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Wednesday, 19 April 2017

The Trouble With Brazil’s Expanding Arms Trade

The Trouble With Brazil’s Expanding Arms Trade


Read here Brazil's Merchants of Death
With weapons appearing in Yemen and transferring to repressive regimes, Brazil's arms policies are outdated and out of step with it's peaceful aims.
Brazilian-made weapons – whether firearms, ammunition or cluster munitions – are turning up with alarming frequency in some of the world’s most fragile countries. This is not so surprising; Brazil has ranked among the top global producers of small arms and ammunition for two decades. Between 2005 and 2015, for example, the Latin American giant exported all manner of weaponry to more than 100 countries, according to United Nations customs data.
What makes Brazil’s “arms seller” credentials awkward is the country’s simultaneous claim to be a global peace broker. To be fair, the country has a hard-earned reputation for preventing conflict and building peace close to home and overseas, having participated in nearly fifty UN-led peacekeeping missions. Yet there is misalignment between the government’s stated foreign policy and its aggressive attempts to expand arms sales. To fix this, Brazil needs to increase transparency in arms licensing and transfers, improve enforcement of end-use compliance, and ratify the Arms Trade Treaty, or ATT.

The arms industry is big business in Brazil. If all defense products are considered — aircraft, ammunition, small arms, light weapons, cluster munitions, and more — the sector amounts to roughly $60 billion annually, of which about $350 million involves exports of small arms and ammunition. While many industrial sectors have faced shortfalls and cuts during Brazil’s ongoing economic recession, the defense industry has been ring-fenced as a budget priority. Total military spending by Brazil’s Ministry of Defense jumped to $27.4 billion in 2016, a 36-percent increase on the previous year.

The export and use of these weapons generate disproportionate costs, not least a severe human toll in armed conflicts and violent crime around the globe.

Take the case of Brazilian-made armaments that have repeatedly turned up in Yemen’s two-year-old civil war. Over the past 18 months, the Saudi-led coalition has used cluster munitions manufactured by Avibras Indústria Aeroespacial at least three times. One attack reportedly killed two civilians in December 2016, while rockets launched in October 2015 and February 2017 injured non-combatants, including children. More than 100 countries ban the manufacture, stockpiling, and sale of these types of weapons because of their indiscriminate impact on civilian lives and infrastructure. Brazil is not one of them.


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