States, including Bulgaria, are failing to adequately control the transport of weapons around the world leading to serious human rights violations, Amnesty International said in a report.

Examples highlighted in the report include a case study about the delivery of machine gun/anti-aircraft gun parts from Bulgaria flown on a regular scheduled Air France passenger flight from Sofia to Charles de Gaulle airport, Paris, in September 2008.

The shipment was then flown to Nairobi with the final destination listed in the transport documents as Kigali, the report says.

According to Amnesty International there was a clear and substantial risk that machine gun/anti-aircraft gun parts procured by the Rwandan government might be diverted. Such weapons were used in the fighting taking place in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where more than 220,000 people had been displaced and serious violations of human rights were perpetrated.

The report cites as the Bulgarian seller of the weapons Sofia-based Armico Ltd., which had authorization from the Bulgarian government to export them to Rwanda.

The Bulgarian, French and Kenyan governments which permitted the export and transit of the arms shipment through their territories failed to stop the transfer, the report says.

It shortly mentions another Bulgarian-related case, in which Bulgarian and Romanian weapons ostensibly destined for government authorities in Nicaragua were received by the FARC in Suriname.

The report highlights how transport companies registered in China, France, the Russian Federation, the UK, and the USA – the five permanent members of the UN Security Council - are able to move conventional weapons and munitions to countries where they could be used to commit rights violations and war crimes.

“Lax controls on arms shippers and flyers who increasingly move conventional arms around the world are not confined to jurisdictions with weak arms export and import laws,” said Brian Wood, Arms Control Manager for Amnesty International.

“To save lives and protect human rights, the Arms Trade Treaty being negotiated at the UN must address the role of transporters and other intermediaries in arms supply chains, not just specify what states’ export and import licensing procedures should be.”

The report, entitled "Deadly Movements: Arms Transportation Controls in the Arms Trade Treaty", was launched in New York as the first round of UN deliberations on the content of the proposed international Arms Trade Treaty resumed.

The Amnesty International report decries the fact that EU-members such as Bulgaria and France, parties to numerous treaties on weapon movement, fail to exercise due control on shipments and their destinations.

It calls for harder and more adequate measures on the part of governments.

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