The United States will regulate the sale of arms abroad to help respect human rights

The United States updated this Thursday the regulations that regulate the transfer and sale of arms abroad put more emphasis on the Respect for human rights against economic advantage.

The White House explained in a statement that the revised directive “is committed to strengthening the national security of the United States by reaffirming respect for human rights, international humanitarian law, democratic government and law enforcement”.

There Biden Administration wants to prevent the sale and transfer of arms to other countries from contributing to human rights violations, in addition to promoting that their allies respect them and avoid harming civilians.

Also seeks to ensure arms delivery ‘does not fuel corruption or undermine good governance”.

The rules date back to the time of the President Jimmy Carter (1977-1981) and its last update dates back to the mandate of donald trump (2017-2021).

The change in this regulation occurs when the first anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Since the beginning of this conflict, the United States has granted $29.8 billion in military assistance to Kyiv.

It remains to be seen how this update will affect US arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

For now, the Biden government has refused to sell attack missiles and bombs to Riyadh, after they were used in the past by the kingdom against civilians in Yemen.

Yet arms sales to Saudi Arabia continued and The United States continued to supply it with anti-aircraft defenses and air-to-air missiles.

In August, the US administration gave the green light to the sale of more than 5 billion dollars worth of weapons in the Arab country, in particular anti-missile defense systems.

Last January, a court of first instance of the State of Illinois (USA) has temporarily suspended the entry into force of a new Assault Rifle Control Actpreventing the sale of chargers from being limited to high capacity ammunition or ban switches that convert semi-automatic weapons into machine guns.

An Illinois judge granted the temporary restraining order sought by some 800 plaintiffsblocking the law signed by the Democratic Governor Jay Robert Pritzkeraccording to channel information CNN.

This measure limits the sale of high-capacity ammunition magazines, prohibits switches that allow semi-automatic firearms to fire automatically, and “expands the courts’ ability to prevent dangerous persons from possessing a firearm by means of restraining orders”.

The plaintiffs argued that the ban violates the Illinois Constitution and they asked for an exception in the legislation where they are allowed to buy this type of weapon.

“This legislation has used criteria to choose who can and who cannot own guns without consideration,” said the judge who suspended the law, Joshua Morrison.

“Furthermore, because of the speed with which this bill was passed, the effect on protected classes could not be considered, nor could the legislator consider whether it it was the least restrictive way to achieve his goal,” he added, according to the channel.

(With information from EFE, Europa Press and The Associated Press)

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