As the United Nations meets in October to consider moving toward negotiations on an Arms Trade Treaty, Amnesty International urges world leaders to prevent arms transfers where there is a substantial risk that they will likely to be used for serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law.

“While governments have made important progress to curb irresponsible and illegal arms transfers in the last few years, today’s global weapons market is still much like the wild, wild west — where weapons easily tumble to groups listed as terrorists by U.S. authorities and governments with abusive human rights records,” said Larry Cox, Amnesty International USA executive director. “Any and all treaties must be enforced or the words are worth less than the paper they are printed on.”

China and Russia remain the largest suppliers of conventional arms to Sudan; the weapons are used for serious, ongoing human rights violations by the Sudanese armed forces in Darfur. Russia supplied military helicopters and bomber aircraft, while China sold Sudan most of its arms and ammunition.

The report highlights new eyewitness and photographic evidence of foreign weapons found among armed actors in Darfur and Chad (near Darfur) and of cases in which the Sudanese government is supplying its militias with arms. The Sudanese government was able to import military and civilian arms and ammunition worth $17.2 million in 2006 through commercial entities, mostly from China, but also Iran and Egypt, according to latest available customs data.

Later this week, U.S. Senators Ben Nelson (D-FL) and James Inhofe (R-OK) are planning to introduce a resolution condemning the ongoing arms transfers to Sudan and calling for the expansion of the U.N. arms embargo to all of Sudan.  It currently has 13 co-sponsors representing both parties.

“Governments such as China, Russia, and others can no longer deny their weapons are being used in Darfur, Sudan, for gross human rights violations,” said Colby Goodman, Amnesty International USA control arms expert. “All governments and entities involved in supplying arms to Sudan must immediately halt this practice to help mitigate the devastation of this conflict.”

The report details that in Iraq, the U.S. Department of Defense has funded most of the supply of more than one million rifles, pistols and infantry weapons for 531,000 Iraqi security force personnel in a poorly-managed and unaccountable process since 2003.  These supplies have compounded gross human rights abuses and have sometimes involved dubious players in international supply chains and a basic lack of accountability by the Iraqi, U.S. and the U.K. governments, leading to diversions of supplies to armed groups and illicit markets.

In 2005, among the weapons seized in Iraq from operatives connected with Al Qaeda were thousands of Italian-made Beretta 92S pistols. Amnesty International reveals that since then, Italian authorities discovered that the Beretta company in Italy had illicitly refurbished and then sold the pistols using irregular and deceptive documentation to a U.K. arms dealer for export to the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq. The U.S. Department of Defense contracted Taos Industries (Alabama), which then used a U.K.-based company, Super Vision International Ltd, to arrange the pistol deal with Beretta.

The British government provided assurances that there are specific procedures in Iraq to avoid the possibility of U.K. weapons destined for Iraqi police in Basra ending up in the wrong hands. However, Amnesty International interviewed eye witnesses responsible on the ground for distribution of this equipment who suggested there were serious deficiencies with the management systems in place. They also alleged that some of the military equipment was ending up on the illicit arms markets or in the hands of Shia militias who were carrying out sectarian violence.

Amnesty International also received reports that U.K. arms dealers involved in the delivery of AK-47 type assault rifles to the Iraqi security services have procured significant quantities of these weapons from China which has been subject to an E.U. arms embargo since 1989 largely due to concerns over China’s poor human rights record.

The report also examines case studies in nations including Colombia, Cote d’Ivoire, Guatemala, Guinea, Myanmar, Somalia, Chad and Uganda.