NEW YORK (CNS): The Vatican has called on the international community to start work on “a comprehensive, legally binding agreement on international arms trade that will reduce and eventually eradicate the illicit traffic of small arms and light weapons”.
Nuncio to the United Nations, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, said on July 8 that “the ultimate goal” of international action in this area was “protection of the life and dignity of each and every human person”.
But even without a new legal agreement, governments should face up to their responsibility to stop “illicit arms transfers”, he said.
Governments, the archbishop said, have the capability of acting to prevent “the death and destruction that result from the availability and use of small arms and light weapons”.
Speaking at UN headquarters in New York, Archbishop Migliore addressed a meeting held from July 7-11 as the first follow-up to a 2001 international conference that was itself the first to focus on the theme of illegal traffic in small arms.
In a message to this year’s meeting, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who was in Africa and had his statement read by a deputy, called illicit trade in small arms a “global scourge” that cost the lives of 500,000 people each year, 300,000 in armed conflict and 200,000 through homicides and suicides.
