15 November 2019
SUBMITTED TO: Disarmament and International Security Committee (DISEC)
FROM: Republic of Korea
SUBJECT: Preventing the Illicit Arms Trade
DELEGATE: Anja Peters, Royal Oak High School
The illicit arms trade is an issue the whole world is facing together, with most of the terror focused on areas at war and conflict zones. According to a 2006 UN conference, 25% of the 4 billion dollars spent annually on small arms trades are “illicit”. In Mexico 80% of guns used in crime originate from outside the country, and in Canada, 50% of the guns used for crime were smuggled in from outside sources. There are several issues to address when discussing the topic of illicit arms trade. First, these guns are getting in the hands of people illegally when legal trade is going on, the trade is either intercepted or an inside person interferes and sells these weapons illegally. Secondly, people can steal guns that were registered legally in a country, and then use them for their own agenda’s, possibly smuggle them out of the country and so forth. These are two really big issues when we look at the root of this problem, and the committee will hopefully address these two topics in depth.
South Korea agrees with and supports the UNODC’s firearms and protocol procedures, as well as an Arms Trade Treaty. Only three countries voted against the resolution, 23 abstained, and 154 voted yes, allowing it to successfully become adopted by the UN in spring of 2013. This is a multilateral treaty in order to regulate the international trade in conventional weapons. Hopefully we can look at aspects of the treaty that the countries who abstained or voted against don’t agree with and come to new and updated terms and agreements.
South Korea wants to, in upcoming committee, ensure at the national level states promote that the production, export, and import stockpiling of SALW are followed complying correctly to their laws and regulations. South Korea believes that each state taking control over the weapons is extremely important to preventing an excess amount of weapons. We should dig into deeper detail about the export and import of guns and the trading system, as that seems to be a problem area for things to go wrong. When marking guns, they should be easily identifiable to each country they’re coming from, for the ease of all involved, possibly being identifiable through a computer database or the internet. South Korea looks forward to our DISEC committee.
Sources:
https://www.rand.org/blog/2001/03/light-arms-trading-in-se-asia.html
http://unrcpd.org/conventional-weapons/poa/
https://www.un.org/events/smallarms2006/pdf/factsheet_1.pdf
- Anja Peters
