10 Reasons Why You Should Care About the Illegal Arms Trade

Between 50,000 and 200,000 people were killed and more than 2 million displaced (out of a population of 6 million) during the regime of Charles Taylor in Liberia. His forces were armed against U.N. sanctions in part by notorious arms dealer Vicktor Bout.

2. Illegal arms provide abusive armed groups with the means to carry out or intensify gross human rights violations.

The Revolutionary United front (RUF) in Sierra Leone was notorious for making villagers slaves in the diamond mines that were assumed by force. These slaves were often killed, maimed or tortured at gunpoint.

3. Small Arms make child soldiering possible.

The Revolutionary United front (RUF) in Sierra Leone armed up to 23,000 child soldiers with illegally acquired arms. These children were mostly used to raid villages and guard diamond mines. They were drugged, raped and forced to commit such atrocities as killing their own parents.

4. The illegal arms trade makes the armed seizure of natural resources possible.

Small arms can be traded directly for natural resources such as oil, diamonds, and timber or for the profits generated by the sale of those natural resources.

5. The same pipelines used to smuggle arms are used to smuggle human beings, drugs and natural resources.

Human trafficking and drug trafficking are responsible for some of the most heinous crimes against humanity in the world today.

6. Terrorist organizations that acquire arms illegally are able to seize natural resources and provide a sustained income for themselves and fund their activities.

According to Amnesty International "The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia take in an estimated $500 million a year from the drug trade by taxing drug growers and traffickers, or by swapping guns directly for weapons."

7. The arms trade makes crimes against women and children even more possible.

Between 1998 and 2000, hundreds of thousands of women and children were killed in the Congo by small arms.

8. Illegal arms dealers earn hundreds of millions of dollars every year and continue to make more every time the U.N. enacts arms embargos.

According to a Belgian intelligence document reported by ICIJ in January 2002, the notorious arms dealer Vicktor Bout earned $50 million selling weapons to the Taliban in the late 1990s.

9. Armed violence, sustained by the illegal arms trade, can prevent aid from reaching those who desperately need it, including those in refugee camps.

According to the United Nations Development Program, most of the countries involved in armed conflict in 2003 were ranked at the bottom half of its human development index which measures a country's life expectancy, literacy and education.

10. Genocide, the deliberate and systematic extermination of an ethnic or national group, is made possible by illegal arms.

So, now that you have all these reasons, do you care about the illegal arms trade?