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With Indian Copters in Burma and Congo, Tanks for S. Sudan,
Arms Trade Treaty Called For
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
October 21 -- As a ship full of
over 30 tanks remains captured by pirates off Somalia's coast,
reportedly bound
by way of Kenya for war-scarred South Sudan where in the same week a
planeload
of weapons from
Ethiopia was flown in, in New York a message from South African
Archbishop
Desmond Tutu was carried Tuesday morning to the missions to the UN of
all 192
member states.
A visit to
the Tutu-message command center by Inner City Press at 11:30 a.m. found
a third
of the deliveries made, with some notable exceptions, China, Kenya and
Ethiopia
among them. The U.S. mission had been visited, but the U.S. remains an
opponent
of the Arms Trade Treaty called for in the message. UN Headquarters
this week
is full of fliers and events about such a Treaty, called an ATT,
complete with
a six foot mock pair of eyes glasses on the theme, the world is
watching.
At one such
event last week, international lawyer Clare da Silva explained that
international law supports an Arms Trade Treaty. Flicking through
PointPoint
slides with quotes from the UN Charter, she cited a 1982 General
Assembly
report that
"[a] State may incur
responsibility if it (...) provides material aid to a state that uses
the aid
to commit human rights violations. In this respect, the General
Assembly has
called on Member States in a number of cases to refrain from supplying
arms and
other military assistance to countries found to be committing serious
human
rights violations." A/37/745
To use a
particular sale as an example, how then to view India's offer of
surveillance
aircraft and other military assistance to Myanmar, which in September
2007 shot
peacefully protesting monks dead in the street, and this year blocked
and then
stole
assistance to Burmese people impacted by Cyclone Nargis?
Burning weapons on Cote d'Ivoire, flow
to South Sudan and Myanmar not shown
India has
not, it appears, rescinded its offer of Dhruv advanced light
helicopters to
Myanmar. Meanwhile, Indian soldiers operating as part of the UN
Peacekeeping
Mission in the Congo, MONUC, are supporting the Congolese army in
assaults on
the rebels of renegade General Laurent Nkunda, in a conflict in which
both
sides have killed and displaced civilians.
Inner City
Press on Tuesday asked Congo's Ambassador to the UN about reports that
the
Indian peacekeepers in South Kivu refused to engage with Nkunda's
forces
earlier this year, and instead returned to their UN paid-for base.
He
acknowledged that the Indian forces called their capital, New Delhi,
and
received an interpretation of Chapter Seven of the UN Charter different
that
MONUC's, and thus refused to fight.
He went on
to praise more recent Indian
actions in Eastern Congo, specifically attack helicopter attacks in
support of
the Congolese army. But isn't the Congolese army, the FARDC, been even
by the
UN "found to be committing serious human rights violations"? So could
the UN itself by in violation of international law in its action in the
Congo
and elsewhere? Perhaps a 193rd message from Archbishop Tutu should have
been
delivered -- to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. He was in Cambridge,
Massachusetts on Tuesday, but will be back in Headquarters on
Wednesday. We'll
see.
Watch this site, and this Oct. 2 debate, on
UN, bailout, MDGs
and this October 17 debate, on
Security Council and Obama and the UN.
* * *
These
reports are
usually also available through Google
News and on Lexis-Nexis.
Click
here
for a Reuters
AlertNet piece by this correspondent
about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click
here
for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali
National
Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an
undefined trust fund. Video
Analysis here
Feedback: Editorial
[at] innercitypress.com
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