I recently attended the Nairobi Summit, the First Review Conference of the 1997 Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction. There are nations that stayed away. It is a shame.

After outlining the deadly scope of today’s small arms trade, this paper touches on questions of international law and responsibility, or lack thereof, as illustrated by the legal intergovernmental transfer of arms from China to the Sudan, despite international pressure urging the contrary. References include United Nations documents, task