New threat to Lukashenka's arms business

The Arms Trade Treaty puts illegal export of arms and technologies to rogue states at risk.

The Treaty was adopted by the UN General Assembly on April 2. It was approved by majority vote (154 votes in favour). North Korea, Iran and Syria voted against and 23 countries, including Belarus, Russia and China, abstained, Interfax reports.

The idea of the Arms Trade Treaty was proposed by a group of Nobel Nobel Laureates, but the document was outlined by former UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. The reason to carry through this initiative, the largest one in the global arms control in the last 15 years, was the simple fact: The number of the countries subject to the EU arms embargo was much bigger than the number of the countries hit by the UN sanctions, Kommersant (Russia) writes.

It meant in practice that the countries under the EU arms embargo, such as China, Belarus, Myanmar, Sudan and Syria, were able to buy arms from less scrupulous suppliers, first of all Russia, and re-sell them. Obviously, the EU didn't enjoy the situation.

The pluses of the Treaty that it is a legally binding instrument covering almost all conventional arms and setting the conditions when exporters must refuse arms transfers.

The new document also has some discrepancies and flaws. The treaty was initially considered by many states, including Russia, to become a tool to combat the illegal arms trade. To Moscow's disappointment, its final version was reduced to regulation of the legal sector of arms trade with an emphasis on observing humanitarian law and human rights.

Besides, the ATT does not contain Jack Straw's main idea: It doesn't have a mechanism to control the implementation of the treaty and doesn't set punitive measures for transgressors. Moreover, every exporter can decide in its own way whether there is a risk that the importing state may use the arms for human rights abuses and genocide, the terms that were not given clear definitions.

In fact, the right to impose sanctions on arms exporters still belong to the UN Security Council. In this regard, the new treaty proposes no changes. However, it can be considered as a significant step forward: The countries that signed the document will have to give information about supplies, which could have been kept in secret by mutual consent of the parties. Besides, the Treaty will become the international forum to discuss scandalous or controversial deals. The counties that didn't join the Treaty risk to stop receiving arms, military technologies and dual-use technologies from the EU and the US.

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