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New international laws regulating the $85 billion global trade in arms and ammunition enter into force tomorrow, Project Ploughshares has pointed out. The Arms Trade Treaty or ATT will become international law on December 24.

More from the Project Ploughshares news release:

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Project Ploughshares, based in Waterloo, Ontario, has worked for more than 15 years to make the ATT a reality, most recently as part of the global civil society Control Arms Coalition.

Sadly, the Government of Canada will be absent from the Christmas Eve celebration. Canada participated in negotiations for the ATT and voted to approve the text in the UN General Assembly in April 2013. But subsequently Canada has not signed the ATT, the only member of NATO that has failed to do so.

This treaty aims to set the highest possible standards for cross-border transfers of arms and ammunition and to cut off the supply of weapons to dictators and human rights abusers around the world.