INTRODUCTION

Article 3 of the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) is a product of compromise: the great majority of States wished to see ammunition and munitions included in the ATT under the same terms as the classes of conventional weapons systems listed in Article 2(1); other States, notably the United States (US) and the Russian Federation (Russia), would likely have preferred a treaty with no provisions on ammunition/munitions at all. By the end of the negotiations, it was agreed that ammunition/munitions could only be included in the ATT if it was done in a partial way and not subjected to the same requirements as items in Article 2(1). As a result, ammunition/munitions are notably excluded from the obligations regarding diversion in Article 11 and the reporting provisions of Article 13, but included in the Treaty’s prohibitions under Article 6 and export requirements under Article 7.

The pragmatic proposals during the 2012 and 2013 United Nations (UN) Conferences on the ATT to develop a separate article on ammunition/ munitions were eventually agreed in order not to alienate the world’s two largest conventional arms and ammunition manufacturers and exporters: the US and Russia. This resulted in the acceptance by the US of Article 3 as part of the final ATT text adopted by the UN General Assembly on 2 April 2013 and its signature to the Treaty in September 2013, both unexpected victories at the time.

The use of the term ammunition/munitions in the ATT was a way of creating an inclusive concept, since the meaning of ‘munitions’ can sometimes refer to all military supplies while the word ‘ammunition’ in English generally refers only to what is fired and/or launched from small arms and light weapons (SALW). In certain contexts, however, the term ‘ammunition’ refers to the whole spectrum of munitions from SALW to heavy artillery shells, as is the case in French, Italian and Spanish.