapons being diverted into the black market, to criminal
or terrorist groups or in order to breach embargo decisions, thus
threatening the political stability and security of people, in Europe
and elsewhere.
3. The introduction of greater transparency would also help ensure
that economic considerations are not prioritised over human rights,
human security, conflict prevention and non-proliferation, that
governments are held accountable for their political commitments
in the field of defence and foreign policy, and that episodes of fraud
and corruption in the armament sector are reduced.
4. The Assembly welcomes the progress made at multilateral level
to intensify the confidential exchange of information among governments
as regards the arms trade. It also notes with satisfaction that
some Council of Europe member states are parties to a number of
such mechanisms, including the Wassenaar Arrangement, the European
Union Code of Conduct on arms exports and the Organization for Security
and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) information exchange mechanisms
on small arms and light weapons.
5. However, the Assembly believes that progress in the confidential
exchange of information at governmental level should be matched
by enhanced public transparency through the publication by each country
of detailed annual reports on arms transfers, the development of
regional reporting mechanisms and better use of existing multilateral
ones, such as the Register of Conventional Arms and the Commodity
Trade Statistics (COMTRADE) database, both set up by the United
Nations.
6. Above all, the Assembly is convinced that parliamentary scrutiny
is the most appropriate instrument to achieve greater transparency
and accountability in the arms trade, while preserving the competitiveness
of a country’s defence industry and respecting the confidentiality
of the government’s national security policy. The Assembly therefore
regrets that good practices, such as prior parliamentary consultation
over the issuing of licences in sensitive cases, as well as regular
reporting by governments to national parliaments regarding the arms
trade, or parliamentary debates on the issue, are still rare and
limited to a few Council of Europe member states.
7. In this context, the Assembly takes note of the Inter-Parliamentary
Union’s (IPU) resolution on the role of parliaments in strengthening
control of trafficking in small arms and light weapons and their
ammunition, adopted on 12 May 2006, which suggests a series of measures
to improve parliamentary involvement in this field.
8. Similarly, the Assembly welcomes the initiative taken, among
others, by some Council of Europe member states to promote the negotiation,
within the United Nations, of a legally-binding arms trade treaty (ATT).
In particular, the Assembly welcomes the circulation on 24 July
2006 of a draft United Nations resolution entitled “Effective control
over the import, export, and transfer of conventional arms”, to
be tabled at the First Committee of the UN General Assembly in October
2006, which is intended to set this process in motion.
9. In light of the above, the Assembly calls on Council of Europe
member states to:
9.1 ensure the
highest possible level of transparency and accountability in the
arms trade by:
9.1.1 imposing on
governments the obligation to publish comprehensive, detailed and
clearly structured information on national arms transfers (including
imports, exports, transit and trans-shipment) to be submitted to
parliaments for debate at least once a year;
9.1.2 considering introducing a mechanism of prior parliamentary
consultation over the issuing of licences in sensitive cases;
9.1.3 implementing appropriate procedures to facilitate enhanced
parliamentary scrutiny over the government’s activities in the field
of the arms trade;
9.2 promote enhanced international co-operation in the regulation
and control of the arms trade by:
9.2.1 supporting
the successful negotiation within the United Nations of an arms
trade treaty which also takes into account the impact of the arms
trade on women;
9.2.2 complying fully and in a timely manner with the reporting
requirements stemming from their participation in the UN Register
of Conventional Arms and other multilateral mechanisms to which
they are parties;
9.2.3 establishing, together with interested non-European countries,
an informal group to examine how best to use the UN Register of
Conventional Arms and other multilateral mechanisms to further reinforce
transparency in the arms trade;
9.2.4 developing regional registers on conventional arms transfers,
including data on small arms and light weapons.
10. The Assembly calls on those Council of Europe member states
who do not participate in the COMTRADE database, or only provide
partial data, to fully adhere to this mechanism at the earliest convenience.
11. Finally, the Assembly calls on national parliaments to promote
the establishment of an international parliamentary network with
a view to assisting parliamentarians in increasing the level of
domestic transparency in the arms trade through the exchange of
information and models of good practice.
