Global military spending is set to break the previous Cold War record by the end of 2006, warns international aid agency Oxfam as government representatives meet at the UN General Assembly in New York.
Oxfam is calling on governments to ban arms sales that fuel poverty, conflict and human rights abuses, by supporting an Arms Trade Treaty. A landmark vote to start work on such a Treaty will take place next month in the General Assembly.
Global military spending this year is estimated to reach US$1,059bn (ca. 5,9 mia. kroner), outstripping the highest figure reached during the Cold War in real terms, and roughly fifteen times current international aid expenditure. This growth in military budgets has caused a boom for the arms industry with the top 100 arms companies seeing their sales increase by almost 60 per cent from 2000 to 2004.
And while the world spends more on weapons, the number and scale of conflict-related food crises is also growing. Last year, conflict became the leading cause of hunger, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. Conflict and economic problems were cited as the main cause of more than 35 percent of food emergencies between 1992 and 2003, compared
to around 15 percent in the period from 1986 to 1991.
The US and countries in the Middle East are responsible for the bulk of the growth in military spending, but some of the world’s poorest countries have also increased spending. The Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Sudan, Botswana, and Uganda all doubled their military spending between 1985 and 2000. Between 2002 and 2003, Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan spent more on their military than on health care.
Kilde: www.oxfam.org
