Article from Oxfam Canada - Control Arms

Small arms: the real weapons of mass destruction
HELEN MIRREN

For 12 years, I fought lawlessness as Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison in the television series Prime Suspect. The crimes I solved were sometimes horrific, but I have since discovered that they can pale in comparison to the real-life horrors faced by millions of ordinary people when guns are easily available and can fall into the wrong hands. Over the past five years, I have become deeply involved in the Control Arms Campaign, run by Oxfam International, Amnesty International and the International Action Network on Small Arms. I have visited South Africa and northern Uganda, and met children who have been raped at gunpoint, seen their parents shot or been forced to become child soldiers.
In a week's time, the United Nations world conference on the small arms and light weapons trade begins in New York. This meeting is a chance for governments to stop the uncontrolled flow of weapons around the world. They must seize this opportunity. Every year, guns and other small arms kill more people than did the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A survey released by the Control Arms Campaign yesterday shows that nearly one in three people across six countries (the United Kingdom, Canada, South Africa, Brazil, Guatemala and India) has been affected by gun crime in the past five years.
The devastating effect of violence on children was graphically illustrated to me when I visited northern Uganda with Oxfam. There, I went to camps for people who have been forced to flee their homes by a 20-year civil war. More than 25,000 children have been kidnapped in the region and forced to become child soldiers. I met children who had recently escaped from rebel captivity, and many were too traumatized to speak about their experiences. One girl, Mary, who was 15, had been abducted in 2003, forced to march to Sudan with hundreds of other kidnapped children and held for nine months. When I asked her what had happened to her, she just stared at the ground. These children are the victims of a dangerously unregulated global trade in arms.
There are at least 640 million firearms in existence in the world today. As many as 14 billion bullets are manufactured globally every year, two for every man, woman and child on the planet. And every day, as many as 1,000 people are killed by guns and other small arms. The vast majority of these people are innocent men, women and children. The figures defy belief. Yet, there is no global treaty to control governments' arms exports. This means arms sales continue to fuel conflicts, undermine development and contribute to countless human-rights abuses. Eighty-five per cent of killings reported to Amnesty International involve the use of small arms.
The Control Arms Campaign is trying to stop weapons from getting into the wrong hands, and being used to kill or harm innocent people. At the UN conference on the small arms trade, it is calling on governments to agree on principles to govern the transfer of weapons between countries. Opinion polls commissioned by the Control Arms Campaign and released yesterday show a groundswell of popular support for tougher arms controls. The research showed that 87 per cent of all respondents want strict international controls on where weapons can be exported to. Next week's UN meeting is the second world conference on the small arms and light weapons trade. I was at the first, held in 2001. In the intervening years, almost two million people have been killed by guns. The challenge this time is for governments to agree on tough controls that will actually save lives. Good intentions and empty rhetoric mean very little to people like Mary.

Dame Helen Mirren is an ambassador for Oxfam International on conflict and has represented Oxfam at the United Nations in New York