From February 28th to March 4th 2011 will be held in New York the third session of the preparatory negotiations for the adoption of an international Treaty on the Trade of the Conventional Arms (TCA) in 2012 at the time of a Conference of the United Nations. The States will continue the discussions started in July 2010. Those had finished on a positive note, almost all the States have testified a will to commit themselves to one international treaty at the conclusion of the discussions.

During this new week of negotiations, the States will look further into the discussions on the types of weapons and transactions which a TCA should regulate, on the definition of the criteria which would be used to assess the risk related to a transfer of arms, as well as, on the international cooperation and the assistance for the implementation of the future treaty.

The attitude of the United States on the issue of ammunition will be particularly awaited, Washington refuses until now their inclusion in this treaty. The attitude of certain skeptical States, like Russia or China, will also be extremely waited. In fact they should arrive at this meeting with a better defined position than in July 2010 when they had remained discrete.

The importance of having common rules in all the States appears crucial in the current context in order to avoid transfers of weapons towards countries which do not hesitate to make use of them to repress internal oppositions or to violate the human rights and the international humanitarian law.