MISSING PIECES - Inter-Parliamentary Union

MISSING PIECES
which should help prevent leakage to criminal elements, and provides for
long prison sentences for violations.
A Small Arms Survey review suggests that clamping down on ammunition
supply may present fewer challenges than previously thought: 41 ammunition
production is less diversified and easier to identify than small arms
manufacture, and bullets are less durable than the guns that fire them. 42
In addition, some measures, such as marking, are well suited to control
ammunition (ammunition markings cannot be tampered with, unlike gun
markings). Finally, tracing ammunition would be particularly useful in crime
investigations as often cartridges are the only thing left on a crime scene.
Parliamentarians can encourage a greater focus on ammunition regulations,
while working to increase their transparency in reporting authorised
ammunition transfers.
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PARLIAMENTARIANS
This theme has considered a wide variety of measures to prevent transfers
that undermine human security, whether they are ‘authorised’, grey market
or diverted transactions, or strictly illegal transactions. Limiting the scope
of efforts to ‘illicit’ transfers is clearly insufficient, given that all three types
of transactions are intertwined, as are the actors that engage in them. Some
recommendations for legislators include:
1. Adopt and enforce arms transfers criteria into national law based on
strong human rights and IHL principles. To reduce the likelihood that
small arms transfers will cause indiscriminate or unnecessary suffering or
reach human rights abusers, governments must adopt into national law
strict arms export criteria, while at the same time endorsing the need for
a binding international instrument on arms transfers. As international
export criteria may be slow to develop, regions can develop their own codes
of conduct for arms exports.
2. Strengthen and enforce arms embargoes and criminalise embargo
busting. Parliamentarians can facilitate the adoption into national law of
criminal prohibitions against arms transfers in violation of Security
Council arms embargoes, and enforce those laws by prosecuting violators.
Parliamentary questions can also ascertain the government’s compliance
with them. In parallel, the creation of UN arms embargo monitoring mechanisms
could provide the infrastructure to monitor embargo enforcement
and suggest consequences for violations. 43
56