A report issued by 12 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) says that weapons kill 2,000 people every day, or one person every minute.
The report, written by the British aid organisation Oxfam, says that an estimated 2.1 million people, most of them civilians, have been killed by weapons-related violence since 2006, the year that many governments recognised the need to regulate the global arms trade.
Wars, in countries such as Somalia, Afghanistan, Sudan, Sri Lanka and the Democratic Republic of Congo, account for around a third of the deaths. The NGOs also warned of the dangers posed by the arms trade in countries such as Chad, Zimbabwe and Libya.
The report was issued as a UN General assembly committee began considering a draft resolution setting a timetable for negotiations aimed at concluding an arms control treaty in 2012. Oxfam director Jeremy Hobbs says eight out of 10 governments and the vast majority of ordinary people want an arms trade treaty.
