CAAT/Control Arms

With more than a little help from CAAT, I've finally got my shit together in relation to trying to get a control arms campaign started at Warwick...

Reed Elsevier are a company who organise international arms fairs. At DSEI last year (or it may have been the year before) Mark Thomas went undercover and found evidence that as well as your common or garden arms dealing (which is bad enough in its own right) some of the dealers there are directly and indirectly brokering illegal arms & torture equipment.

This is the same Reed who publish a rather large number of academic journals (including, most famously, the lancet) and, as such, they're a company which recieves rather a lot of support from this university's academic staff.

I'm short on time but there's a lot of information on the below site & I have some ideas about how to get this campaign started. I'm going to speak to Amnesty this week then hopefully have a meeting some point in the next fortnight.

Anyone interested or know people who are?

It is a little known fact that the giant information company Reed Elsevier - famous for its work in education, science and health publications, as well as massive web-based services such as the LexisNexis Total Research System used by academics and legal professionals - also plays a significant role in the arms trade.

Through its subsidiary companies, Reed Exhibitions and Spearhead Exhibitions, Reed Elsevier is responsible for organising arms fairs in several countries across the world, as well as here in the UK. These include DSEi and Latin America Aero and Defence.

For many customers and shareholders of Reed Elsevier, convinced of the company's good reputation and ethical stance, this has come as a rather unpalatable surprise. In September 2005 The Lancet, arguably the world's most prestigious medical journal and owned by Reed Elsevier, published a letter signed by public healthcare professionals from five continents. The letter highlighted the surprising involvement of The Lancet's publisher in the global arms trade, and prompted The Lancet's editorial board itself to issue a scathing condemnation of Reed Elsevier in the same issue, calling upon the company 'to divest itself of all business interests that threaten human, and especially civilian, health and well-being'.

Reed Elsevier provides vital information services to a raft of major professions: not just healthcare professionals but teachers, lawyers, librarians, academics, social workers, whose work is in the public interest and underpinned by principles of democracy, equality and human rights. It is therefore surprising that Reed Elsevier has chosen to involve itself in arms fairs that help to undermine human rights, exacerbate poverty and fuel conflict around the world. The company has also subscribed to the UN Global compact which specifically commits businesses to uphold human rights and make sure that they are not complicit in human rights abuses. These commitments are ostensibly at odds with inviting repressive regimes, from Indonesia to Saudi Arabia, to shop for instruments of oppression and conflict at the DSEi arms fair.