Pro-gunners and anti-gunners around the world will be monitoring the two-week United Nations (UN) preparatory committee meeting (PrepCom) on small arms controls at the UN headquarters in New York which was scheduled to run Jan. 9-20.

The meeting is intended to prepare the structure, procedure and priorities for the 2006 review conference on the international firearms control plan which will also be held at the UN’s New York headquarters from June 26 to July 7.

Operating under the UN Department of Disarmament Affairs, these conferences produced an agreement in 2001 called the UN Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects.

According to the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA), the leading global gun control coalition which operates as a non-government organization (NGO) accredited to the UN, the January meeting may prove to be the most important global meeting on small arms since the 2001 program of arms agreement.

IANSA also anticipates the possibility of a second PrepCom in March.

The global effort to regulate all aspects of small arms manufacturing, exporting and possession has been mired for years in definitions. Governments like that of the United States take a narrow view of what constitute small arms and what is reasonable regulation of manufacturing and international trade. IANSA and many other governments include all rifles, shotguns and handguns in the definition of small arms and seek not only international protocols to regulate the firearms business but also endorse limitations on the types of firearms which civilians may possess in all member countries. Universal registration of all small arms, including hunting, competition and defensive guns, is another of their goals.

The United States is one of the major stumbling blocks to the kind of regulations that IANSA is pursuing. At the 2001 meeting when the program of action was adopted, the US representative, John Bolton, then Undersecretary of State for Disarmament and now the US ambassador to the UN, made it clear that the US would not agree to any treaty that infringed on the Second Amendment to the Constitution.

Since then, UN arms control discussants have moved to recommend regulation of ammunition as well as small arms.

But the US may not be the only country holding up the global control effort. There have been reports that Russia is also not in agreement with all proposals, and the rejection of the gun ban referendum in Brazil in October also has created ripples. Brazil was one of the leading small arms control advocates, along with Japan, Canada, Great Britain and the European Union.

Bulletins reporting what transpires of the PrepCom and other meetings can be obtained from the National Rifle Association and the World Forum on the Future of Sport Shooting Activities, both of which are recognized NGOs at the UN.

The chairman-designate for the current PrepCom meeting is Sylvester Ekundayo Rowe, deputy permanent representative of Sierra Leone to the UN. Other member nations include: Japan; Papua New Guinea; the Philippines; Lithuania; Poland; Ukraine; Austria; Finland, and Switzerland.