YouSaid · the spoken record

Spleeters

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12
first
2020-02-05
most recent
2020-02-05
sittings or episodes
1
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un-security-council

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  1. “The Secretary-General, in his concluding observations, states that it is a matter of urgency for the United Nations, the Security Council and the broader international community to focus on the root causes of the diversion of small arms and light weapons. It is my hope therefore that my briefing has demonstrated the importance of an evidence-based approach and the unique field expertise built by CAR in that respect. That approach is an effective way to tackle the illicit proliferation of weapons contributing to the massive loss of civilian life and international instability.”

    2020-02-05 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8713 (2020) · source

  2. “CAR’s work in East Africa and the tracing of weapons and ammunition documented there, for example, has resulted in one European country publicly stating that it refused to issue a licence to another country in the region identified by CAR as having previously diverted material. To support embargo and sanctions enforcement, CAR has provided law enforcement agencies in several countries with detailed information about weapons traders in their jurisdictions who have violated several EU arms embargoes. CAR also works in partnership with countries on the front line of embargo enforcement, for example by directly supporting the Federal Government of Somalia to identify supply routes of weapons being trafficked into Somalia, in violation of the United Nations embargo, and reaching Al-Shabaab.”

    2020-02-05 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8713 (2020) · source

  3. “Through the iTrace project, our field investigators have documented more than 6,000 individual weapons and 590,000 units of ammunition. Recognizing the cross-border nature of illicit arms trafficking, CAR has worked in more than 30 conflict-affected States from West Africa to the Middle East, thereby building an extensive and holistic database that can support effective sanctions and embargo monitoring or inform required adjustments to sanctions regimes. Using CAR’s iTrace project findings, the European Union has made evidence-based policy decisions, including risk assessment prior to the export of weapons.”

    2020-02-05 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8713 (2020) · source

  4. “That demonstrates the important complementary role that non-governmental organizations can play in the process. The Secretary-General’s report also underlines that exports of conventional arms, including small arms, light weapons and associated ammunition, must be contingent upon a robust risk assessment that incorporates the strictest considerations of international law. Again, such a robust risk assessment must be backed by concrete evidence provided by investigations into weapon diversion. With that objective in mind, CAR developed the iTrace project in 2013, with the continuous funding and support of the European Union (EU). That project is the foundation of CAR’s work and methodology and the repository of all its data.”

    2020-02-05 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8713 (2020) · source

  5. “However, national law enforcement is often one of the first victims of armed conflicts, which results in the obstruction of traditional law enforcement investigations and weapon-tracing mechanisms. Through its field documentation and tracing operations, CAR offers a service to its national partners that would otherwise not be available to them. The Secretary-General indicates in his report that Member States’ success rate in tracing weapons seized between 2016 and 2017 was typically less than 13 per cent. Between 2014 and 2019, CAR’s Tracing Unit issued more than 700 trace requests for weapons. If successful, tracing can be defined as confirming a waypoint in a weapon’s chain of custody. CAR’s success rate is currently about 40 per cent.”

    2020-02-05 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8713 (2020) · source

  6. “CAR provides information in support of several United Nations sanctions monitoring groups and panels of experts — such as those concerned with the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant and Al Qaida, Libya, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen. CAR also provides direct support to United Nations operations in the areas of diversion monitoring and the technical aspects of weapon and ammunition management. With resolutions 2370 (2017) and 2482 (2019), the Security Council insists that efforts must be undertaken by all Member States to address the sources of supply of weapons to terrorists, including through better information-sharing, coordination and investigations into the illicit origin of weapons.”

    2020-02-05 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8713 (2020) · source

  7. “Although its investigations begin with the examination of a physical weapon, CAR pursues multiple strands of inquiry, following the paper trail through arms transfer records to reveal bank accounts, front companies, illicit brokers, conflict financing and trafficking support networks. In that work, CAR supports several crucial United Nations mechanisms, such as the Arms Trade Treaty, the Firearms Protocol, the Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects and the 2020 Group of Governmental Experts on problems arising from the accumulation of conventional ammunition stockpiles in surplus.”

    2020-02-05 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8713 (2020) · source

  8. “First, Governments fail to secure their weapons against theft and looting. Secondly, national defence and security forces are defeated, resulting in wholesale weapon losses. Thirdly, export control documents are falsified. Fourthly, States do not exercise proper due diligence when they grant export licenses. Fifthly, imported weapons are subject to unauthorized retransfers. Finally and sixthly, State-led initiatives deliberately supply weapons to rebel, insurgent and terrorist forces. Weapon diversion has real consequences. In 2016, our field investigation teams working in Iraq documented and traced a weapon that had been diverted to the Islamic State group less than two months after its manufacture in Europe.”

    2020-02-05 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8713 (2020) · source

  9. “Deploying alongside national defence and security forces, CAR field investigation teams recover unique, traceable information from weapons, ammunition and related materiel, such as serial, lot and batch numbers, which identify an item individually in production, sales or transfer records. With the cooperation of weapon exporters and their Governments, CAR then traces each item’s transfer history through sales and supply records from the place of manufacture to the point of diversion. By aggregating data on thousands of traced items recovered on the battlefield, CAR provides a dynamic global picture of weapon-supply chains and indicates where weaknesses in those chains permit diversion to unauthorized users. Those weaknesses usually include one or several of the following six elements.”

    2020-02-05 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8713 (2020) · source

  10. “That is a situation that is analogous to attempting to control the spread of an infectious disease without understanding its origins and transmission vectors. On the battlefield is precisely where my organization, Conflict Armament Research (CAR), gathers the evidence that matters. CAR’s approach recognizes that the most effective way to determine the origins of diverted weapons, ammunition and related materiel is to observe and document them at first hand on the battlefield or as close as possible to the point of capture, seizure or recovery. CAR places the physical weapon at the nucleus of its investigations.”

    2020-02-05 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8713 (2020) · source

  11. “Since the early 1990s, the international community has sought to control the conventional arms trade so as to minimize weapons diversion — the loss, theft, or intentional retransfer of legally acquired arms to unauthorized users, such as insurgent, terrorist and criminal groups, whose activities sustain armed conflicts and violence across the globe. The lack of detailed reporting has consistently hampered those efforts, with most reports failing to record unique weapon-identifying information, thereby providing little indication of weapon provenance and, consequently, offering few avenues for further and effective investigation. Ungrounded reporting has resulted in arms- control policymaking that fails to understand the dynamics it seeks to mitigate.”

    2020-02-05 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8713 (2020) · source

  12. “Mr. Spleeters: I thank the Belgian representation to the United Nations for giving me the opportunity to address the Security Council today. I congratulate Belgium for the work already accomplished during its mandate. In his very important and timely report to the Security Council (S/2019/1011), the Secretary-General highlights the importance of using evidence-based approaches to control the illicit proliferation and circulation of, and trafficking in, small arms and light weapons. The Secretary-General’s report underlines a truth that is widely recognized in the research community, namely, that a comprehensive understanding of the problem is a critical first step towards taking effective action and achieving measurable outcomes.”

    2020-02-05 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.8713 (2020) · source