Arms from the wealthy kill the poor

Madam, - It is the great shame of the developed world that even as its leaders preach peace, they funnel the instruments of …

Madam, - It is the great shame of the developed world that even as its leaders preach peace, they funnel the instruments of death to the most insecure areas on the planet in pursuit of profit.

The United Nations Security Council is the global body "responsible for maintaining international peace and security", yet its five permanent members, along with Germany, are responsible for more than 90 per cent of the world's weapons sales, the majority of which are supplied to the developing world.

These weapons fuel conflicts with devastating humanitarian consequences for the poorest of the poor. In Darfur 400,000 have died, while the escalation of conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo could lead to a return to the full-scale war which claimed the lives of 5.5 million people between 1998 and 2003. There are 26 million people worldwide displaced by violence. Without a ready supply of cheap weapons, tragedies of such magnitude would not be possible.

There appears to be no effective regulations in place to restrict this deadly trade. During the Rwandan genocide which claimed nearly a million lives, France continued to sell weapons to a government engaged in mass slaughter in defiance of an international ban on arms sales to the country. China continues to supply weapons to the government of North Sudan, guilty of the ongoing genocide in Darfur.

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Last week was the UN's "Disarmament Week", but the proceedings ended in farce when many of the world's major arms exporters, such as China and the US, opposed or abstained from a vote that sought to put some basic controls on the flood of weapons to the developing world.

The unfortunate fact is that there is too much money to be made from the supply of arms. There are now more weapons being traded globally than at the peak of the Cold War, yielding tens of billions of dollars to arms-exporting countries annually. The misfortune of the poor is grounded in the greed of the rich and the powerful. - Yours, etc,

JOHN O'SHEA, Goal, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin.