“A person dies every minute from armed violence. In the next few days, the world has a chance to reach an agreement on an Arms Trade Treaty that will save lives,” says Alistair Gee, Executive Director of Act for Peace.

"Currently there is nothing in place to prevent the sale of weapons to regimes where they could be used to kill civilians. Without this treaty, countries like Russia would be free to continue to sell arms to Syria without regard to the devastation taking place there.”

There are currently more regulations governing the global trade in bananas than there are for the trade in weapons. The treaty negotiations in New York, lasting until March 28, present an historic opportunity to change this.

As co-author of the draft treaty, Australia has played a significant role in bringing the treaty negotiations to their final stages. However, there are significant loopholes in the current wording that would undermine the effectiveness of the treaty.

“We need a strong, tightly worded treaty — the kind that we and others have campaigned for for more than 10 years — to see the flow of weapons made illegal if there is a risk of human rights abuses. The conflict we are seeing in Syria, and conflicts in South Sudan and Somalia, may not have escalated so severely if such criteria already existed,” says Mr Gee.

Act for Peace supports disarmament and weapons control programs in some of the most conflict-affected countries in the world. It also supports partners helping communities to rebuild after conflict.

“The partners we support deal every day with the appalling consequences of armed conflict,” says Mr Gee. “We urge our government now to stand firm, alongside the overwhelming majority of states, and work towards international arms transfer controls that will reduce suffering and protect communities.”

Act for Peace is part of the Control Arms coalition and the World Council of Churches campaign for an Arms Trade Treaty.

Mr Gee concluded “Churches in all regions of the world share in the suffering caused by armed violence.  We look to our governments now to finally agree on international arms transfer controls that prevent and reduce human suffering.”

Available for interview: Alistair Gee, Executive Director, Act for Peace
To arrange interviews, please contact Emma Halgren, 0458 303 515 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

About Alistair Gee:

For the past eight years, Alistair has been the Executive Director of Act for Peace, which helps communities to be safer in the world’s most conflict affected countries. He has been involved in supporting disarmament, weapons destruction and mine action programs of Act for Peace partners in Somalia, South Sudan, Iraq and Burma.

Over recent years he has also had leadership roles with a number of international initiatives working to reduce the impact of arms and armed violence, including: Founder of the new Centre for Armed Violence Reduction; Chairman of The Border Consortium - which provides humanitarian assistance to over 200,000 Burmese displaced by the civil war; Founding Chairman of the Asia Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect; Chairman of the Australian Council for International Development’s Advocacy and Public Policy Committee; and Co-Convenor of Make Poverty History.