Last week, Iran, Syria and North Korea blocked the adoption of the Arms Trade Treaty, the first international pact to regulate conventional arms sales across borders, citing its failure to ban weapons sales to rebel groups.
In the absence of consensus, the United Nations General Assembly is expected to put the treaty to a vote on Tuesday morning. It is considered likely to pass overwhelmingly.
“As we like to say, it's ludicrous that the global trade in bananas is better regulated than the global trade in arms,” Allison Pytlak, campaign manager for the Control Arms Coalition, an international civil society organization that has advocated for the Arms Trade Treaty, told Trend Lines in an email interview. “Patchy and diverse regulations allow many arms to be diverted to the illicit market and fall into the hands of those who misuse them. This treaty is an important first step to establishing a global standard for the trade in conventional arms.”