Citation(s) from the GunPolicy.org literature library
Alpers, Philip and Conor Twyford. 2003 ‘Stockpiles and Trafficking in the Pacific - Trade Within The Region.’ Small Arms in the Pacific; Occasional Paper No. 8, p. 9. Geneva: Small Arms Survey, the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva. 31 March
Relevant contents
Trade Within The Region
While total export volumes may be small, Australia still plays an important supplier role for many Pacific states. In 2000, it was responsible for most recorded deliveries of arms and ammunition to Fiji, Papua New Guinea, and Vanuatu. New Zealand plays a much smaller role, but is still one of the main exporters of commercial arms and ammunition to Tonga and Vanuatu. (3)
Given their relative political and economic prominence, it might be expected that Australia and New Zealand would play a larger export role in the region. Broadly, though, their role is declining. In recent years, both countries have become increasingly wary of indirectly fuelling armed conflict on their own doorsteps, and consequently more cautious about granting export licences. (4)
Despite their own well-stocked official and private arsenals, both nations try, as states, to contribute more to arms control than to arms proliferation.
Sources cited:
3) Interview with Bob Lehmann, Australian Federal Police Liaison to the Vanuatu Police Force, Port Vila, 15 May 2002.
4) In 2001, for instance, the NZ Ministry of Foreign Affairs declined an application from Auckland-based company Tropical Exports to export 65,000 rounds of .22 calibre ammunition, as well as a number of rifles and shotguns to a Vanuatu gun dealer, Port Vila Hardware, because of concerns that the ammunition might have been diverted to neighbouring Solomon Islands (Capie, 2003).
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