Amnesty-Omega technical report seeking to facilitate and inform an EU-led process currently assessing the implementation and effectiveness of EU Regulation 1236/2005.
In 2006 the European Union (EU) introduced the world’s first multilateral trade controls to prohibit the international trade in equipment that has no other practical purpose than for capital punishment, torture and other ill-treatment; and to control the trade in a range of policing and security equipment frequently misused for such ill-treatment. Council Regulation 1236/20051 fills a major gap in human-rights-based export controls. It introduced unprecedented, binding trade controls on a range of equipment which is often used in serious human rights violations, but which has not usually been included on Member States’ military, dual-use or strategic export control lists.
This landmark piece of legislation has been widely welcomed by human rights bodies in the United Nations and elsewhere, and has influenced proposed new trade controls in at least one other major global exporter of such equipment, the USA. Three years after its introduction, however, Amnesty International and the Omega Research Foundation have found a number of issues concerning loopholes, its implementation, and its influence on the attitudes and behavioural changes of states.
