Eduardo González
The Sumar, Republican and Mixed Parliamentary Groups have presented a Bill to declare “automatically” an arms embargo on any country that has been sued before an international court whose jurisdiction has been ratified by Spain.
The Bill, presented on July 11 and which would reform the 2007 Law on the control of foreign trade in defense and dual-use material, recalls that “the arms embargo is an essential measure within the set of diplomatic and coercive tools available to the States that make up the international community, aimed at preserving global peace and security, protecting human rights and preventing the illicit arms trade.”
In general terms, the text continues, “we can understand that an arms embargo is a coercive measure imposed by one or several States or international organizations, which basically consists of the prohibition of exporting, importing, transferring, producing or marketing arms and related material to a given State,” always with the objective of “preventing the escalation of armed conflicts, protecting peoples who are victims of human rights violations and guaranteeing international security and peace.”
It also recalls that the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), adopted in 2013, obliges States that have ratified it to evaluate their arms exports to ensure that they will not be used to commit or facilitate human rights violations. “This rigorous evaluation seeks to prevent conventional weapons from reaching the hands of actors who could use them to perpetrate atrocities or destabilize entire regions, as is currently happening in the Gaza Strip, on Israel’s border with Lebanon and elsewhere in the Middle East region,” the Bill states.
“Since its approval, the ATT has been signed by more than 130 countries and ratified by more than 110, including Spain,” it continues. “However, the effective implementation of the ATT depends on the commitment and cooperation of the States parties to comply with its provisions and collaborate in the monitoring and exchange of information on arms transfers,” it adds.
The text also recalls that, in application of the ATT, the European Union has imposed an arms embargo on Syria and Yemen and that the EU itself has a specific regulatory framework for the control of arms exports under which it has imposed arms embargoes on Syria or Venezuela.
In Spain, the text indicates, the 2007 Law “has constituted a further step towards the supervision and regulation of the arms trade”, but “its implementation has revealed some practical gaps throughout its implementation, and various inefficiencies have been identified” that are intended to be addressed through the Bill, which introduces, precisely, the figure of the arms embargo, with all its legal regime.
Among these deficiencies, the lack of transparency in transfer authorizations stands out, the legal ambiguity of some concepts that allow “an excessive margin of interpretation of certain provisions” and the absence of “a more agile and automatic procedure that, instead of being based on discretionary decisions, is guided by the most scrupulous respect for International Law”.
“All of this is resulting in the transfer of dual-use material to destinations where it could be used for military or repressive purposes, or in the non-denial of transit licenses for weapons whose final destination is States that could use them to commit serious human rights violations, in contravention of the principles of human rights and international security,” the three parliamentary groups denounce.
Automatic embargo
For this reason, the Bill calls for “an automatic” arms embargo to be declared for “those States that have been sued before an international court whose jurisdiction has been ratified” by Spain, provided that the claim has not been rejected for processing, due to the commission of a crime of genocide, crimes against humanity, serious violations of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, attacks directed against civilian objects or civilians protected as such, or other war crimes defined in international agreements ratified by our country.”
The embargo, which will be maintained “indefinitely” over time during the duration of the judicial procedure against the recipient State, “will entail the prohibition of all sales, supplies, transfers or exports that have as their direct or indirect destination the territory of the recipient State of the embargo, by natural or legal persons who are nationals or residents of Spain, or from the territory of the Kingdom of Spain, or using ships or aircraft that fly the national flag, whether or not they originate in Spain, with respect to the following products”.
