Cesar Lopez (Colombian musician), with his escopetarra, a guitar made from an AK-47. Cesar played at the UN Headquarters on 29 June.
The UN Small Arms Review Conference (26 June to 7 July, New York, US) is a vitally important global meeting for preventing gun violence.
How are the talks going?
The serious negotiations are only just starting to get underway, and a new draft Outcome Document was produced on 3 July with much contention from States and NGOs alike. So far, there are some serious problems:
A government delegate from the Central African Republic reminded fellow delegates during the meeting this afternoon, ‘In the last hour that we have been discussing process issues, several dozen people in my region have been killed.’
Cliquez ici afin de lire le «non-paper» du 3 juillet en français
Other events at the Review Conference
- On the first day of the conference on 26 June, Julius Arile from Kenya presented the Million Faces Petition to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to demand global controls on the arms trade. Julius is the millionth person to sign the visual petition, collected by the Control Arms campaign in 160 countries. The number of one million is significant, because in the nearly three years that it has taken to collect these photographs, about a million people have been killed by small arms around the world. Click here for more videos and photos.
- An AK47 that has been converted into a guitar was presented to the UN by a Colombian musician on 29 June. Cesar Lopez, from Bogotá, designed the escopetarra (a play on the Spanish words for guitar and rifle) after he saw security guards standing next to the scene of a bombing in the capital, and noticed how they carried their guns in exactly the same way that he himself was carrying his guitar. The escopetarra he presented – and played a few songs on – was made from an AK47 previously used by a paramilitary group in Colombia. The AK-47 is the world’s worst regulated weapon, according to a new Control Arms report. General Kalashnikov, the inventor of the weapon, has joined the call for stronger arms controls.
Click here for more information on the Review Conference
|
