MPs recommend stronger anti-corruption focus on arms export controls
Tuesday, 12 April 2011
by Tobias Bock, of Transparency International's Defence and Security Team
The Parliamentary Committees on Arms Export Controls (CAEC) published their annual report for 2011 on Tuesday, 5 April. They recommend that the UK Government introduce a much stronger focus on addressing corruption risks when issuing arms export licences, in line with the written evidence submitted by Transparency International.
Transparency International welcomes the Committees on Arms Export Controls’ anti-corruption conclusions and recommendations. Together with other civil society organisations including Oxfam, Amnesty International and Saferworld we are calling for a thorough and transparent review of all arms export licences to the Middle East and North Africa, as recommended by the CAEC.
The CAEC consist of four House of Commons select committees – Business, Innovation and Skills, Defence, Foreign Affairs, and International Development. Their report concluded ‘that the Government has failed to demonstrate satisfactorily whether, and if so how, it assesses the risk that individual arms exports may be linked to bribery and corruption during the licence approval process’. The Committees ‘recommend that the Government sets out fully in its response to this Report whether such an assessment is made for all arms export licence applications, and if so how’.
The 2008 EU Common Position on arms exports, which is legally binding for all EU Member States including the UK, does not include a stand-alone criterion on corruption. It contains a criterion on sustainable development, but the CAEC rightly ‘recommend that, given that Criterion 8 applies only to developing countries and that bribery and corruption are not confined to such countries, the Government gives full consideration to proposing the insertion of an additional Criterion into the EU Common Position on arms exports obliging Member States to assess the risk of bribery and corruption before approving an arms export licence to any country’.
Regarding the UN Arms Trade Treaty, the CAEC ‘recommend that the Government, in its response to this report, sets out its policy on including anti-corruption provisions in the Arms Trade Treaty with details of the provisions it would wish to see incorporated’.
More information on the CAEC and the 2011 annual report is available here.