Senior Red Cross Official Touts Importance of Implementing Arms Trade Treaty

August 23, 2018

Tokyo- Helen Durham, law and policy head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, told Jiji Press on Wednesday that implementing the Arms Trade Treaty is important.

"The creation of a treaty is just the first step," Durham said. "The hard work is getting states to agree to follow the treaty and then developing domestic law and domestic regulations to make the treaty real."

Durham is visiting Japan to attend a meeting of ATT signatories that started in Tokyo on Monday for a five-day run.

Although the treaty urges countries to regulate imports and exports of arms such as guns, militant groups in Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan and other countries still obtain sufficient weapons, causing continuing battles across the globe.

Pointing out that weapon supplier countries do exist, Durham said that such countries "need to take responsibility" for ensuring that the weapons cannot be used to create war crimes.

Durham also noted that conflicts are "more protracted" and "happening more often in urban areas," with an increasing number of non-state groups creating armed conflicts.

"The availability of small weapons is the critical issue," she said.

"The ICRC played a strong role in the development of the ATT because we saw a real need to have some rules about transfer of weapons," Durham said, citing her colleagues' terrible suffering in war zones that was brought about by weapons falling into "the wrong hands."

The ICRC will "keep the issue alive by talking about it," she stressed.

Durham expressed disappointment with any country that does not join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, adopted at the U.N. General Assembly last year.

"Japan has played a very important role in bringing the stories, experiences into the international environment to really remind people of terrible dangers if these weapons are used," she said.

Hoping that Japan will be able to bridge the gap between nuclear powers and those who oppose nuclear weapons, Durham called on more Japanese citizens who have a "very good understanding of dignity and need to reduce suffering in war" to play "a stronger role internationally." Jiji Press