NRA report on UN Arms Trade Treaty conference

The 10th Conference of States Parties to the Arms Trade Treaty met this week in Geneva, Switzerland. Although it was heralded as a celebration of the treaty’s 10th year since entry into force the only thing worth celebrating was the fact that President Trump unbound the United States (U.S.) from its object and purpose in 2019.

Supporters of the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) have always argued that it will have zero impact on national policy, claiming instead that it serves as a tool to bring other nations up to U.S. standards when it comes to firearm export and import standards. On the other hand, we have always held the position that the ATT is a direct threat to our national sovereignty, and the Second Amendment in particular. That is why the NRA alone worked tirelessly with the Trump administration to remove John Kerry’s signature from the treaty and unbind the U.S. from its object and purpose, which he did from the stage at our annual meeting in 2019.

Last week, we witnessed firsthand why that was the right move, and we only had to wait until halfway through the first day of the meeting to see why. Justification came in the form of an intervention from the state of Palestine (which is recognized by the ATT). They took the floor to deliver a blistering attack against Israel and the U.S., claiming that U.S. arms exports are fueling violations of human rights and are being used to commit gender-based violence in the Gaza region. According to them, U.S. firearms exports are a clear violation of the ATT and demand immediate international recourse.

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The foray proved, as we have warned, that the ATT is not just another United Nations (UN) instrument designed to attack the firearms community, but that it can and will be used against nations despite their membership status. In this case, the attack was not based on any legal standing, as President Trump removed the U.S. from upholding its object and purpose in 2019, but instead on the theory that the ATT is an international norm that even non-State Parties and Signatories must adhere to. One can only imagine the fight we would be in had the U.S. kept John Kerry’s signature on the document.

Continuing to prove our warnings correct, the treaty’s State Parties decided this week to fill the slot of its resigning Head of the ATT Secretariat with an individual straight out of central casting for the anti-firearms movement. Starting Dec. 1, the head of the ATT secretariat will be an individual with deep ties to a rabidly anti-firearms/pro ATT coalition of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Remarkably, this was accomplished without any objections, without a single state party acknowledging the positions of this individual’s previous employer or the fact that they will now have access to confidential national reports filed by the treaty’s state parties through their colleague’s appointment.

For almost half of the state parties, there is nothing to fear with this. Not only do most share the radical anti-firearms views of this NGO, but almost half of them do not even submit their required annual reports. In fact, of the ATT’s 115 state parties, which includes only 41% of the top international arms exporters and 32% of its importers, only 57% of them even bothered to file these reports last year.

The lack of adherence by state parties to their obligations under the ATT is nothing new. We have reported on this for years, but the lack of focus on correcting the problem becomes truly shocking when that focus is instead directed on expanding the ATT into other arenas.

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This year, the theme of the conference was “The Role of Interagency Cooperation in the Effective Implementation of the ATT Provisions,” or in plain English, expanding the tentacles of the treaty into regulating national bodies such as customs and law enforcement. Thankfully, while the U.S. delegation remained silent during the debate on expanding into these arenas, others in the room prevented any concrete expansion language from inclusion into the final document.

For the U.S., whose delegation has always supported adoption of the ATT, the only interventions came in the form of semantic and technical amendments to the conference’s final report. While there was no signal of any intent to “re-sign” the treaty, even such insignificant attempts to help steer the ATT in the right direction grammatically were met with hostility from the state of Palestine and China.

Hopefully, the pro-ATT U.S. delegation recognized the significance of such hostility and abandons any arguments to the current administration regarding “re-signing” the treaty. President Trump was right to remove us from the ATT’s object and purpose in 2019, but a simple Presidential Directive could bind us once again. As the saying goes, “elections have consequences,” and “re-signing” the ATT is one such consequence we cannot afford to ignore come November.

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