Proposition 53K1794

Proposition de résolution relative à un traité international strict sur les armes.

General information ¶

Authors

Vooruit David Geerts, Dirk Van der Maelen

Submission date

Oct. 11, 2011

Official page

Visit

Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

international agreement resolution of parliament arms trade

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

Groen CD&V Vooruit Ecolo LE PS | SP ∉ Open Vld N-VA LDD MR VB

Contact form ¶

Do you have a question or request regarding this proposition? Select the most appropriate option for your request and I will get back to you shortly.

Discussion ¶

Feb. 9, 2012 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

Mr. Speaker, I have contacted Mrs. De Meulemeester. She is studying naturalizations dossiers. She is now on the way to here. It will take a few minutes.

First and foremost, I apologize. I was together with my two colleagues checking files on the Service Naturalizations; therefore I was not there for a moment.

I will present a very brief oral report on the draft resolution on a strong international arms treaty. Dirk Van der Maelen, the main speaker of the draft resolution, acknowledged that one person dies every minute as a result of the illegal use of a weapon. That is 500,000 victims per year. Moreover, three more people are injured every minute.

The arms trade is regulated both nationally and EU-wide, but those measures remain inadequate. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to have a comprehensive treaty on arms trade.

The representative of the Minister of Foreign Affairs also emphasizes that the draft resolution is consistent with the position of the Minister and the Government. It is a strong support for the upcoming negotiations.

With a number of amendments, all of which were approved, all political groups have approved an important draft resolution.

Mr. President, colleagues, we would like to expressly thank Mr. Van der Maelen for submitting the draft resolution. We would also like to thank the Chairman of the Commission, Mr. de Donnea, for the way he led the debates. With many amendments, we have been able to greatly improve the text, thanks to the good cooperation within the committee, which is not always obvious. On behalf of our group, thank you.

The importance of this text should not be underestimated. In the past, Belgium has always played a leading role in international arms regulatory initiatives. We believe it is important for our country to continue this tradition.

Next week, the fourth preparatory meeting for the Arms Trade Treaty will take place in New York. We believe that our diplomats will come there on the ice, but a good back support because of the House does not seem to us to be irrelevant.

The topic is more than current. Just look at the discussions about arms deliveries to Syria and Libya. Even in Africa, small weapons have already led to large killings. Arms deliveries often create insecurity, lawlessness and impunity, which primarily affect ordinary citizens. This should be absolutely avoided.

We must also remain absolutely vigilant for our own country. Recent reports on arms deliveries sometimes mention Belgium negatively. This is mainly about arms deliveries to Libya in 2009. We can absolutely welcome the statements on arms deliveries and the recent human rights speech of our Minister of Foreign Affairs.

With regard to the amendments we have submitted, I would like to make one comment. We have submitted an amendment to initiate consultations with the regions on arms trade. Since it is a shared competence, it is very important to initiate the consultation with the Regions and to recognize them as full partners. We would like to invite from the Chamber the FOD Foreign Affairs and the Minister to conduct regular consultations with the regions, in order to reach a common position. After all, the treaty on the system of weapons permits will have to be implemented primarily by the Regions.

In the context of the future ATT treaty, we especially consider nuance, conciseness and clarity very important. In that context, it is very important that it should be consistent, which is quite logical, with the Charter of the United Nations.

For us, a robust treaty is a treaty with a clear and simple legal framework so that it can be applied in a wide range of circumstances where the supply of weapons can have a negative impact on the civilian population.

Mr. Speaker, colleagues, the CD&V Group thanks the applicant and all colleagues for the way this resolution was worked out.

First of all, I would like to thank my colleagues in the Committee on Foreign Relations for their exceptionally constructive cooperation on this resolution.

International regulation of weapons has so far mainly focused on banning certain types of weapons, types that are considered to be ⁇ inhumane. The Arms Trade Treaty in this resolution deals with conventional weapons. It is not about prohibiting weapons. They remain inevitable in ensuring the safety of people and communities. This Treaty shall set out the basic principles and mechanisms for international arms transfers.

It is interesting to recall the history of the treaty. The initiative came in 1997 from a group of Nobel Prize winners, led by the Costa Rican Oscar Arias. They called for a code of conduct for arms transactions. Then an international group of NGOs took over this. The idea of pouring those principles into a binding treaty has gained more and more support. That is logical. These are principles that all states have already committed to, such as respect for international law and human rights, peaceful international relations and sustainable development.

The consequences of all those commitments when it comes to arms transfers that lead to large-scale violations of those principles were somewhat difficult as long as the initiative remained at the national level. It is therefore feared to undermine the competitive position of the own weapons manufacturer.

If those rules are international, that same concern no longer stands in the way of an ethical position.

Hopefully, we will be able to reach a strong treaty with good guarantees for its compliance. This can prevent a lot of human suffering.

It is useful and valuable that we adopt a resolution on this subject today. The committee found that there is a broad consensus on the need for a strong arms trade treaty and on the desire to see the Belgian diplomacy play a leading role in this, in line with the reputation that this diplomacy enjoys thanks to previous work, including on anti-personnel mines and cluster munitions.

It was a bit surprising to see that in the policy note of Minister Reynders no word is spoken about this arms trade treaty. It is one of the major issues on the international agenda this year.

This resolution corrects that. We were therefore very pleased to find that the representative of the Minister attended the discussions and fully supports them. Thus, we bring this file where it belongs to the priorities of Foreign Affairs.

Moreover, it is remarkable that we can vote on this resolution today, as next week, from 13 to 17 February, the fourth preparatory meeting for the International Arms Trade Treaty will take place in New York, the last of four preparatory meetings for the official negotiations in July.

It is an agenda with mainly procedural elements, but it is undoubted that there will be further discussions on the content of the treaty.

With this resolution, we provide the Belgian negotiators with a number of guiding directives. Compared to the briefing paper of the Argentine Ambassador Roberto García Moritán, which is now a precursor to the negotiations and a good basis for the negotiations, this resolution adds a number of crucial elements.

We want the criteria to apply not only to arms exports, but also to other types of transfers, such as transit and brokerage. We would like to include order-keeping materials, in particular security and police weapons, in the Convention. In fact, serious human rights violations do not only happen with military equipment. We also emphasize transparency in reporting.

The resolution is also quite concrete and complete for the evaluation criteria. We have, for example, added a reference to child soldiers as fighters. Also in terms of the desired scope of the treaty, we explicitly mention ammunition and technology.

This resolution gives a clear mandate and concrete guidelines to the women and men who will negotiate on our behalf to resolutely move for the bottom of the can for a strong arms trade treaty.

Mr. Speaker, colleagues, I took the two texts: the original version submitted by the colleagues Van der Maelen and Geerts, and the resolution as it was adopted thanks to the cooperation and active engagement of our committee chairman, Mr. François-Xavier de Donnea.

You can see that this resolution has been improved. There were comments from many colleagues, who have provided for a balanced resolution, which we will also approve.

Ms. Brems has rightly cited that this is a good time, because next week the last preliminary meeting on this subject will be held in the United Nations. I would like to draw your attention to the wording of this resolution, especially when we work together on a European level.

This includes the import, export, transit and transfer of defence-related products, other military-use material, order-keeping equipment, civil firearms, parts and ammunition.

It is obvious that this is also part of the free movement in Europe. With this resolution, we try to curb that – and later at the UN level, if it ever succeeds.

I look forward with some optimism to the outcome of the International Arms Trade Treaty of 2 and 27 June, knowing that the ATT, the Arms Trade Treaty, will still have a lot of feet in the earth.

After all that has been said, I would like to remind the Chamber of a few things.

We followed with a few – Mr. Van der Maelen will never forget that – the famous debate about the Minimi, the famous delivery of weapons by Belgium to the rapid democracy that Nepal has remained since then.

These debates were incredible. They took place at a strange time, in August, in a plenary session of the Chamber that did not take place here because of repairs on the hemisphere, but in the Congress Hall. I will never forget that intense moment of debate. Mr. Van der Maelen and I have special memories of that debate.

The result of that debate was that the export and transit of weapons was entrusted to the regions. I allow myself to say that it was “forgiven” as it were. This is an important element that is addressed in the resolution.

Indeed, I allowed myself to take a look at where the Regents stand with the penetration of the directives. I note that by 30 June 2011, Member States must implement the laws, regulations and administrative provisions necessary to comply with the European Directive.

Unfortunately, the three regions are not far away. In Flanders the decree was submitted. However, it is still far from settled. It may be difficult to apply before 30 June 2012. The decree was submitted late. The debate on this issue began in Brussels in January 2012. Unless I am wrongly informed, the Waals Region is still waiting, in a comprehensive, Waals weapons decree, to make the obligation in question in some sense harsh.

The questions that were asked then, in 2003, concerning Nepal, can therefore now be asked, though in the opposite direction. Then the purple government—a real purple government—decides to bring the issue of arms licenses and arms exports, which was a federal authority, to the regions. Nevertheless, the truth commands me to note that the regions react very slowly, even in Flanders. I fear that Flanders will never be ready by the date that is accepted by the European Union. I don’t know how far Wallonia is. However, they are apparently not so far away. The Brussels region has also just begun to shake.

Questions can therefore be asked when we have talked about arms exports to Libya and other elements. In particular, the question may be raised whether the federal level should not again consider a coordinating role somewhere, in order to adequately align all these elements of regional jurisdiction with our European obligations and with our eventual, subsequent, international obligations. This question must be dared to ask. Indeed, if a measure has been taken at the federal level in order, in a certain sense and crucially speaking, to get rid of the problem, it must be ensured that everything goes better after it has been entrusted to the regional authority.

I note that because at the end of the resolution – if I am not mistaken, Mr Waterschoot has also cited it –, through an additional amendment that paid the effort to be considered, it is stated that the Parliament and the Western governments should be periodically informed about the efforts made by the government and the progress of the negotiations.

It is not, because something, for opportunistic reasons, has been given a certain destination in terms of division of powers, that for the sake of concrete arrangements it cannot take another direction. What we want is to implement our international, European obligations in our system in a timely manner. What we are also attached to is that everything can be realized at the international level at the most through the influence, the impact and the action of our diplomacy.

We should not be ashamed of the measures we have taken. Our country has taken a priority position in the field of landmines, for example. Our country can be considered “peaceful” in the world, and we should not be ashamed of it. If the resolution that we are going to adopt succeeds in giving the international movement more form and content in this regard, it would be a satisfaction that can please us all.

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to congratulate my colleagues Geerts and Van der Maelen for the initiative they took. Indeed, this is an important resolution because when we draw the balance sheet, since the end of the Second World War, we see that light weapons have killed between twenty and thirty million people. These are by far the weapons that kill the most, for decades, in the world.

If a strong and broad treaty concerning all types of weapons, types of transfers and situations in which such transfers take place can be voted, a big step will be taken.

Many of us are fighting against the sale of weapons in certain situations and we are often objected that if it is not us or the European Union that sells them, it will be others.

Through this treaty, the whole community will ensure, in the future, more than it does today, that the international community does not sell or transfer weapons in certain situations.

Furthermore, I am pleased that information is given to the regions. Indeed, the latter are now competent in this matter, which raises a series of questions, difficulties. I will not advocate here for a refederalization of the arms trade, but a concertation and consultation seems to me important.

We are the only country in the world where the federal state has no jurisdiction over the sale and transfer of weapons. It is useful that in the future consultations are organised in order to avoid situations like those known recently, ⁇ in Libya.

I am pleased once again that Belgium has been a precursor in this matter, as Mr. Watershoot said it. Moreels, Minister of Foreign Affairs, organized the first international conference on the prohibition and trade in weapons in Belgium. Therefore, I welcome that a follow-up is given to these first efforts. And I hope – but I am confident on this point – that the government will make it one of its priorities at the level of its diplomacy.

The draft treaty we are discussing today seems to me to be extremely important. As some colleagues have said, lightweight and small-caliber weapons are the only weapons of mass destruction that have been used since Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

These are weapons that are not only propagators, initiators or facilitators of civil wars, but also weapons that are the origin of Fort Chabrol-type killings, by fools of the type of Breivik in Norway or of the one who triggered the Liège killing, etc.

They are also the main working tools of those who are engaged in the great banditism, who are engaged in various subversions. Specifically, the fact that the Touaregs were able to seize large stockpiles of weapons, following the collapse of the Gaddafi regime in Libya, had as an immediate consequence to relive the civil war in Mali, to again create unrest in northern Niger and Chad.

Therefore, it is important to regulate the trade in light and small-caliber weapons. This cannot be done only at the level of a space such as the European Union. Of course, it is important that we have taken very strict measures at the European Union level. But international competition makes this kind of chancre, metastases, generated by lightweight and small-caliber weapons can only be effectively combated at the global level.

It is not only the European Union or the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, but also other regional organizations around the world that, within the framework of a comprehensive treaty concluded within the United Nations, must combat this phenomenon.

Therefore, it is with great conviction that the MR will vote on this text today. We hope that our New York negotiators will be stronger next week to defend very clear views at the preparatory meeting and then at the final meeting this summer to try to lead to a comprehensive treaty on the trade in light and small weapons.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank Mr. President de Donnea and all colleagues who promptly and efficiently discussed this resolution on Tuesday in the Committee on Foreign Relations.

I have nothing to add to what my colleagues have said. In their speeches they have accurately described the importance of such an arms trade treaty.

I invite all colleagues to follow up with me on the progress of the negotiation process. I hope that our country will keep the tradition of the landmine treaty, the cluster treaty and others, high. I also hope that the government will inform us. If it does not do this on its own, I propose that we invite the Minister to keep us permanently informed in the Committee on Foreign Relations of the further developments in the negotiation process.