PLOUGHSHARE TIME:

Our chance for an arms treaty (Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, May 2, 2007, Boston Globe)

We in Liberia have been working hard, since our 14 years of civil war ended in 2003, to clear the country of the weapons that killed an estimated 250,000 people -- about 8 percent of the population. We knew that we could not rebuild society unless we ended the violence. By 2004, we disarmed and demobilized more than 100,000 combatants, and recovered and destroyed about 28,000 weapons and 8 million rounds of ammunition.

But all our efforts will come to naught if the international trade in weapons is not controlled, and weapons are easily accessible and proliferated across our borders by individuals or groups in search of profits.

This truth remains on my mind as I survey the achievements of the 14 months since I assumed office as president of Liberia. We have started to repair roads and bridges. Tens of thousands of displaced people have been resettled with tools and seeds. Dozens of health clinics have been rehabilitated. Through a combination of efficiency and anticorruption measures, we expect to increase government revenues by 50 percent this year. We are working hard on a plan for legal and judicial reform. Our Truth and Reconciliation Commission, formed to investigate and heal the wounds of war, is now functioning, even if with expected teething problems.

During the wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone, the United Nations forbade the export of weapons to our countries. Clearly, the sanctions did not work. Arms brokers and traders found ways around the rules and millions of weapons came here from many parts of the world. Except for what appears to be token cases, those arms dealers and governments that facilitated their activities have yet to be punished.

It got uneven reviews, but Andrew Niccol's Lord of War is a darkly comic polemic against the world arms trade.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 2, 2007 7:02 AM