The ABC of the Arms Trade Treaty: Why it's important - How will it work?

The Arms Trade Treaty is a potential ground-breaking humanitarian treaty that wouldregulate the international trade in conventional weapons. The Treaty will be negotiated at aUnited Nations conference in New York between July 2 - 27.There is currently no effective international legislation on the global arms trade. While thereare treaties on nuclear, chemical and biological weapons there is nothing on the weaponsthat kill people every day.Patchy, diverse and often completely absent, national regulations are inadequate with theincreasingly globalized nature of the arms trade. Arms companies, operating from anincreasing number of locations, now source components from across the world. Theirproducts are often assembled in countries with lax controls on where they end up, hence theneed for truly global rules which reflect the nature of the trade