DUSHANBE, March 13, 2013, Asia-Plus -- All United Nations Member States will gather in New York from March 18-28, 2013 for final negotiations on a historic treaty to regulate the international trade in conventional arms, press release issued by Amnesty International said.

Amnesty International will have a delegation at the UN throughout the conference and will have spokespeople available for comment in multiple languages, both at the UN and in many capitals around the world.  The organization’s Secretary General will attend several days of the conference.  As a global human rights movement, Amnesty International has been campaigning for two decades for a global treaty to control the transfer of conventional arms with strong rules for human rights protection, and has been pressing all states to agree robust mechanisms with a wide scope to establish common standards that will close the many loopholes in national control systems.

Such a treaty would save countless lives by ensuring that an international arms transfer is blocked when there is a substantial risk the arms would be used to facilitate or commit serious violations of human rights or war crimes.