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Wars and armed conflicts are fuelled by the global arms trade. As a consequence, millions of human beings are killed and maimed, innumerable people are displaced, and fertile regions are turned into wasteland. At the same time arms companies, intermediaries and their political and military enablers are making immense profits out of this suffering. We, the Global Net - Stop The Arms Trade, want to put an end to this cruel circle of violence.
The GN-STAT is a network of committed people and an online resource that provides information about the nature, functioning and consequences of the international trade in weapons in order to empower activism and campaigning for a more peaceful and just world. Our goal is to give a name and face to the perpetrators of the global arms trade and a voice to the victims.
To be effective, our actions must be systematic and based on the following principles:
1. Non-violence and peaceful conflict resolution are the foundations of our work.
2. We practice a critical approach to all actors involved in the global arms trade, including but not limited to states, individuals and corporations.
3. We are working to hold the actors of the global arms trade to account by providing information about their activities and through protest, activism, campaign work, shareholder action, and legal advocacy, all underpinned by evidence-based research and investigations.
4. We have a systemic approach to the arms trade in that we locate it within its wider political and economic context, including its impact on climate change, inequality, injustices migration and broad militarism;
5. The arms trade is a global enterprise, operating through international networks of arms manufacturers, politicians, military leaders, state officials, and lobbyists. Thus, if we want to successfully understand its structures and unravel its operations, we too must act on a global scale.
6. While we acknowledge that national laws, multilateral, regional and international agreements and treaties can be useful in regulating the trade in weapons, we believe that these are currently woefully inadequate to deal with the out of control nature of the trade, as much due to the lack of political will as to weaknesses with these instruments themselves; and crucially
7. In doing this work we reject any discrimination based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, language, religion, national or social origin, property, birth, legal or other status. We treat each other with mutual respect and dignity which we believe all people on the planet deserve.