Presented the VI Report: $1700 billion turnover for the production of arms: USA in the lead, China and Saudi Arabia growing. Paolo Beccegato: “they fight sure to win because they are more armed than their adversary”.
International peacekeeping missions are decreasing and military spending is increasing to an exorbitant estimated of $1739 billion in 2017, a record since the end of the Cold War. This is one of the most alarming and significant data, contained in the sixth research report on forgotten conflicts presented by Caritas in Rome this year dedicated in particular to armaments. The Report saw the collaboration of the magazines Famiglia Cristiana and Avvenire, and the Italian Ministry of Education.
“The thesis we want to propose - Paolo Beccegato, deputy director of Italian Caritas, explains to Vatican Insider - is not only that wars are fought with these weapons, because they would be fought in any case, but that the production of weapons is one of the factors that can explain the causes of conflict itself, i.e. one fights believing that they can win a war because they are more armed than the opponent, thus weapons become a causal factor.
“Another significant fact - Beccegato further notes - is that all this mass of weapons, including small arms, are one of the major causes of human rights violations in the world. We shall remember it, on the 70th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights, people are suffering more and more because more and more weapons are circulating globally. The hope, therefore, is that “this awareness may lead to policies to support the reduction, regulation and reduction of the arms trade that has reached peaks never seen before.
The report describes a worrying general picture: “Global military spending represents 2.2 per cent of the world’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) - the text reads - having grown by 1.1 per cent in real terms compared to the previous year: practically 230 dollars per person, for an estimated total of 1739 billion”. In particular - it is explained - China has continued to increase its military expenditure to 150 billion dollars”; instead, the United States spends 602 billion, or 3.1 per cent of GDP, in 2018 growth is expected to reach 700 billion dollars in the United States.
Russia, in decline in spending on armaments for the first time since Vladimir Putin came to power, has spent in 2017 61 billion dollars and has been surpassed by Saudi Arabia - engaged in the bloody war with Yemen - which has reached 71 billion dollars becoming the third country for military spending in the world. Finally, with its $20 billion, Italy ranks 13th in this macabre ranking, just overtaking Israel and Iraq.
In general, it is possible to affirm that there is both a legal trade in arms and an illegal one, however, often the two get mixed up to the point of becoming indistinguishable one from the other. Through the so-called triangulations, for example, legally produced weapons reach markets where it would be illegal to sell them, so weapons arrive in the hottest areas of the world where the largest armed war are fought. “In essence - Beccegato explains - legally produced weapons are sold to governments or parties not at war thus respecting international treaties, but these parts, in turn, become the means - in an illegal way - through which to reach the belligerent parties, the countries at war, so the weapons arrive where they should not, even those produced legally.
It should be noted that, according to the Report, 20 conflicts were classified as “high-intensity” in 201, while there is a total of 378 of conflicts around the world, ranging from wars, to limited wars, to violent crises, to non-violent crises and finally to disputes. The twenty wars concern the following countries: Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Philippines, Libya, Mexico, Myanmar, Nigeria, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Yemen. The countries in total are therefore 15, but in Nigeria and Syria there are respectively two and three fronts of conflict, even in Congo there are two fronts.
“There is a growing number of conflicts - explains the Deputy Director of Italian Caritas - which are scarcely talked about; the number is high because we must take into account these strong interconnections: first of all, with the production and trade of arms, then with climate changes that make resources increasingly scarce; for example, the peaceful coexistence between farmers and shepherds throughout the Sahel becomes increasingly less peaceful and more violent. So financial speculation and, basically, poverty”.
“Because - Beccegato points out - most of these wars are fought in poor countries, precisely among the poor people who fight each other to contend for increasingly scarce resources. Thus “good politics”, to put it in Pope Francis’ words, that examines these situations on a global scale should say: if this is the analysis, there is consequently a need for a policy that removes the causes of similar situations that are increasingly widespread and violent”.
