Control Arms Campaign

The Control Arms Coalition is a campaign jointly run by a coalition of over 100 organisations including Amnesty International, IANSA, Oxfam International and Saferworld.

The campaign has been active since 2003 in calling for an international Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). The campaign began due to the lack of regulation in the international trade in arms. Control Arms has argued that the lack of controls on the arms trade is fuelling armed conflict, poverty and human rights abuses worldwide. Even though existing treaties and pieces of international law exist that focus on the international arms trade, none of them, before the Arms Trade Treaty, were legally binding and fully international.

Since 2003 it has used a range of tactics to get its message across, including publicity stunts, mass public actions, petitions including the Million Faces campaign, worldwide public consultations, policy publications and the lobbying of politicians and diplomats across the world.

The process towards creating an international Arms Trade Treaty began in the United Nations in 2006. On April 2, 2013 the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to adopt an international Arms Trade Treaty.

The Arms Trade Treaty began as an idea in an NGO meeting in the 1990s. At the end of the decade, after successfully lobbying to bring about the EU Code of Conduct on Arms Exporters, civil society groups worked with a group of Nobel Peace Prize Laureates to draft proposals for the regulation of the international arms trade. In 2001, they began to circulate a "Draft Framework Convention on International Arms Transfers" and sought the support of governments around the world.

In 2003, the Control Arms campaign began, campaigning for an international ATT in more than one hundred countries. One of the main elements of the early campaign was the 'Million Faces' petition. The petition brought together people from around the world who had suffered from armed conflict and armed violence as well as other supporters. The petition reached its goal in 2006, and the petition was presented to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan by 'Millionth Face' Julius Arile, from Kenya.

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