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The Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) needs 50 ratifications to become legally binding international law, and it already has 40 ratifications, with the eight ratifications added June 3. Ten were expected to ratify.

A total of 118 states have signed the treaty. Four of the world’s major arms producers–USA, France, Germany and USA–signed in September. Appeals have been made to the 155 states who voted last year to adopt the ATT at the UN General Assembly in New York last June 3, groups such as Amnesty International have made appeals to stop hesitating. Most of the 43 states who have yet to sign are from Asia, Africa and the Middle east.

The ATT prohibits conventional weapons and munitions sales to states when there is knowledge the weapons would be used to commit or fascilitate serious human rights abuses, such as genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. States will be required to conduct objective assessments to avoid risks.

Amnesty International estimates that 500,000 people are killed each year due to armed violence and conflict. In addition, millions of people are displaced, abused and injured.

Amnesty also called on states not to wait for the treaty to come into effect before observing its human rights provisions. Antigua and Barbuda, Belgium, Costa Rica, Germany, Iceland, Mexico, Norway, Serbia, Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, and the UK have decided to implement the treaty’s human rights provisions sooner than the required date.

Currently, international commerce in weapons accounts for the equivalent of billions or trillions USD each year. The ATT is 20 years in the making–it started out as a group of civil activists expressed concern about unregulated global arms trade and its impact on human security. The idea was a set of ethical standards for arms trade.

China and Russia have abstained from signing so far. Both were expected to sign the treaty soon, but on May 20 Voice of Russia reported that Moscow would not sign the ATT because it was “not completely thought through,” and because it “discriminates against the Russian military industrial complex.”

The ATT will come into force 90 days after the 50th ratification. Ratification means adopting the ATT into a nations laws. The ATT will be the  first legally binding instrument ever negotiated in the United Nations to establish common standards for the international transfer of conventional arms.

By Day Blakely Donaldson

DW

Global Issues

Amnesty International

VOR

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In response to the exchange of five high-level Taliban operatives for one US soldier–Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl–the US Senate Intelligence Committee held a closed-door briefing Tuesday, wanting answers as to why they were not included in the process, which from the beginning has raised concern for various reasons.

Among the criticisms are that the exchange puts Americans at risk by releasing potentially dangerous Taliban operatives, and that there may have been better alternatives in seeking the return of Bergdahl.

The exchange took place without the Senate’s knowledge despite a promise that the Obama administration would abide by a law that Congress be notified 30 days before any proposed transfer.

Congressmen are calling for an investigation. A full Senate briefing on the exchange has been set for Wednesday. Among the questions already raised are was the price of the exchange too high? was Bergdahl a deserter? was his health really in danger? and were there less costly options?

“Not even the weakest case has been made” to back up the administration’s assertion that Bergdahl’s health was in grave condition, necessitating immediate action, said Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga), after the closed-door briefing Tuesday.

By James Haleavy

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Bill HR4490, which has already passed the House Foreign Affairs Committee with bipartisan support, and is expected to be taken up by the full House as early as this summer, would create a new “federal news network,” called Freedom News Network, which would subsume other US international news agencies.

Under a section of the bill headed “Creation of the Federal News Network,” the bill is explained to provide for the creation of the Freedom News Network (FNN), consolidating the grantee broadcasters Radio Free Europe/Radio Libety (RFE/RL), Radio Free Asia (RFA) and Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN) into one “surrogate” grantee broadcaster. The brands would remain unchanged, thus maintaining “audience name recognition.”

The board for the FNN would be composed of new individuals appointed by the Chairmen and Ranking Members of the House of Foreign Affairs and Senate Foreign Relations Committees.

The FNN would also expand its programming “into regions where no current individual surrogate broadcaster currently operates,” such as sub-Saharan Africa.

The FNN’s mission is provided by the new bill: “[sharpening] the legislative vision of the proper focus for surrogate programming, directing the new grantee to promote democracy, civil society, free media, political freedom, and uncensored flows of information”

By Day Blakely Donaldson

Related:

Big Changes in US News Communications if Bill HR4490 Passes

HR4490

Congressional Research Service report

Federation of American Scientists

US Foreign Affairs

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Joseph Grima, editor-in-chief of Domus magazine, recently commented on the state of design in Italy–a country with a long design tradition and which has undergone a prolonged crisis, saying that “an era is drawing to an end for Italian design,” and “a new idea will be born.” Grima’s words on the current state and future of Italian furniture design showed a strong vestment in cultural tradition and an understanding of the influence of the system that surrounds designers.

“I think crisis can engender nostalgia, especially when it’s so protracted,” Grima said. Grima spoke of a new idea that will be born, and the hope for such an idea in the contemporary Italian design world. “Something new will emerge,” he said.

As to how this new thing wound enter Italian furniture design, Grima said, “Some hope that new technologies will bring that era in. The digital technologies that we talked a lot about last year, they lend themselves also to being combined with traditional knowledges  regarding materials, the kind of craft–hands-on skills of the artisans that exist in this region and are unrivaled anywhere else.

Grima made his comments in relation to the annual show at the Triennale, where a wide range of Italian designers present.

“I think it’s interesting that at the Triennale the annual design museum exhibition is very much on the theme of the great masters and the past and Italian design almost searching for comfort in its own history, and Italy trying to remind itself that there is something there,” said Grima.

“I think everybody realizes that possibly an era is drawing to an end and a new era is beginning.”

I think some manufacturers are really seriously beginning to think about how they can engage a completely different model of design industry.”

Grima spoke of a distinction between the Italian design tradition and the tradition currently experiencing favor, citing relatively prosperous London. “The great tradition that was born here was not born from the tradition of schools. It’s actually the direct contact between the masters and the craftsmen. It’s almost an apprenticeship model, which is something really, really different from the London model, for example. That’s something that now is in a little bit of a crisis because it’s something that’s not as easy to perpetuate, and the world has moved a little bit more towards being aligned with the schools model.”

Of London, where wealth gained through financial services has been replaced by fast-growing, digital community, Grima said, “I think the reason that that’s sprung up in London is a direct consequence of London being one of the great education centers of the world. It’s got some of the best universities and the best schools.”

Grima did not think the state of Italy was conductive to design innovation. “I think there’s a lot of uncertainty, and the political model of course is not encouraging,” he said

Of the system, Grima said, “It can [move forward with the times]. It’s not a system that is predisposed to naturally move in that direction, and it’s one of the paradoxes of Italy that on the one hand it’s completely–it’s one of the most innovative, creative countries in the world, indisputably. On the other hand, the culture of bureaucracy, the actual framework–the mental framework, the bureaucratic framework, the economic framework of the nation–is, actually, one would be forgiven for actually thinking that it had been designed to suppress any sort of creative, vital energy of creating something new. It’s really–some aspects of it are really beyond belief.

Finally, of the current situation in which Italy is importing designers from around the world, and in which great designers are not living in the country, Grima said,  “I don’t think it necessarily matters, because I don’t think you can expect to survive by perpetuating the past, and I think Milan still has an undisputed role as the design capital of the world, and as long as it is able to look out to the world and kind of capture, and be the arbiter in a way of what is interesting and what is innovative in the design world, that’s something that can be equally as important as being simply the product of a lot of small countries.”

By Joseph Reight

Domus