ROME - "A decisive international intervention for the control and limitation of the arms trade is today the indispensable tool to contain the widespread violence that, after the end of the Cold War, has affected entire regions of the world such as the Middle East and Latin America, where conventional weapons take more human lives than wars themselves". So Andrea Riccardi, the founder of the Community of Sant'Egidio, presented Nobel Peace Prize Winner Óscar Arias Sanchez, former president of the Republic of Costa Rica, who gave a conference today afternoon on "The pendulum between concord and war", to illustrate the International Arms Trade Treaty adopted on 2 April last year by the UN General Assembly. Among those present at the meeting, at the headquarters of the Community of Sant'Egidio, there were members of the diplomatic corps accredited to the Italian State and the Holy See, former president of the Council and Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini and Foreign Undersecretary Mario Giro.
Presenting the speaker, Andrea Riccardi recalled that Óscar Arias was "a main actor of the challenge launched in the 80s for the democratisation of the entire Central American region and for the promotion of a vision of the international relations between the Latin American countries that can overcome the historic conflict between States, based on militarism and conflict”. The Arms Trade Treaty, designed by Arias along with personalities such as Elie Wiesel, Betty Williams and the Dalai Lama, is "the arrival point of a culture of peace that indicates the permanent danger of conventional weapons as destabilising factors on the path of ' humanity”.
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