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FYI’s

• Month’s letters
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• Month‘s key Human Rights dates
• Web_Feed of Human Rights News
• Action: Arms and Atrocities

ABOUT ARMS AND ATROCITIES

Will YOU be surprised by the facts in the article ‘‘No Arms for Atrocities’’ in Connect, Amnesty International’s newsletter to its activists? ‘‘Prepare to be surprised - there are more controls on the export of bottled water and dinosaur bones than there are on conventional arms. At present, there are no global rules to guide decisions about arms transfers. Not surprisingly, the absence of legally binding international standards to regulate the global arms trade has had an enormous human cost. Serious human rights abuses have been committed around the world using a wide range of weaponry, armaments, muntions and related material. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, injured, raped and forced to flee from their homes as a result. The existing patchwork of standards are ineffectual because they are not in harmony with each other, and they leave many loopholes open for unscrupulous arms brokers and governments who trade weapons irresponsibly. The Arms Trade Treaty is intended to address that concern, creating global standards to ensure that weapons transferred across international boundaries are only for appropriate use, by responsible actors. ’’ Click here to read the full article and possible actions. Go to the Top hit counter