Panel of World Leaders Aims to Slow Flood of Small Arms Sales by John Shaw While most of the world trembles about the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, an independent commission of global leaders close to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan focuses on a narrower but persistent concern: the spread of small arms and light weapons. Although less spectacular than nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, the unrelenting flow of illicit small arms threatens societies, destroys economies, and leads to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people every year, according to Albrecht Gero Muth, executive director of the Eminent Persons Group (EPG), in an interview with The Washington Diplomat. The EPG was created in 1999 to advise Annan and support his quest for a small arms nonproliferation regime. It is working with the secretary-general to shape the global debate on how to slow the rapid spread of small arms and to halt the burgeoning illicit trade. Co-chaired by Malian President Alpha Oumar Konare and Salim Ahmed Salim, the former secretary-general of the Org anization of African Unity, the EPG is a hybrid group. It is a nongovernmental organization (NGO) that has an impressive roster of current and former senior government officials working to advance intergovernmental cooperation on reducing small arms. The EPGís 24 international members include Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), former French Prime Minister Michel Rocard, former British Foreign Minister David Owen, former Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev, former Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy, Swedish diplomat Rolf Ekeus, and Russian Gen. M.T. Kalashnikov. It also includes ambassadors from Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and Russia. The EPG has plunged into this politically difficult and technically complex issue with decidedly mixed results so far. A much-awaited U.N. conference on the spread of small arms last year was thrown off balance by very public skepticism from the Bush administration. The conference issued a final report that was widely viewed as a tepid compromise that solved few problems and failed to set a bold direction for the future. Annan has argued for several years that the proliferation of small arms is a serious global threat that should be the next focus of urgent multilateral attention. ìThe world is flooded with small arms and light weapons numbering at least 500 million, enough for one of every 12 people on earth,î Annan said last year. ìMost of these are controlled by legal authorities, but when they fall into the hands of terrorists, criminals and irregular forces, small arms bring devastation. They exacerbate conflict, spark refugee flows, undermine the rule of law, and spawn a culture of violence and impunity. In short, small arms are a threat to peace and development, to democracy and human rights,î he declared. Annan said that the global communityís work on an international criminal court, debt relief, and a ban on landmines demonstrates that committed leaders can tackle tough problems. ìSurely the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons deserves similar attention,î he said. EPG Executive Director Muth observed that about 300,000 deaths every year are linked to the use of small weaponsóand that many thousands of these fatalities are innocent women and children. He said that key African leaders in the 1980s recognized the danger of the proliferation of small arms. According to Muth, it was Malian President Konare who first brought the danger of small arms proliferation to the attention of the international community. Former U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali initially chose not to include small arms proliferation in his personal agenda for peace in 1992. The issue was not considered sufficiently significant to warrant serious multilateral action. It was Konare, Muth said, who changed this general sentiment in the corridors of Western powers when in 1995, he requested that the United Nations send an advisory group to Mali to assess the devastating humanitarian toll small arms were inflicting upon the countryís civilian population. Boutros-Ghali eventually included small arms proliferation in his 1995 peace agenda. Later that year, the U.N. General Assembly agreed to authorize an intergovernmental study of the issue. The first U.N. study was released in 1997, and a second one was published in 1999óthe same year the EPG began its work. As the executive director of the EPG, Muth works out of a small office in Georgetown. He is responsible for crafting the groupís broad strategy and day-to-day tactics. He serves as the liaison to governments, civil society, including small arms manufacturers and NGOs, as well as to the media. The group has met three times, the last time as guests of Annan during the U.N. conference on small arms last year. It will assemble again this November in Geneva. Muth, a native of Germany who graduated from American University, has been involved in arms control issues for a dozen years. A protÈgÈ of his uncle, the former vice president of East Germany, he has advised the president of Mali, the Estonian foreign minister, the secretary-general of the Conference on Disarmament and former Sen. Chuck Robb (D-Va.). Muth said the global death toll is mounting because of the spread of inexpensive small arms and light weapons. He noted that in nearly all of the 49 wars of the 1990s, small arms were the weapons of choice. ìThis is one of the great humanitarian challenges of our time,î he said. ìThis is an issue of great significance to him [Annan]. He sees its consequences on his continent. This is an issue that greatly affects Africa.î Muth noted that of the 7 million to 8 million fatalities in Africaís recent regional conflicts, 2 million were children. Additionally, in Africa 4 million to 5 million children have been disabled and another 12 million have been left homeless from conflicts, and more than a million have been orphaned or separated from their families. Muth said the economic cost of small arms violence has been increasing in Africa and across the world. Small arms violence, he noted, undermines good governance, disrupts trade, tourism and investment, and raises the costs of keeping orderówhich in turn unbalances budgets and disrupts economies. He said the secretary-general wants the EPG to keep searching for creative ways to confront the spread of small arms and to craft strategies that can overcome bureaucratic inertia and political intransigence. ìThe small arms problem cannot be successfully resolved in the classic U.N. process alone for it involves too many actors with agendas too diverse to reach the requisite consensus,î he said. So the EPG is trying to accomplish Annanís vision for a global small arms nonproliferation regime by advancing an informal consultative mechanism between manufacturers, manufacturing and exporting countries. This mechanism is known as the Paris process. ìIt involves fewer actors than the classic U.N. process in which all 190 or so nations participate,î Muth said. As a result, according to Muth, the Paris process will make it easier to reach a consensus on highly sensitive security and commercial issues without unduly impacting lawful trade or causing unnecessary difficulties between major manufacturing and exporting nations. Muth added that support for this process has come from important manufacturing and exporting countries, such as China, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States as well as other key nations, such as India, Indonesia and Nigeria. ìIf this process holdsóif it holdsówe will be able to make a difference, and that would be satisfying,î Muth said. Although seeking compromises with leading small arms manufacturers in key nations, the EPG has also been willing to offer tough criticisms. Former French Prime Minister Rocard, for example, in public statements, has blasted ìmerchants of deathî who traffic illicit weapons. However, Muth called this the ìname and shame campaignî and said the EPG is willing to mix it up. ìGiven the groupís high-level membership, we are not marginalized as are many NGOs who, on hard issues, too often are seen but not heard, or heard but not listened to,î he said. Muth said his group has practiced aggressive and creative diplomacy but acknowledges that the small arms proliferation problem remains largely unsolved. ìMy daily concern is that from a diplomatic point of view, fro m the perspective of diplomacy as an art, we have performed admirably, even brilliantly. But has it made a difference on the ground? Absolutely not. We have not been able to do any of the things at the center of our programmatic outline. The honest answer is that very little has been accomplished. Even transfers to areas of conflict are unabated,î he said. Analysts argue that the reasons for this are because of the inherent intractability of the issue, the lack of a unifying principle to shape an international consensus, and the ambivalence of small arms activists and their supporters. They added that limiting illicit arms flows will be a huge challenge and said that efforts should not focus on universal agreements but rather on discrete activities aimed at the problems of particular countries and regions. ìThe dangers of small arms will never be lopsided enough to mobilize a global campaign to prohibit their use, let alone to seek their outright elimination,î wrote Aaron Karp, a senior faculty associate at Old Dominion University, in a recent essay. ìSmall arms must be dealt with incrementally with bold initiatives where possible and with patient efforts the rest of the timeÖ. Instead of betting everything on breathtaking reforms, activists should bet on their more modest accomplishments,î he said. ìGradually nibbling away at weapons problems will never be as photogenic as a massive U.N. conference. Modest proposals reforming gun exports will not win a Nobel Prize. But there is no substitute for the sheer persistence of such endeavors,î added Karp. Muth said the EPG remains focused on finding practical ways to limit the spread of small weapons and is determined to help shut down the illicit pipeline that fuels so much death and destruction. ìThis is not gun control we are talking about. This is 1,000 or 5,000 AK-47s in the hands of one tribe on the eve of that tribe going to annihilate another tribe,î he said. ìCooperation on eradicating the proliferation of small arms to regions in conflict must be as prominent a part of the international anti-terror campaign as efforts to deprive terrorists of financial and logistical resources.î John Shaw is a contributing writer to The Washington Diplomat.