By Jeff Moran | Geneva
Geneva –-(Ammoland.com)- The United Nations’ (UN) 5th meeting of states on the Program of Action (PoA) on Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW) is 16-20 June 2014.
TSM Worldwide LLC would like to encourage all qualified pro-gun trade and civil society groups to attend and appropriately make their views known. The deadline to request credentials for this meeting is 7 April. Documents to help you do this are listed below.
If past meetings are any indication, This PoA meeting will be mostly attended by Non Governmental Organizations with established goals that express little or no margin of appreciation for what American law recognizes as an inherent, customary right of individuals to acquire, bear, and use suitable arms for self-defense.
For example, the group actually running the back office for all NGOs during this meeting is the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA). For those of you who may not already know, page three of IANSA’s founding document actually states it was set up to work toward “controlling availability, use, and storage of small arms in states.” Also found on page three is the clarification of their view that effective domestic control over small arms “requires,” among other things, “reducing the availability of weapons to civilians in all societies.”
According to the published agenda, this year’s meeting will focus on building international support to harden various SALW soft-law instruments. The Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) will implicitly be a subject of the meeting as well, as many PoA boosters see the meeting as a logical place to also exchange ideas about implementation and development of the ATT. (See our prior work on the ATT here)
One specific discussion thread is government stockpile management and physical security measures. Another more controversial discussion thread relates to the International Tracing Instrument, and of building of support for rules and capacities related to marking and tracing of arms and ammunition with new technologies.
One company likely to be present to discuss their technology offerings is Traceability Solutions (TS). TS has been actively marketing to various UN bodies its capabilities to mark single rounds of small arms ammunition for tracing purposes. Kyle Parker, head of sales, reported in an email to customers earlier in March that he attended a special UN consultation on 19 November 2013. Parker also reported that this was connected to a forthcoming UN Report by the UN Secretary-General to UN Member States on new technology related to marking, record-keeping and tracing of SALW.
Please urge your favorite industry or gun rights civil society organizations to make an effort to show up to this meeting. Any organization that gets credentialed to attend is eligible for pro bono preparation assistance from TSM Worldwide LLC.
Here are some supporting documents to get you started:
- 1. Provisional Agenda
- 2. Aide-mémoire for NGOs (credential request instructions and background)
- 3. 2012 PoA Meeting Outcome Document
- 4. 2014 PoA Meeting “Home Page”
- 5. International Tracing Instrument
Published first at TSM Worldwide : https://tsmworldwide.com/meeting-reminder_bms5_2014-2/