Look Into It - UN Arms Transfer Treaty (ATT) on Small Arms: Gun Grab Gradualism

The UN has voted overwhelmingly to regulate the $70bn global trade in conventional weapons in an attempt to halt the proliferation of violent conflict and human rights abuses around the world.

The UN general assembly voted by 154 votes to just three to adopt the first Arms Trade Treaty. The new regulations will bring the gargantuan global business in small arms and light weapons, as well as tanks, armoured vehicles, military jets, helicopters, battleships and missiles under the same sort of international controls that have long applied to nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

Human rights and development groups hailed the decision as a turning point in the prolonged struggle to counter the damage wrought by an unregulated arms trade. Anna Macdonald, who heads Oxfam's campaigning on arms control, said "for the first time, we have a legally binding international treaty that will bring conventional arms under control.

"This is a treaty for the millions of people whose lives have fallen apart because of armed violence every day, from Guatemala to Kenya, Jamaica, Albania and a whole range of other countries."

Kate Allen, head of Amnesty International UK, called the treaty a milestone that would regulate "the illegal flow of arms to warlords, tyrants and despots around the world, a treaty that could save the lives of millions and help prevent conflicts like those in Mali or Sri Lanka ever happening again."

The adoption of the treaty marks an important achievement for the UN itself, which came close to repeating last year's failure on conventional arms control. In 2012, the collapse in talks was caused largely by the hesitance of the US, the world's largest arms dealer, which in a presidential election year was particularly susceptible to pressure domestically from the gun lobby led by the National Rifle Association.

Re-election behind him, President Obama showed no such ambiguity this time, and the US signed up to the treaty along with other major arms nations such as the UK, France and Germany as well as emerging weapon trading countries such as South Africa and Brazil. The main threat to achieving an agreement on this occasion came from three countries that are all under various forms of UN sanctions – Iran, Syria and North Korea – who blocked adoption of a draft treaty last week and forced the UN to take the issue to the general assembly for a simple majority vote.

Those three nations were the only ones who voted against the treaty on Tuesday, while 23 abstained including Russia.

Individual nations will now be asked to ratify the treaty, which would incorporate its terms into each country's domestic law. Once 50 countries have ratified, the treaty becomes international law.

The weakness of the new provision is that it has no teeth - there is no policing mechanism equivalent to the international criminal court. But supporters say that the public impact of being seen to act in violation of international law will act as a significant stick to beat errant nations into changing their ways.

"This is not a panacea, it is not going to solve all problems overnight but it is an important step. We have seen time and again that international treaties effect the behaviour even of those states who fail to sign up," Macdonald said.

The US is likely to be among those nations who fail to ratify the treaty. That would require approval by the US senate and the NRA's enduring opposition to any attempt to regulate the trade in guns is likely to stymie that.

The NRA's stamp can also be seen in aspects of the treaty itself. The text stresses that each state has the right to regulate and control conventional arms within its own territory - a response to the NRA's inaccurate claim that the treaty would be the first step towards a government grab of individual Americans' guns. Under US pressure, controls over ammunition contained in the draft treaty were also watered down to remove a requirement on states to record importation of ammunition and to prevent it being diverted to other countries.

Once the treaty is effective, UN member nations will have to assess every arms sale under its jurisdiction to ensure that it does not undermine peace and security or facilitate a violation of international humanitarian or human rights law. Safeguards against the use of conventional weapons to foment organised crime or terrorism will also have to be implemented.