Alpers leads anti-gun team to New York conference

Phil Alpers

Aucklander Phil Alpers will lead a New Zealand delegation in New York this week to "strongly support" an arms trade treaty being discussed at a United Nations conference.

When the conference opens today Mr Alpers - a foundation member of a 700-strong network called the International Action Network for Small Arms - will help present a petition to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Called the Million Faces petition, it consists of 1 million photos of people around the world calling for a halt to the proliferation of firearms. There are 12,000 New Zealand faces on the petition, which was compiled with the help of Amnesty International and Oxfam.

Mr Alpers said there was no effective, legally binding international control on the small arms trade - this against a backdrop of enough ammunition to kill every person around the world twice.

He said 1000 people were killed each day by guns, fired from weapons that were part of the 640 million small arms in stock across all countries.

Although Mr Alpers has the blessing of Disarmament Minister Phil Goff to lobby for an international arms treaty at the conference - and to push for more stringent measures to control the illicit arms trade - the New Zealand Government has not signed or ratified an existing UN Firearms Protocol.

Other countries not to have signed include the US, Afghanistan, Colombia, Egypt, France, Iraq and Zimbabwe. In all, 112 have not signed.

Australia is one of the 30 signatories, with Brazil, Canada, Germany and Britain. Countries to have ratified include Belgium, Cambodia, Croatia, Mexico and South Africa - there are 49 in total.

The Firearms Protocol requires committed countries to regulate the manufacture, export, import and transit of firearms. It forces the identification of guns through markings or codes, requiring records to be kept for 10 years.

It also encourages regulation of suppliers of firearms, but it does not provide for regulation of state-to-state gun transfers.

Unlike the the UN's Programme of Action on Small Arms, drafted at the last conference five years ago, the UN Firearms Protocol is legally binding but to date its effectiveness is unclear.

The conference this week is being strongly opposed by American gun lobby group the National Rifle Association.

On its website it lists Mr Alpers as one of the "conspirators" in its "Who's Who of the power brokers behind the UN Global Gun Ban Treaty".

The former television presenter, now Sydney University adjunct associate professor in Public Health, said several reports would be released over the course of the week in New York.

They included a summary of the worldwide impact of the AK47, a case study of women affected by gun violence, and a review of progress by UN member states since the last conference in 2001.