 The Scrap Weapons team is building on the United Nations Secretary General's call for global ceasefire in all corners of the world. As the disease causes death, poverty, violence and confrontations, states and corporations must harness their capability to divert military modernization, procurement and operational budgets. There is a necessary complementary measure towards the delay, containment and eradication of the COVID-19 coronavirus. I'm going to speak about the why behind the campaign. Why are we calling for a freeze on weapons production and supply? The global military expenditure rose to $1.917 trillion in 2019. This represents an increase of 3.6% from 2018 and it is the largest annual growth in spending since 2010. Search also shows a correlation between military and healthcare expenditure. For every 1% increase in military expenditure, we see a 0.62% decrease in healthcare. This trade-off is worse in poorer countries who see a 0.962% drop for the same. This adds an important risk factor to the health and individual well-being of the population. We need to realize that this pandemic, this global crisis has exposed the fractures in the healthcare infrastructure and the public welfare systems in place. We are posing freeze weapons on the basis of unilateral tools in the form of declarations by governments or national parliaments that can eventually inspire positive effects and multilateral action. Of the range of legal equities available to states, a moratorium appears to be the most obvious and practical choice. This is because a moratorium is temporary. It is a temporary suspension or postponement of normal practice and it can be established by legally binding agreements or resolutions or non-binding declarations. And moratoriums have the effect of freezing the status quo or banning specific activities. Look at what actually makes up military expenditure at the state level. You find that it is very complex and it changes from state to state. For example, these budgets might include salaries and pensions of active and retired military personnel. They can also include the costs of purchasing new military hardware, weapons, ammunition, and even hardware maintenance. So if we want governments to reduce military spending, then we must be able to overcome these practical concerns. States must be able to instigate reductions that are sensitive to their genuine national security concerns. We must also be able to carry out assessments of wasteful and excessive military spending and be encouraged to identify specific economic and social projects that are important to their citizens, which can be financed totally or in part by funds free from reducing the military expenditures. Why? We are asking for all these signatures from other organizations before we bring it to the Secretary General's office. It's because they have already indicated that they are more likely to back the campaign to a declaration of their own if we can build a sizeable coalition of already recognized civil society organizations. Oxfam approaches this question from the point of view of a humanitarian agency. So after the Secretary General launched his call for a global ceasefire, which made eminent sense to us, we started looking at what was happening on the ground. Oxfam is therefore happy supporting the Freeze Weapons campaign, which is showing the way to redirect resources from harmful production to production to meet human needs.