Arms brokers fuelling human rights abuses

The human rights organisation said its document detailed how increasingly sophisticated freight transport and brokering operations were delivering hundreds of thousands of tons of weaponry around the world.

An ever-greater proportion was going to developing countries where the weapons have fed some of the most brutal conflicts, Amnesty and TransArms said in their report, entitled "Dead on Time: arms transportation, brokering and the threat to human rights".

The report detailed the alleged activities of arms brokers and transporters from the Balkans, Britain, China, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates and the United States.

It showed how a network of middlemen had made it easier for the major arms suppliers to target developing countries, which now absorb over two-thirds of world defence imports, compared to just over half in the 1990s, Amnesty said.

"Arms brokers and transport agents have helped deliver many of the weapons used in the ongoing killing, rape and displacement of civilians in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo," said Brian Wood, Amnesty's research manager for the arms and security trade.

"Yet customs controls are often weak and, even now, only about 35 states have bothered to enact arms brokerage laws, making further human rights catastrophes all but inevitable."