The IHEU endorses all measures to reduce the danger of war and therefore welcomes the SALT strategic arms limitation agreement between the USA and the USSR.
We note with regret however the restricted scope of these agreements and urge further and more extensive agreements in include both nuclear and conventional arms, and to embrace all nations. We call upon the Secretary General of the United Nations to convene a conference to this end.
Recognising that the present high level of expenditure on national weapon systems is closely bound up with the misuse of world resources, we call for an international financial tax on arms expenditure.
We suggest, for example, that the industrialised countries should be taxed on their Gross National Product at the same rate that they spend on weapons. The finance gained should be used to ameliorate or abolish want and deprivation in underdeveloped and developing countries. The tax should be administered by an international agency set up with world wide responsibility in order to obviate bilateral agreements which tend to foster the domination of one country by another.
Board of Directors 1972
'Disarmament (1972)', Humanists International, Board of Directors, 1972