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AMUN 2022 - Delegation of Afghanistan - GA1 - Position Paper 1

This is A position paper for an MUN conference to do with The addressing of supplying weaponry to Non-State Actors.

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Izwirashe Mabureza
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159 views2 pages

AMUN 2022 - Delegation of Afghanistan - GA1 - Position Paper 1

This is A position paper for an MUN conference to do with The addressing of supplying weaponry to Non-State Actors.

Uploaded by

Izwirashe Mabureza
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Committee; 1st General Assembly

Country; Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan


Topic; Addressing the illicit supply of weapons to Non-State Actors and Resistance Groups
Delegate Name; Izwirashe Mabureza (St. John’s College ZW)
Nearly daily, governments world-wide are constantly finding ways to limit the powers and
actions of Non-state Actors (NSAs). These are groups that possess a significant political
influence whilst possessing no affiliations with any particular nations or sovereign states. Some
of these groups provide no threats to a government and its sovereignty but others, such as armed
guerrilla warfare resistance groups, terrorist organizations and drug cartels are known to use
violence to meet their objectives. These violent NSAs pose many threats can lead to violence,
war and in worst-case scenarios the collapsing of states and so, play a key role to a state’s
National and International security.
One of the main reasons NSAs are able to rise to power is the presence of a weak or failed state
with easily corruptible systems and the presence of ungoverned regions of states. For example,
the US Fund for Peace think tank’s Fragile State Index includes countries such as Afghanistan,
Nigeria, Somalia, Libya, Syria and Yemen (all within the top 20) that are hubs for international
crime and are places where NSAs are able to acquire weaponry therefore increasing their threat.
In combination with fragile states, poorly designed and incompetently administered polices for
the supplying of weaponry to some State Actors also leads to NSAs acquiring deadly weaponry.
With the USA supplying at least 1.45 million small arms to government security services and
sympathetic militias in Afghanistan and Iraq, with 978,000 assault rifles, 266,000 pistols and
almost 112,000 machine guns and a large proportion of these were lost and are now in
possession of opposing forces such as the Taliban. These same weapons then enter the black
market and are sold to other NSAs world-wide.

With the above information it is no wonder that many governments attempt to limit the resources
these NSAs can acquire, especially weaponry with past UN resolutions such as the UN
Programme of Action on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms (the PoA), which calls on Member
States to prevent illicit arms transfers, such as arms supplies for crime, terrorism or guerrillas.
This resolution is seen as deeply flawed as the PoA allows each member state to have their own
definition of illicit and also apply their national laws. Because of that an estimated 250,000
firearms are moved from the USA to Mexico way annually, these transfers mostly arm NSAs
such as Drug Cartels. The document also does not specifically ban transfers to NSAs and
crucially does not even attempt to define them.

Among the myriad of ways, the UN historically has attempted to prevent NSAs acquiring
weaponry through arms embargoes which Afghanistan believes has massive untapped potential.
With these sanctions informing members states to immediately stop and prevent the supplying of
arms to a certain nation. But arms embargoes are known to be extremely in effective with the
arms embargo previously enforced on the Taliban in the delegates home country Afghanistan
being deemed ambiguous as well as an arms embargo on Libya which a UN panel of Experts
have labelled as “totally ineffective.”

In conclusion, the delegate believes that this is a multi-faceted issue as although we must ban the
transfer of weaponry to NSAs, we should also not completely restrict a country’s trading as it is
vital to its economy. Afghanistan is of the position that although this is a severe issue, as shown
by the fact it mainly enters the black market due to poor administration of these weapons and
corrupt states worldwide. Afghanistan believes in a free-trade based society and more harm than
good will be done if arms embargoes are enforced.

Bibliography
https://fragilestatesindex.org/
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/23/magazine/how-many-guns-did-the-us-lose-track-of-in-
iraq-and-afghanistan-hundreds-of-thousands.html
Libya arms embargo- https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/03/1087562

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