Campaign Against Arms Trade. ONG

Campaign Against Arms Trade
Campaign Against Arms Trade

Founded 1974
Location London, United Kingdom
Focus Opposition to arms trading
Website www.caat.org.uk
Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) is a UK-based NGO and campaigning organisation working towards the abolition of the international arms trade. Founded in 1974 by a broad coalition of peace groups, CAAT is united in opposition to the military industrial complex and the growth of the private military industry. It argues that these organisations reinforce global militarism whilst undermining attempts by civil society and the United Nations to resolve disputes peacefully. CAAT's main focus is to end the influence of arms companies over the UK government, and works together with similar organisations in other countries to the same end. CAAT has grown in stature in recent years as a result of several high profile campaigns, particularly its legal challenge against the Serious Fraud Office's decision to suspend a corruption investigation into BAE Systems in 2007.

Current Issues
BAE Systems and Saudi Arabia Corruption Inquiry
BAE Systems formerly British Aerospace, is the world's third largest weapons trader. In September 1985 BAE was a signatory to the UK's largest ever arms deal, the Al Yamamah contract to provide military planes as well as servicing provisions to the government of Saudi Arabia. This ongoing contact has evolved through several phases to the present day and has thus made the company £43 billion pounds.
Shortly after the contract was signed however, corruption allegations began to surface concerning bribes paid to Saudi officials through a £60 million pound slush fund. On 12 September 2003 the Serious Fraud Office began an investigation into possible corruption. BAE are also the subject of four active SFO investigations for its dealings in Romania, the Czech Republic, South Africa and Tanzania, calling into question the general operating conduct of its agents. However on the 14th December 2006 the Government discontinued the Al Yamamah probe on the grounds that its conclusions may embarrass the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and threaten Britain's national security.
CAAT in conjunction with the Corner House, an anti-corruption NGO, mounted a legal challenge to this decision, to assess if in curtailing the Serious Fraud Office's investigation the Government had acted illegally. Thus on 9 November 2007 the High Court in London granted a request for a judicial review of the decision. Subsequently, on the 10 April the conclusion of this review stated that the Government had indeed acted illegally in stopping the corruption investigation. Lord Justice Moses and Mr Justice Sullivan ruled that the Government had capitulated under intimidation from the government of Saudi Arabia and that "no-one whether within this country or outside, is entitled to interfere with the course of justice." BAE Systems continue to deny any impropriety stating the court had failed "to distinguish between a commission and a bribe."
Subsequently the SFO launched an appeal that was heard before the Appellate committee of the House of Lords on 7 and 8 July 2008. On the 30th July the House of Lords overturned the High Courts' ruling, and decreed that the SFO had acted lawfully in the interest of national security. Senior Peer Lord Bingham of Cornwall stated that "the director's decision was one he was lawfully entitled to make" but the ruling incited a chorus of condemnation from Nick Clegg in the House of Commons. The leader of the Liberal Democrats characterised the verdict as "a legal licence for international blackmail." The ruling also provoked considerable ire among anti-corruption campaigners and a string of NGO's. CAAT spokesman Symon Hill commented "BAE and the government will be quickly disappointed if they think that this ruling will bring an end to public criticism. Throughout this case we have been overwhelmed with support from people in all walks of life. There has been a sharp rise in opposition to BAE's influence in the corridors of power. Fewer people are now taken in by exaggerated claims about British jobs dependent on the arms trade. The government has been judged in the court of public opinion."
In response to the judicial review the Government has drafted a controversial clause of the Constitutional Reform Bill. This will grant the attorney-general the power to quash any further such investigations with immunity from judicial interference. CAAT and the Corner House have both condemned any such legislation as a perversion of justice which will erode the accountability of the executive and threaten the rule of law.
Closure of DESO
The Defence Export Services Organisation was an adjunct of the Ministry of Defence concerned with procuring contracts for private military companies to export arms to foreign governments. The closure of DESO had been a core campaigning aim of CAAT since its inception in 1974, and was their main focus in 2006.

CAAT brought considerable pressure on the government concerning the ethics of some such trading, given that in 2004, UK arms export licenses were granted to 13 of the 20 'major countries of concern' identified by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in its 2005 Human Rights Annual Report. CAAT also alleged that DESO unfairly privileged the interests of the arms companies and helped facilitate bribes to foreign officials. In response to this on 25 July 2007 Gordon Brown announced that DESO would indeed be shut down. Chief Executive of BAE Systems Mike Turner condemned the decision by citing the damage it would do to Britain's export trade. CAAT argued that the closure of DESO is a step forward in transparency for the government. As a result it will be less hamstrung by lobbyists seeking to manipulate its human rights and budgetary policies.
In future export promotion will be the responsibility of UK Trade and Investment, the body that supports all UK exports. On 1 April 2008 the UKTI Defence and Security Organisation, which will be responsible for some of DESO's previous functions, was formed. The current head of UKTI DSO is Richard Paniguian CBE, a former BP executive. CAAT has pledged to monitor UKTI to make sure that military exports, (less than 2% of total UK exports in 2004), do not monopolise a disproportionate amount of its resources.
DSEi: Reed Elsevier Campaign
Defence Systems and Equipment International is one of the largest arms fairs in the world which takes place in London bi-annually, the last occurring in September 2007. From 2003 to May 2008 the DSEi was organised by Reed Elsevier, a publishing and information company, who acquired the previous organisers Spearhead in 2003.

As CAAT is opposed to the existence of arms fairs, it campaigned to encourage Reed Elsevier to extricate itself from the arms industry. There followed a sustained and concerted effort from academics, doctors and writers that use the company's products, who demanded they end their involvement with arms fairs on ethical grounds. This culminated in Reed's decision to sell its arms fairs to Clarion Events in June2007, a sale which was completed in May 2008.
However, CAAT intends to continue campaigning for the overall closure of DSEi and other arms fairs.

Clean Investment Campaign
From universities to local authorities CAAT has consistently sought to highlight areas where public bodies hold shares in companies trading in arms. On 9 July CAAT released research that 75 local authorities in the UK held such investments through their pension funds. It has argued that many council employees reject the notion that they should help to prop up such companies and continues to advocate a more ethical investment strategy.
The long standing Clean Investment campaign has had many successes in the past, one of the most significant occurring in 2001. In response to pressure from the CAAT Christian Network the Church of England redefined its investment criteria and confirmed it will no longer invest in arms companies. Despite excluding arms company holdings, the Church remained, in 2005, the second best performer of more than 1,000 funds over the previous decade.
Furthermore, from 2005 the CAAT Universities Network has met with considerable success in its campaign to advocate ethical investment across the UK. A report entitled 'Study War No More' has highlighted military funding and involvement within 26 British universities. CAAT facilitates research into the details of university investment portfolios which has helped students to mount their own campaigns for clean investment. This has resulted in many universities divesting their shares in the arms industry, whilst many more campuses continue to campaign for similar action to be taken.
Private military companies
Since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the use of 'private military companies' has become standard practice for countries such as the UK and the US. CAAT considers these contractors to be modern-day mercenaries. The Geneva Convention may classify as a mercenary a civilian contractor who is "motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain and, in fact, is promised, by or on behalf of a party to the conflict, material compensation substantially in excess of that promised or paid to combatants of similar ranks and functions in the armed forces of that Party".
Private military companies have become big business, with an estimated turnover world wide of $100 billion, and their use is set to rise.
The UK Government's Green Paper of 2002 on Private Military Companies prompted a debate on the privatisation of a whole range of military services which has been taking place with little comment, high profile cases such as Sandline in Sierra Leone notwithstanding.
CAAT seeks an end to all mercenary activities. If this cannot be achieved at this point, the following controls are its minimum immediate requirements:

a ban on all combat activities
all dealings between Government departments and agencies and the military companies, other than operational details, to be in the public domain
any contract entered into between a military company and a foreign government to stipulate a cash fee and no other benefit. No other business sharing directors or offices with the providers of security should be allowed to have any dealings with the foreign government concerned for a period of, say, five years. The ownership of the military companies should be made transparent.
companies to be made responsible under UK law for any breaches of human rights or the laws of war that may be committed by their employees
CAAT is also committed to publishing research on the issue in order to raise public awareness of the ever increasing role mercenaries play in modern conflict zones.

Reducing Gun Violence

Reducing Gun Violence through Enforcement Strategies
Jens Ludwig
University of Chicago Crime Lab
February 1, 2011
 

Firearms facts
q~250 million in private hands,
       1/3 handgun
q Ownership quite concentrated
q1/3 of households, ¼ of adults
qAnnually: 30,000 gun deaths, 80,000 injuries, 500,000 gun crimes
qGuns:  52% of suicides,
           68% of homicides,
           25% of personal robberies
Cargando...
The challenge for research & policy
•Whatever you think of current regulations politics make big changes unlikely
•State / local regulations undermined by across-state gun transfers
•Federal politics are what they are
•Courts striking down gun bans in DC and Chicago, uncertainty w/ other regulations
•What can we actually do that would help?

Alternative strategies for reducing gun use in violence
If guns are going to become more prevalent, what steps are available to reduce negative consequences?
Two general strategies:
USE:  Change incentives for using a gun  
ACCESS:  Make it harder for youths and criminals to obtain guns and ammo
Cargando...
USE:  Make guns a liability to criminals (swift, certain punishment)
1.Anti-gun policing (key role of gun carrying)
1.Most homicides in US involve guns, most victims discovered outside
2.NYPD does a lot of this, studies of Pittsburgh (Cohen & Ludwig) suggests this helps reduce gun violence
3.But challenging to implement appropriately
2.Swift, certain punishment for carrying guns
1.Police complains about slap on wrist for illegal gun carrying (“real crime” vs. probabilistic harm)
2.Seems like promising margin but little direct evaluation evidence (& implementation?)
 
 

USE:  Make guns a liability to criminals (swift, certain punishment)
1.Rewards for tips about guns
1.Venkatesh: Lots of teens carry guns for status
2.Rewards for tips inverts incentives to show off
3.NYPD pilot project, but never evaluated
2.Direct communication of gun priority to gang members, group sanctions (Boston)
1.Is this as promising as we hope? (And can it work in areas w/ weakly organized gangs / drug mkts?)
3.Less promising:  Long prison terms
1.All people short sighted (criminals especially)

ACCESS: friction and price
Surprise: many high-risk people have difficulty in obtaining guns (the Chicago story, from Cook / Ludwig / Venkatesh / Braga 2007 Economic Journal)
   
1.Large price mark-ups relative to legal mkt.
2.Substantial wait times
3.System of “retail brokers” has developed
4.Large share of purchase attempts unfulfilled
1.Different for guns than drugs b/c durable goods?
 

Tactics for increasing
friction / price in gun market
•Reduce theft through locks & liability
•Investigate “point” sources (both FFL and in the underground market
•ATF trace data important for this activity
•Provide arrestees with incentives to share information @ gun sources (NJSP)
 
•Don’t bother with gun buybacks

What you should know about Arms Trade. THE ECONOMIST

From the blog Prospero from The Economist

ANDREW FEINSTEIN is our inaugural host for "Quick study", a new series on Prospero that offers a crash course in a particular subject, delivered by an expert in the field, with some suggestions for further reading. Mr Feinstein is the author of the new book "The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade", out this week in Britain and America. A former South African MP, he resigned in 2001 in protest against the government's refusal to allow an investigation into a corrupt £5 billion arms deal. His 2007 political memoir, "After the Party: A Personal and Political Journey Inside the ANC" (reviewed by The Economist here), became a bestseller in South Africa. Mr Feinstein lives in London and he co-directs Corruption Watch, an anti-corruption organisation. Here he answers a few questions about the global arms trade.

What is the first thing I need to know about the arms trade?
 
We estimate that armed conflict was responsible for 231m deaths last century. That figure has probably continued proportionally, if not increased. I’m not saying that the arms trade has caused 231m deaths, but I’m saying that the nature of the arms trade intensifies these conflicts. Often the conflicts are far more bloody because of the easy availability of weapons.
 
Global military expenditure is estimated to have totalled $1.6 trillion in 2010. That is $235 for every person on the planet.
 
Suggested reading: The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute Yearbook offers incredibly impressive figures on exactly who buys and sells what.
 
Why?
 
I think because the United States has become so militarised and militaristic. It spends $1 trillion a year on national security—as much as the rest of the world put together. That really came to a head during the George W. Bush administration. The Obama administration has simply continued this. Defence spending under Obama has actually risen.
 
Is that because he doesn’t want to seem weak, or is he secretly more hawkish than he appears?
 
It is very difficult for a president who wants to win another election to appear soft on national security. [Then there] is the power of "the iron triangle"—that is, the Pentagon, the defence contractors and Congress. At a time of some economic difficulty for the United States, the country is still pressing ahead with the development of a jet fighter called the F-35, which will cost the country over $380 billion. It is virtually irrelevant to the current conflicts in which the US is engaged.
 
In 2010 84% of retiring generals in the Pentagon went into employment with the big defence contractors. Lawmakers seldom vote against any of these gargantuan projects. They get a lot of campaign contributions from the large defence contractors, and the contractors ensure that there are jobs on these contracts in every single congressional district, even if it’s just a couple of people sitting around a table surfing the internet. This means that anyone who votes against these projects is accused by the lobby of voting against jobs in their own constituency. A Pentagon whistleblower I interviewed, Chuck Spinney, describes the system as a self-licking ice cream.
 
Suggested reading: William Hartung’s "Profits of War" (2010). This is a history of Lockheed Martin, the world’s biggest defence contractor. Lockheed Martin was at the forefront of global arms-trade corruption in the 1960s and 1970s until the US cleaned up its act with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (1977), which is now under threat from the US Chamber of Business.
 
Presumably there is then the illicit arms trade complicating things further?
 
The boundaries between the formal arms trade and "the shadow world" are extremely fuzzy. Someone like Viktor Bout [now on trial in New York] has actually done logistics work for the US and the UN. There is often a relationship between a country’s departments of defence and the big arms producers, but also between their intelligence agencies and the illicit dealers. There was an Interpol warrant out for Bout’s arrest for nine years, and during that time the US was using him in Iraq and Afghanistan.
 
Why?
 
He had an ability to take weapons and military material anywhere in the world, regardless of conditions on the ground. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Bout bought up massive military transport planes that are incredibly dangerous to fly. He paid pilots to land these gargantuan beasts anywhere in the world. He also had access to surpluses of former Soviet weaponry. Bout armed elements of the Taliban, elements of the Northern Alliance; in Liberia and Sierra Leone he was involved in weapons dealing around the blood-diamond phenomenon. There were al-Qaeda elements involved in those transactions, so he’s also an intelligence asset.
 
And a risk.
 
Yes. The American academic Chalmers Johnson refers to the unintended consequences of the arms trade as "blowback". These weapons land up in places you don’t want or expect them to. In Libya the NATO forces were destroying a lot of weaponry that the NATO countries had sold to Qaddafi, especially since 2004. Now a whole lot of those weapons, including surface-to-air missiles, are turning up on the black market around the world.
 
Suggested reading: Richard Bausch's novel "Peace" (2009). It’s about a small group of soldiers in Italy in 1944 dealing with the moral consequences of the behaviour of their little unit leader. It’s one of the most powerful things I’ve ever read about the arms trade.
 
What about straightforward corruption?
 
The industry is hardwired for corruption. The last figures on the arms trade, up to the end of 2003, show that it is responsible for 40% of all corruption in world trade. The arms trade undermines accountable democracy in both buying and selling countries. UK police investigating the largest-ever arms deal, the al-Yamamah deal between the UK and Saudi Arabia, estimate that around £6 billion of commissions were paid on that deal alone. Mark Thatcher received £12m as an agent on the deal and al-Yamamah became known in certain circles as "Who’s Your Mama". Tony Blair intervened to ensure that that investigation was closed down. Similar things happen in the buying countries. The South African deal with BAE Systems [1999] has had a devastating impact on South Africa’s democracy. Until ten days before he was elected President, Jacob Zuma was facing 783 counts of corruption, fraud and racketeering in relationship to this deal. So, they disbanded the country’s two anti-corruption bodies.
 
Suggested Reading: Nicholson Baker’s "Human Smoke" (2008). It’s 400 pages of quotes and radio reports taken in the lead up to the second world war. It’s a remarkable compilation of the contradictions in how we are governed and how we find ourselves in wars like the second world war.
 
What needs to be done?
 
This is a matter of political will. The imperatives of national security and commercial confidentiality legitimately conceal some aspects of these deals, but they’re also used to hide the malfeasance that takes place. There needs to be greater transparency, particularly around the use of middlemen. Secondly, we need far stronger regulation of an industry that quite literally counts its costs in human lives and is highly under-regulated. There are negotiations in the UN at the moment for an international arms-trade treaty, but it will have to be tough with meaningful enforcement methods. I would also suggest that no weapons manufacturer should be allowed to make any political contributions.
 
More reading about the campaign against the arms trade can be found at Amnesty International, Control Arms and Oxfam. Mr Feinstein's book "The Shadow World" is published by Hamish Hamilton in Britain and FSG in America, and out this week.

Recommend
29

Submit to reddit
inShare

Readers' comments
The Economist welcomes your views. Please stay on topic and be respectful of other readers. Review our comments policy.

Add a comment (up to 5,000 characters):