ARC Petition Form  Dec 04

Arms Reduction Coalition
      Petition

Concerned by the obstacles, threats and difficulties that the large amounts of arms in circulation pose to the maintenance of peace and security and to Non-Governmental Organisations and UN departments in carrying out their work;
Concerned by the disproportionately large amount of the world’s human and economic resources being expended on arms;
Recalling that Article 26 of the United Nations (UN) Charter calls for "the least diversion for armaments of the world’s human and economic resources";
Calls upon the United Nations General assembly, to agree, and for all signatory States of The United Nations to ratify, a legally binding instrument:
a) for reducing the diversion for armaments of their State’s human and economic resources by between one and five percent per year;
b) to establish and maintain systems that enable annual independent verification and auditing of their States compliance;
c) to establish a United Nations mechanism to facilitate implementation; dealing with such matters as non-compliance, concessions, reporting and auditing standards, and the publication of targets and achievements annually;
d) that specifies how amounts diverted from armaments are to be used on State and UN programmes such as poverty reduction, sustainable development, conflict prevention, peaceful resolution of conflict, protecting the vulnerable, maintaining the environment; and effective and efficient implementation of the legally binding Instrument;
e) that gives full opportunities to non-governmental organisations and other non state actors to make their contributions in implementation, compliance and allocation of resources;
f) that requires review and re-commitment by the States to the legally binding Instrument after a period of between 10 and 25 years.

THE ARMS REDUCTION COALITION, PO BOX, 42567, London E1 2WP    
Tel: 07903 967 355 / 07776 231 018, Web: www.arcwebsite.org, E-Mail: info@arcwebsite.org