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July 2012 (19)
Jul 28 2012 1:08PM
An Arms Trade Treaty is coming. Not today, but it is coming
Update 7 November 2012 - An Arms Trade Treaty one step closer after resounding UN vote The 2012 UN General Assembly has seen the biggest showing of support for the Treaty yet - 157 governments have voted in favour of a final negotiatin...
Jul 27 2012 2:01PM
Arms Trade Treaty: The final hours
Want to get straight to the loopholes? Skip ahead At 4pm yesterday (9pm UK time, if you're counting), a packed UN conference room received the final draft of the Arms Trade Treaty from Ambassador Moritan. After nearly 20 years of campa...
Jul 27 2012 12:45PM
Arms Trade Treaty: The world needs you!
Update, 28 July: Despite a fantastic response from all of you and the UK government pulling out the stops in strengthening the treaty, the US showed stunning cowardice last night to stop the negotiations , opening the door for others t...
Jul 25 2012 12:09PM
Arms Trade Treaty – It’s time to tango
Chair says "let's tango". China says "let's abandon our efforts". It is the day we have been waiting for. The day civil society has been working towards for decades, and many governments for six years. For some of us, with the way nego...
Jul 24 2012 12:24PM
Arms Treaty - get your tweet on and #AskFCO
Update - thanks for adding your questions to the #AskFCO Q&A. Alistair Burt maintained throughout that the UK government is determined to get the strongest treaty they can, read the full transcript of the Q&A . It's our job now to keep...
Jul 23 2012 4:15PM
Afghanistan: Promises alone are not enough
Horrific footage has emerged of a woman being killed in Afghanistan. The Guardian and others are reporting that she had been accused of adultery , and that her murder seems to be in retribution for this alleged ‘crime’. The attack prov...
Jul 20 2012 5:46PM
Russian authorities should 'immediately release' Pussy Riot detainees
‘These three activists have now been behind bars for months, awaiting a trial that should not be taking place’ - John Dalhuisen Amnesty International has reiterated its call for the release of three members of the female punk group Pus...
Jul 17 2012 2:02PM
Arms Trade Treaty: Can we do it Obama?
Arms Trade Treaty negotiations are at a crucial point. I can hardly believe that we’re already half way through. So much has happened and yet in terms of concrete decisions, Moritan (the president of the conference) sums it up nicely:...
Jul 12 2012 5:26PM
Arms Trade Treaty - the gender dimension
‘[T]hey took me and five other women into a room. It was in the morning. There were three of them. They told us to undress. I refused. One of them hit me with his knife. I told him it was not human. He said: ‘We will see about that’. H...
Jul 11 2012 12:40PM
Arms Trade Treaty: The battle for bullets (and tear gas, small arms, missiles…)
It's self-evident that to control the arms trade you have to actually control all the things that kill, maim and brutalise people, and capture all the ways that arms get into the wrong hands. Maybe I take an overly simplistic view of s...
Jul 7 2012 1:00AM
Arms Trade Treaty: First week round-up
Cesar Marin from Amnesty Venezuela offers our round up from the first week of Arms Trade Treaty negotiations in New York. Keep up-to-date on facebook
Jul 6 2012 1:02PM
Arms Trade Treaty: It’s time to act
Time at the UN is a precious commodity. Being told by Chair Ambassador Moritan that there are just 99 hours of negotiation left for the Arms Trade Treaty was a sobering moment. The sceptics, countries like Syria, Egypt, Iran and others...
Jul 5 2012 11:49AM
Arms Trade Treaty talks, there will be fireworks
I have fireworks on the mind. I love fireworks. I love other people's reactions to them. Let’s see if that's still the case by the time these talks end on 27 July... Experiencing them here in NYC is a happy by-product of being part of...
Jul 4 2012 4:08PM
Arms Trade Treaty talks get off to a strong (if delayed) start
After several false starts, the Arms Trade Treaty negotiations finally got underway yesterday. The Chair of the conference, Ambassador Moritan, was keen to make up some lost time and kept everyone in the room for an extra hour beyond t...
Jul 3 2012 12:21PM
Minister Burt pays a flying visit to Arms Treaty negotiations
Well, there’s good news and there’s bad news. The bad news is that a procedural stumbling block related to Palestine’s status at the UN laid waste to the first day of this 19 day long negotiation. The good news is that Foreign Office M...
Jul 2 2012 4:32PM
The vital importance of a strong Arms Trade Treaty
As part of a blog-swap with the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, Paul Arkwright, the UK Ambassador to the Netherlands , blogs on the start of the Arms Trade Treaty negotiations. Today marks the start of important negotiations in New York...
Jul 2 2012 1:00AM
Demanding tighter control on arms sales - what you've been up to
As negotiations begin in New York and world leaders meet to thrash out the first ever international treaty to control the arms trade, we thought it'd be nice to recap on all the amazing work you've been doing across the country. You ha...
Jul 1 2012 7:30PM
Live stream the next Syria conference by the “Great Powers”
On Saturday 30 June, the “Action group on Syria” met in Geneva to try to address the growing crisis in Syria – they did indeed “address the crisis” but what progress did they actually make and how is that reflected on the ground where...
Jul 1 2012 2:03PM
#armstreaty - it's time to get down to business
It's hard to describe how I'm feeling right now. But I'll try. Nervous. Prepared. Raring to go. Hot (it's 34degrees in New York City right now...) The journey we've been on together to get here has been a long one but we are now on the...

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