4THE JAPAN ECONOMIC REVIEW,Friday,

October 15, 2004

The Japan Economic Review Study Forum

Collecting small arms after civil war is importantfor prevention of terrorism
Behind-the-scenes consensus-building practices common to Japan’s village
society applicable in the international community

Kuniko Inoguchi

Professor of Sophia University, Faculty ofLaw
On September 10, Professor
Kuniko Inoguchi of Sophia University, Faculty of Law, who
served for two years as Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Japan to the Conference on Disarmament inGeneva and returned to Japanin May, addressed the Japan
EconomicReview
Study
Forum held in Tokyo, on thesubject of “Disarmament
Diplomacy and Anti-terrorism
Strategies.”
Professor
Inoguchi stressed the following
points:1) Collecting small arms after
civil war is important for prevention of terrorism;
2) Japan should perform a central role in disarmament activities. The practice of behindthe-scenes consensus-building,which is common to Japanesevillage society, can be successfully applied at the international level.
The outline of the lecture is
as follows.
For many years disarmament negotiations have produced no results. I havechaired the Conference on Disarmament and the UN First
Biennial Meeting of States on
Small Arms, and I think thoseinitiatives achieved certainresults. As Chairperson, I do

not support the approach ofpushing through decisions
using the power of major countries to override opposition byother countries. It is importantto give all members a sense ofownership. I have always
stuck to the concept that negotiations fail when there is evenone party in opposition, and I
have explained this concept on
many occasions. It is consistent with the philosophy ofincorporating all parties as iscommon for Japanese villagesociety.
Disarmament challenges
include fissile material production cutoff, and bans on biological weapons and strengthening of bans on biologicalweapons
andchemicalweapons.
Of these, at the negotiationon the protocol for the Biological
Weapons
Convention(BWC) in particular, the United States took a passive
approach, and negotiations
were suspended for one year.
The negotiations were chairedby the Ambassador of Hungary, but I was tasked to workwith the US to find a more positive way to strengthen the Convention . The U.S. maintained
the position that the BWC willcontribute little to the prevention of terrorism, but later
agreed to discuss the follow up
process of Convention with
non-aligned countries. However, the agreement came withtwo conditions: the talks musttake place at the official residence of the Japanese Ambassador, and representatives of
all non-aligned countries must
be present at the talks. I contacted the representatives of
the non-aligned countries, andthey all agreed to attend thetalks. This contributed to theprocess of strengthening theBWC.
The
strengthening
process enhanced the domestic
legislation of member states

Prof. Inoguchi addresses the Study Forum held in Tokyo on disarmament diplomacy and antiterroism strategies.
and certain results wereachieved.
Ranking officials at the U.S.
State Department have praised
all our efforts, saying that noterror incidents involving biological weapons have occurredsince then.
The UN First Biennial Meeting of States on Small Arms
that I chaired addressed theissue of combatting illicit tradein small arms and lightweapons. Some 500,000 people
die in small arms-related incidents each year, and 70% of thevictims are women and children. The inability to collectsmall weapons even after theend of armed conflict, such ascivil wars, poses significantproblems.
Therefore,
weagreed at the Meeting tostrengthen domestic legislation to prevent illicit proliferation of such weapons andenhance capacity building toinplement measures agreed in
the process. Illicit proliferation

is carried out in linkage with
illicit trade in small arms is nodifferent from illicit trade indiamonds or drugs. Furthermore, places where illicit
transactions of weapons arecarried out serve as hotbeds forrecruitment of terrorists.
On that occasion, I insisted
that the voice of victims of illicit proliferation of small arms
be heard at the Meeting. By
directly speaking about what isgoing on in the hinterlands ofAfrica, the victims can help
states representatives understand the gravity of the problems. All such efforts contributed to unanimously adopting the Report of the Conference with the Chair’s Summary on strengthening the monitoring of illicit trade in smallarms and light weapons.
The attitude of the U.S. gunlobbyists towards the Meeting
was rather passive, but I said
to them, “You are one of themost powerful political con-stituencies. Please come up
with a constructive proposal tohelp me, and I will have theproposal presented at theMeeting.”
As a result, the g un lobbyists
came up with a very good proposal. They proposed to provide, free of charge, a technologies that will enable marking
each manufactured gun withan indelible laser imprint. This
indelible imprint will allow themanufacturer of each weapon
to be easily traced. In the eventthat such weapons are subjected to illicit trade, the manufacturer can be held accountable.
This is a small success, but it
is important to accumulate
such small successes. Control
on small arms may lose vigor
unless the number of guns isreduced. The same goes fornuclear weapons. The absolutevolume of nuclear weapons
must be reduced to reduce theprobability of proliferation towrong hands.