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A. Given the atrocities perpetrated with impunity by state forces, it is a moral imperative that the negotiations scheduled to resume at the United Nations this month on a comprehensive treaty to regulate the sale of conventional arms should succeed. B. Its recent report calls on countries to codify the socalled golden rule not to allow the transfer of arms to states where there is a threat of grave abuses of human rights and humanitarian law. C. Every year, over 300,000 people are killed by conventional weapons and millions injured, forcibly displaced, and bereaved because of armed violence, according to Amnesty International. D. The consensus that has emerged, since the 2006 Resolution for a global pact, on underwriting provisions related to protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the proposed treaty is also a tacit recognition of the brutalities committed systematically against innocent civilians in the conflict zones. E. However, opposition by the United States, Russia, China and India, besides others, to link the trade in arms to the observance of human rights and humanitarian law by recipient countries threatens to block progress.
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