“There are over 550 million firearms in worldwide circulation. That’s one firearm for every twelve people on the planet. The only question is: How do we arm the other eleven?”

In a recent post Oz made some very interesting points regarding the major problem the world is facing, which is the possible development of Nuclear Weapons by certain countries.

This is getting a great deal of media coverage around the world at the moment. First it was North Korea, then Iran and now Pakistan etc.

Nuclear weapons are a massive threat the world as a hole – everyone knows it. However, no one really ever knows what is going on behind the scenes. Who is doing what, who is coorperating with whom and what will come out of it at the end.

One thing however is going on right now, which is an absolute disgrace and is killing hundreds of thousands of people every year!

Currently small arms are killing more and more people every year and are therefore the major cause of civilian casualties in modern conflicts.

It is estimated that Modern conflicts claim an estimated half a million people every year. 300,000 of these are from conflicts, and 200,000 are from homicides and suicides.
Some more facts: over 80 percent of casualties are civilian, every minute someone is killed by a gun, over 1.100 companies are involved in the production of most small arms and civilians buy more than 80 % of all small arms.

It has been estimated that there are now about 500 million small arms and light weapons in circulation in the world, one for every twelve people. One in twelve!!!! Is the world completely CRAZY?

Gone long ago is the time when we Europeans could subdue other continents because we had firearms and the local peoples had not. In 1999 it was reported that an AK-47 assault rifle could be bought in Uganda for the price of a chicken.

— Robert Neild, Public Corruption; The Dark Side of Social Evolution, (London: Anthem Press, 2002), p. 131

FACT: Small arms and light weapons destabilise regions. This is because they
• Spark, fuel and prolong conflicts;
• Obstruct relief programmes;
• Undermine peace initiatives;
• Exacerbate human rights abuses;
• Hamper development; and
• Foster a “culture of violence.”

The Control Arms Campaign also notes that

… illicit drugs production thrives on territory outside the control of recognised governments, and 95 per cent of the world’s production of hard drugs takes place in contexts of armed conflict. Valuable natural resources are illegally exploited by armed groups and their state sponsors, ruining millions of lives and impeding local development, as has occurred in DRC. International trade suffers and illicit markets thrive, to the detriment of national economies.

— Towards an Arms Trade Treaty; Next steps for the UN Programme of Action, Control Arms, July 2005, p.8

However, as the UN also adds, “unlike nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, there are no international treaties or other legal instruments for dealing with these weapons, which States and also individual legal owners rely on for their defense needs.”
The worst part however of all of this is still to come…
“The five permanent members of the UN Security Council—France, Russia, China, the UK, and the USA—together account for 88 per cent of the world’s conventional arms exports; and these exports contribute regularly to gross abuses of human rights.”

— The Arms Bazaar, Shattered Lives, Chapter 4, p. 54, Control Arms Campaign, October 2003

88 %!!!! And they can sit there and decide who is able to produce weapons of mass destruction. Don’t get me wrong, I’m against any country having Nuclear Waepons, but isn’t there some sick, perverse hypocrisy behind all of this??

“There are over 550 million firearms in worldwide circulation. That’s one firearm for every twelve people on the planet. The only question is: How do we arm the other eleven?”
This statement is at the end of a Film “Lord of war”.

What can we all do to prevent this disaster?

Please visit these links: http://www.amnesty.org.uk/wales/action/arms/ and http://www.iansa.org/media/wmd.htm

Random culture with their all round insightful posting shows us the latest from a London based agency Daft London who seem to have put together some package for Oxfam and the Make Poverty History (brand?).

Play bit unfair here

From a marketing perspective, I think this is genuinely good stuff and something very few are actually doing in the “grab your dollar” charity space. I ask the question though, is it too good? All this lights and whistles surely had to come at a cost. Who funded it? If it was internally commissioned from within OXfam, how deep did the creative bill eat into the stash to reduce poverty?

I guess eliminating poverty is quite a task and needs the leverage of a few billion people, I can’t fault Oxfam for trying something new in the market to get first dibs at your donation dollar. Lets just hope it doesn’t get to a point where we get MPH and Red Nose Day head to head to see who will out creative the other…No thanks, I want to be confident that my money actually gets to Kiaan in Bangledesh.

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