Context: Recently, China has decided to join the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty (UN-ATT) to regulate its arms sales.
China’s agenda at ATT

• Beijing saying it is committed to efforts to “enhance peace and stability” in the world.
• It comes after the US announced plans last year to pull the United States out of the agreement which entered into force in 2014.
• The US Senate never ratified the 2013 Arms Trade Treaty after former president Barack Obama endorsed it, and Trump has said he would revoke his predecessor’s signature.

Why has India abstained?

• From the beginning of the ATT process, India has maintained that such a treaty should make a real impact on illicit trafficking in conventional arms and their illicit use especially by terrorists and other unauthorized and unlawful non-state actors.
• India has also stressed consistently that the ATT should ensure a balance of obligations between exporting and importing states.
• However, the ATT is weak on terrorism and non-state actors (undoubtedly Pakistan) and these concerns find no mention in the specific prohibitions of the Treaty.
• Further, India cannot accept that the Treaty is used as an instrument in the hands of exporting states to take unilateral force majeure measures against importing states parties without consequences.
• Also, one of India’s concerns is that the treaty does not include non-state actors in its purview, and therefore does not address the pressing concern of illicit trafficking and use of conventional arms by non-state actors. This is a major lacuna which may serve to make the treaty ineffective.

About UN Arms Trade Treaty

• It is a multilateral treaty aimed at regulating the global arms trade.
• It was envisioned as a tool to prevent conflict and human rights violations fuelled by poorly regulated trade in arms, which could not conceivably be controlled via national legislation alone.
• It is designed to control the flow of weapons into conflict zones.
• The treaty calls for the international sale of weapons to be linked to the human rights records of buyers.
• It requires countries to establish regulations for selling conventional weapons.
• It seeks to prevent conventional military weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists or organized criminal groups, and to stop deals that would violate UN arms embargoes.
• Conventional weapons covered by the UN Arms Trade Treaty include tanks and other armoured combat vehicles, artillery, attack helicopters, naval warships, missiles and missile launchers, and small arms.
• It establishes common international standards for the regulation of the international trade in ammunition, weapons parts, and arms components.
• It does not regulate the domestic sale or use of weapons in any country.
• It recognizes the legitimacy of the arms trade to enable states to provide for their own security.

Additional Facts

• India has not signed the treaty citing that it has strong and effective national export controls on military hardware to ensure they don’t fall into the wrong hands.
• As per latest reports of SIPRI (January 2020), China is the second largest arms producer in the world, behind the US.
• US had signed the treaty but not ratified it yet. Trump has called to exit from the same.

Road Ahead

• Civilian populations often in conditions of poverty, deprivation and extreme inequality suffer the most because they are on the receiving end of the misuse of arms by state armed and security forces, non-state armed groups and organized criminal groups.
• Inadequate controls on arms transfers lead to the widespread availability and misuse of weapons disrupting the humanitarian and development operations of the UN.
• In many areas of work, the UN faces serious setbacks that ultimately can be traced to the consequences of the poorly regulated arms trade so the adoption of the ATT is very important for the UN system as a whole.