INTRODUCTION

Article 4 of the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) requires each State Party to establish and maintain a national control system that allows it to regulate the export of parts and components corresponding to those categories of conventional arms covered by Article 2(1). The focus of Article 4 is on the form of the export in order to avoid even complex conventional arms being broken down into a small number of constituent parts to circumvent export controls. The national control system established under Articles 4 and 5 requires that States Parties have the capacity to identify where the export of parts and components ‘is in a form that provides the capability to assemble the conventional arms covered under Article 2(1)’. Various practical approaches have been developed by States to establish such controls, though the ATT requires that these controls also apply to Article 6 and Article 7.

NEGOTIATING HISTORY

Article 4’s origins are intrinsically linked to discussions on the scope of equipment and items to be covered by the ATT. These discussions began with the 2006 United Nations (UN) General Assembly resolution ‘Towards an Arms Trade Treaty’, which set out two processes.

Firstly, the Resolution requested the UN Secretary-General to ‘seek the views of Member States on the feasibility, scope and parameters for a comprehensive, legally binding instrument …’ and to submit a report to the General Assembly at its 62nd session (UNGA, 2006, para. 1).

Secondly, the Resolution requested the Secretary-General to establish a Group of Government Experts (GGE), commencing in 2008, ‘to examine the feasibility, scope and draftparameters for a comprehensive, legally binding instrument establishing common international standards for the import, export and transfer of conventional arms’ and to transmit its report to the General Assembly for consideration at its 63rd session (UNGA, 2006, para. 2).