Can a day of action make the killing fields a thing of the past?

Arms control campaigners say up to 1,000 people every day are killed by armed violence.

While the trade in rare stamps and dinosaur bones is strictly regulated there is, it is claimed, an absence of international controls on the trade and movement of weapons.

They say that the British Government allows the sale of weapons to countries guilty of systematically abusing their citizens. Indonesia is cited as an example.

Oxfam, Amnesty International and International Action Network on Small Arms - the three organisations leading the campaign - are particularly concerned about the continuing international flow of weapons into Colombia.

This adds to the impact of those already in use. Abuses of human rights and international law perpetrated in Colombia by all sides, including the armed forces, are widespread and well known.

In spite of which, in 2003 arms exports to Colombia from South Africa alone were worth more than a reported $33 million. Similarly, loopholes in Canadian export controls allow helicopters to be shipped to the US where they can be converted for military use before being moved to Colombia.

Dr Owen Greene, who specialises in international security and arms control at Bradford University's Department of Peace Studies, said: "There is deeply-embedded, high-level violence. There are self-sustaining, highly-organised armed gangs. This makes the situation in Colombia very tough to reverse.

"It is shocking how little has been done to limit the uncontrolled small arms availability and use. Therefore as soon as you start to do anything people begin to feel the effect."

In Bogota, the capital, a musician has turned rifles into guitars, showing that there is another way. In spite of an endemically desperate situation interested parties agree that the key to change is hope.

Earlier this year Laura Mantinan Parker, manager of the Bradford Oxfam shop, was sent on a three-week field trip to Colombia to look at some of Oxfam's projects.

She travelled from Bogota to the Cauca region where she visited an Oxfam project developing sustainable and secure livelihoods for local communities. She then went on to RioSucio where the charity is setting up water and sanitation systems and housing.

One Oxfam project, in Catatumbo, was forced to close when Government paramilitaries and guerrillas started to fight for the land on which the project was based.

Laura said: "You're safe if you're in undisputed areas; but if your land comes under dispute it becomes too dangerous. Oxfam staff were held hostage overnight then told that, if they stayed, they'd be killed.

"They're not overly worried - they just get on with it. They are all very impassioned, working 16 hours a day in the field."

Armed violence in Colombia has become a way of life. Comedians are killed. Referees are killed. Laura isn't hopeful for the country's hopes to host the 2014 World Cup. Killings used to be random but now they're targeted assassinations.

Although terrible things have been done to people in RioSucio many others, displaced by violence, regard it as the most developed place they have seen. Yet Laura was "scared stiff," hearing gunshots and screams at 3am one particular morning.

On the return to Bogota she got separated from her group and boarded the wrong aircraft. When she attempted to get off she was commanded to sit down.

"I was in full Oxfam gear and the plane was half full of what were clearly drug barons, dressed in bling' if you want to call it that. I thought I could end up anywhere, in some far-flung place in Colombia. I really feared I was going to be kidnapped. I was petrified," she said.

Fortunately, the plane was bound for the capital. When she arrived the rest of her group were waiting.

Back in Bradford, in response to being asked if the trip was depressing, she said: "I'd do it again in a heartbeat." She was impressed by the optimism of Colombians whose hope is that one day soon the war will end.

In Colombia arms dealing and drugs trafficking feed off one another. To maximise income from narcotics both the paramilitaries and guerrillas claim more land. To accomplish this they use small arms and terror tactics.

But in spite of the threat of violence many Colombians are working for change - like that artist turning rifles into guitars. Oxfam works closely with local campaign groups.

"The one thing you've got to get across is the hope," Laura said.

Dr Julia Buxton, at Bradford University's Peace Studies Department, specialises in the drugs trade in Colombia.

She identifies Colombia's border with Venezuela as the area where the paramilitaries are most powerful and numerous - the area where drugs come in to evade US surveillance on ports where the trade used to flourish.

"Even after demobilisation the criminal networks are maintained, ruining the border areas where a quarter of a million people are displaced.

"The Government uses a strategy of violence to bring peace, trying to bomb the guerrillas into submission. The US provides billions of dollars in military aid but this encourages the circulation of weapons. They should deal with guns, not sell them more," Dr Buxton said.

The campaigners are calling for the establishment of a four-point programme of action: l Constraining both the illegal and legal trading in arms, with tougher inspections and licensing checks.

l Stemming the flow of large-scale arms shipments to conflict zones, especially industrial production ammunition.

l Destroy stockpiles of ammunition which are said to be stored beyond the capacity defence against theft and abuse.

l Demilitarisation focused on the paramilitaries: collecting weapons and destroying them.

Today, people around the world will be calling on their governments to agree to an International Arms Trade Treaty to stop weapons from falling into the wrong hands.

In subsequent weeks foreign ministers will be meeting at the United Nations in New York; the Control Arms campaign intends to be there to lobby for an Arms Trade Treaty.