Gender-Based Violence to be Focus of Arms Trade Conference

Efforts to regulate the international export of weapons to lessen gender-based violence will be a focus next week of the U.N. Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty. More than 500 delegates from over 100 countries are expected to attend the meeting in Geneva. The arms trade treaty, which regulates trade in conventional arms and seeks to eradicate the illicit trade in those weapons, took effect on December 24, 2014.  It has been ratified by 104 countries.  Although the treaty takes gender into account as a risk factor, officials note there has not been a single case of denial of an arms export license purely based on gender.U.S. President Donald Trump holds up an executive order with his signature as he announces that the United States will drop out of the Arms Trade Treaty signed during the Obama administration during a speech in Indianapolis, Indiana, April 26, 2019.
In April, U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from the arms trade treaty that was signed by the Obama administration in 2013. The U.S. sent the U.N. secretary-general notification that Washington would not seek to ratify the treaty and does not consider the U.S. bound by the treaty provisions any longer.
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