Epress.am News from Armenia
The USA, Russia and European countries supplied large quantities of weapons to repressive governments in the Middle East and North Africa before this year’s uprisings despite having evidence of a substantial risk that they could be used to commit serious human rights violations, Amnesty International said today in a new report.
The report titled “Arms Transfers To The Middle East And North Africa: Lessons For An Effective Arms Trade Treaty” examines arms transfers to Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Syria and Yemen since 2005.
“These findings highlight the stark failure of existing arms export controls, with all their loopholes, and underline the need for an effective global Arms Trade Treaty that takes full account of the need to uphold human rights,” said Helen Hughes, Amnesty International’s principal arms trade researcher on the report.
“Governments that now say they stand in solidarity with people across the Middle East and North Africa are the very same as those who until recently supplied the weapons, bullets and military and police equipment that were used to kill, injure and arbitrarily detain thousands of peaceful protesters.”
The main arms suppliers to the five countries included in the report were Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, the UK and the USA.