Members of the global Control Arms coalition are actively preparing for the upcoming Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) negotiations scheduled to begin at the United Nations on 18 March. This conference is the follow-up to the negotiating conference that took place in July 2012 at which states came close to adopting a treaty.

Our aim over the following weeks will be to ensure that governments agree to a stronger, improved version of the draft treaty text in March. To help make that happen, many members have been participating at various regional meetings for government representatives by providing expertise on legal and thematic issues. Others are organizing nationally focused lobby or campaign actions. On the International Day against the Use of Child Soldiers some members spoke out about the relationship between the flow of weapons and recruitment of child soldiers. There is also a strong parliamentary and faith-based advocacy effort underway and several US-based groups took advantage of Valentine’s Day to ask their government to show some love for the ATT.

In New York, members and staff met with the President-designate of the future conference, Ambassador Woolcott, during an NGO consultative session. This came on the heels of an open Protection of Civilians Debate in the Security Council, where 14 countries and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon made references to the Arms Trade Treaty.

Control Arms will release a toolkit to support its members as they plan for the Global Week of Action that will take place from 11 – 17 March. The theme of the week will be the “missing pieces” that are still needed to make the draft ATT strong and complete, and there will be multiple ways for supporters to get involved with online and offline actions.

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