Strengthening Arms Act and a United Nations Arms Trade Treaty currently being negotiated and can help India tackle rising gun violence and provide safety and security for its citizens
New Delhi, 22 March 2011: Each year worldwide, 500,000 people are killed directly with small arms and many more are injured, abused, forcibly displaced and bereaved as a result of armed violence. And 5000 Indians are killed every year due to gun violence.
The movement of arms across the world is a huge threat to human security. 1,135 companies in 98 countries manufacture arms, ammunitions and components worldwide. Yet the global trade that fuels the epidemic of armed violence is not subject to international regulation. There is more regulation in music and film industry than in arms. If the death, injury and disability resulting from small arms were categorised as a disease, we would view it as an epidemic.
Several years earlier on 6 December 2006, for the first time, work to find a solution on unregulated arms proliferation and trade started with the international Arms Trade Treaty process that began as 153 countries voted in favour of the historic resolution on Arms Trade Treaty in the UN General Assembly.
Work is going on now to make the Arms Trade Treaty happen by 2012. Indian civil society have been calling on India to take a more proactive lead in this. With 12 Indians killed every day due to unregulated arms, Indian civil society organisations have been calling upon the Government of India to support the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty Process to stop human cost of unregulated arms.
Hundreds of Indian civil society organizations and over 50,000 Indians have signed on a petition submitted to Indian Prime Minister for India to take a lead on an ATT. India as an emerging world power who is vying for a seat at the United Nations Security Council needs to now lead United Nations member states to make an robust international Arms Trade Treaty happen by 2012.
With this background, Control Arms Foundation of India (CAFI) & Manipur Women Gun Survivors Network invites you to an exhibition of photographs documenting the human cost of arms proliferation. The exhibition is titled, “A Farewell to Arms Part II” and will be inaugurated by Shri Mani Shankar Iyer, Hon’ble Member of Parliament at 4.30 pm at the Convention Centre Foyer, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi.
The exhibition features entries from photographers and painters from across India including the first time display of images taken in Manipur by Shri Raghu Rai. The exhibition showcases the works of 16 photographers and painters from Jammu and Kashmir, the Naxal region and the Northeast India.
For more information, queries or interviews and detail programme, please contact us or log on to http://www.cafi-online.org/Photo-Exhibition-Invitation-March.html
Office of Control Arms Foundation of India
B 5/146, First Floor, Safdarjung Enclave, New Delhi – 110029
Email : Binalakshmi@gmail.com or cafi.communique@gmail.com
Mobile : +91-9868233373 Phone: +91-11-46018541 Fax: +91-11-26166234
Website : www.cafi-online.org