The Hindu : New Delhi News : A mission to keep arms at arm's length

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Aug 26, 2006

New Delhi

New Delhi

A mission to keep arms at arm's length

Mandira Nayar

NEW DELHI: It is easier to trace lost baggage than a weapon. And with there being more laws to govern music than guns and the world living in the shadow of violence, the reality is that there is no control over arms.

On a mission now to make the globe safer by raising awareness about the issue is Binalakshmi Nepram, Oxfam's South Asia Control Arms Policy Adviser. Hoping to create pressure on countries to sign an Arms Trade Treaty in the United Nations, Binalakshmi has walked the tiny gullies and gone into small chai shops to ask for support.

"It is easy to trace GM crops across borders. But deadly arms can't be traced. The stakes for arms are the highest -- life. We got 800 signatures in one day asking for stricter arms control. I went to Ber Sarai and asked people in chai shops about guns. They wanted to sign up,'' says Binalakshmi.

Cutting across class boundaries, people had the same response in the posh Khan Market, India Gate and even Dilli Haat. "We submitted 20,000 faces just from India for the control arms campaign. The public support for the campaign has come from 152 countries,'' she says.

A petite woman with dark black hair and a soft voice, she is an expert in a field that is usually macho territory. "It is important for a woman to be there in this debate,'' she says.

Reeling off statistics, she knows much more about guns than most men. "An AK-47, which is an assault rifle, is most expensive in the Northeast. The global arms trade is out of control. For countries like India, where the borders are porous, it is a problem. There are two bullets per person in the world. There are 634 million arms in circulation. An average of 22 billion dollars a year are spent in Africa, Asia, Middle East and Latin America on arms.''

With plenty to be concerned about, the Arms Trade Treaty is intended to introduce minimum standards to strictly control international trade.

While there is a lot of support for the treaty among 152 countries, it will not be easy to pass the treaty as countries like America are big exporters of arms.

But Binalakshmi is hopeful. "In Britain, gun manufacturers are supporting us. The reason is that the treaty specifies that if a particular country were banned from supplying arms to another country, like India did with Nepal, then no other country would be allowed to supply arms to them. It makes sense for the arms manufacturers,'' she says with a smile.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

New Delhi