Just six months after its launch, the Alliance Against Arms Exports to Civil War Countries submitted the Corrective Initiative on June 24. The corrective initiative calls for a ban on the export of Swiss weapons to civil war countries or countries where human rights are systematically violated. Thanks to massive support from the population, the Alliance succeeded in collecting more than 134,000 signatures within a very short space of time.
“We would like to thank everyone who was involved in collecting the signatures. Only through strong voluntary commitment was it possible to collect so many signatures in record time,” emphasized Lewin Lempert, Co-President of the Alliance against Arms Exports to Civil War Countries and GSoA.
The broad support for the initiative was also evident at the official handover of the signatures to the Federal Chancellery: more than 300 people gathered on the Federal Terrace as part of the submission and symbolically showed the proponents of relaxed export criteria for weapons the red card.
For terre des hommes schweiz is clear: if we are committed to peace and human rights in the world, we cannot accept loose arms export controls. Swiss weapons must not be sold to governments that use them against their own people. Our project partners in Brazil in particular give us first-hand experience of how state security forces commit serious human rights violations. In 2018 alone, 6,160 people were shot dead by police officers there and the trend is rising. Facts on police violence must be given much greater consideration in decisions on the approval of arms exports. That is why we will campaign for stricter criteria for arms exports in the referendum campaign.
