October 10, 2006

The World Council of Churches (WCC) has congratulated the sponsoring states of a draft resolution on conventional arms control currently before the United Nations General Assembly and urged them to include in the text a specific reference to international human rights law.

In a 6 October letter congratulating the seven sponsoring states – Argentina, Australia, Costa Rica, Finland, Japan, Switzerland and the UK – for their work on the draft resolution, WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia argues for "a comprehensive and legally binding treaty" ensuring that arms transfers are "limited and licensed as well as lawful," that "transfers to the black market" are stopped, and that suppliers are made "partially liable for human rights violations committed with their products."

When it comes to human rights, Kobia says, concern for the treaty's ultimate beneficiaries – the people it must protect – makes a inclusion of "international human rights law" in the draft resolution a must.

The WCC general secretary's letter emphasizes the urgency of global arms control while "every week, in every region, the proliferation of weapons causes violent deaths, acute suffering and an unconscionable diversion of resources from things that make for peace."

The full text of Kobia's 5 October letter to the Geneva disarmament ambassadors of the draft resolution's sponsoring states is available on the WCC website at: http://www.oikoumene.org/index.php?id=2525.

Background information on the WCC's work on peacebuilding and disarmament is available at: http://wcc-coe.org/wcc/what/international/peacebuild.html.

World Council of Churches