Closed petition End Britain’s sale of arms to authoritarian regimes

Closed on 15 November 2012

Britain’s policy on arms exports is in serious conflict with the British Government’s stated objectives of promoting peace, democracy and human rights. The British Government's own Human Rights Annual Report, published in 2010, identified 26 countries as having “the most serious wide-ranging human rights concerns”. In that same year, the British Government approved arms export licences to 16 of these countries including; Libya, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Columbia, China and Saudi Arabia. The conflict between Britain's arms exports and it's stated aim of promoting democracy and human rights has become all the more evident in light of democratic uprisings occurring across the Middle East and North Africa - which have seen many of the countries armed by Britain engage in a brutal crackdown on their own citizens. We therefore call on the government to end the export of military equipment to all authoritarian regimes.