Network calls on govt to ratify Arms Trade Treaty
The West African Action Network on Small Arms (WAANSA) has called on the government to hasten its efforts to ratify the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT).
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The ATT is a multilateral arms agreement that was adopted by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly on April 2, 2013 after negotiations by UN member states from July 2-July 22, 2012.
According to the President of WAANSA, Mr Baffuor Amoa, the ratification of the treaty would go a long way to improve the regulatory framework on weapons entering the country.
Mr Amoa made the call at a media briefing by the network in Accra.
Arms trade treaty
The treaty, which seeks to regulate the international trade in conventional weapons, was signed by 118 countries and has since been ratified by 41 countries. However, it needs to be ratified by 50 countries for it to come into force.
Ghana is one of the signatories to the treaty, but it is yet to ratify it.
Mr Amoa said the ratification and the coming into force of the treaty would make it very difficult for countries that had the capacity to produce and manufacture weapons to sell the weapons without respecting the agreed criteria in the treaty.
“If the weapons that a state will like to buy from a manufacturing state will aggravate human rights abuses in the country or the weapons will destabilise the peace of the country, the treaty states that such weapons should not be sold,” he said.
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Crucial role
The Chairman of the Ghana National Commission on Small Arms (GNACSA), Lt Col Seth Ohene-Asare, said the ratification of the treaty was of outmost importance to the commission due to the crucial role it would play in the prevention of the smuggling of unauthorised weapons into the country.
According to him, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) convention on small arms and light weapons did not adequately address the issue of illegal weapons, hence the need to adopt the treaty which was multilateral in nature.
Explaining further, he stated that most of the countries which produced weapons were not bound by the convention, owing to the fact that they were outside the sub-region.