Thursday December 4 2008 / Citizenship
Rockets or calculation notebooks?
Some members of the Dutch parliament are fighting the non-supervised transport of weapons through the Netherlands and calling for a sharpening of licence duty. That is good news, but did we know that the Netherlands produces and exports defence material itself? Expensive weapon systems whose use is questionable are even sold to developing countries and conflict areas. At the same time the Netherlands spends a lot of money on developing countries and post-conflict areas and values the Millennium Goals highly.
The Evert Vermeer Foundation sees this as a striking example of incoherent policy and wants this debate to bring it to the public's attention. The starting point is that heavy military expenditure is an obstacle to achieving the Millennium Development Goals, because weapons are purchased at the expense of social spending.
To which countries and under what conditions does the Netherlands export its defence material? Is this irresponsible policy? And what can the Dutch government do to change this policy? These and other questions will be discussed with Dutch politicians Martijn van Dam and Krista van Velzen and Farah Karimi (director, Oxfam Novib). Ruben Maes will moderate the debate.
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