DISARMAMENT: Pressure Builds For Land Mine Ban

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 21 1997 (IPS) - Supporters of a worldwide treaty to outlaw land mines, including 1997 Nobel Peace Prize winner Jody Williams, have begun a new lobbying effort to push wavering nations into signing the ban.

Williams, coordinator of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) which helped spark the drive for a total ban, is calling on such countries as Egypt, Greece, Japan and Russia to agree to the treaty.

At the same time, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has criticised several Commonwealth governments, including most of the South Asian states, for being “out of touch with the rest of the Commonwealth when it comes to banning landmines.”

Ban supporters clearly intend not only to ensure that at least 100 nations sign on to the Mine Ban Treaty at a meeting in Ottawa on Dec. 2-4, but to raise the moral stakes for any country unwilling to join.

“In Ottawa, we are going to see not only a huge number of countries committing (to the ban), but also a huge amount of moral pressure on countries who have so far been reluctant to act,” said Canada’s ambassador to the U.N. Robert Fowler.

Ambassador Jacob Biorn Lian of Norway, added that the awarding of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to Williams for her work in trying to secure a ban should “send a message to governments that have not yet made up their mind.”

“Those who do not sign the treaty will be stigmatised,” said Stephen Goose, director of HRW’s Arms Project. “Those who continue to use mines will be ostracised.”

The pro-ban forces are convinced that the moral argument against continued production, sale and use of landmines has been effective at quickly securing a consensus for a ban, just one year after Canada challenged other nations to come to Ottawa to sign a treaty to ban all anti-personnel mines. “None of us thought it would happen so quickly,” Williams said.

Nevertheless, many countries and even regions remain wary of the treaty, which would compel its participants to halt all landmine production, commerce and deployment and to remove the 110 million mines now underground within 10 years of the treaty’s entry into force.

The United States asserted in September that it would not sign, and cited the need to maintain mines in the Korean demilitarised zone. Dozens of countries, from China and Russia to India and Japan, are still hesitant although they all are feeling the pinch.

The United States is under pressure despite its claim to be “rock-solid” against signing, Williams told IPS. “I think they are flailing since the Ottawa process took off.”

Nor is Clinton’s stated reason for opting out — the Pentagon’s desire to defend South Korea from attack across its border with the North – acceptable, the Nobel winner contended.

Clinton has declared the United States intends to give up its “smart mines” in 2003, but to keep mines placed in Korea until 2006 – both goals which can be met under the present treaty, Williams argued, since the treaty allows 10 years before mines have to be removed from the ground.

“In order to have achieved an exception, the United States would have had to prove that the way that landmines are used in Korea is uniquely different from how they are used in the rest of the world,” Williams said. Washington has used Korea largely as “an emotional argument” to try to achieve its actual goal of maintaining “smart mines” that can be shut off overtime without exploding.

Williams, noting Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s recent comments favouring an end to landmines said that if Moscow and Tokyo signed, on ‘it would be extremely difficult for the United States to be comfortable outside the process.”

In its recent report, ‘Killers in the Commonwealth,’ Human Rights Watch took a different tack. It separated the Commonwealth nations that oppose a global mine ban – Bangladesh, Cyprus, India, Pakistan, Singapore and Sri Lanka – from the 34 Commonwealth governments that support a ban, including Canada and South Africa.

“These six governments…are clearly out of touch with the rest of the Commonwealth when it comes to outlawing landmines. They are on the wrong side of humanity,” said the report’s author, HRW researcher Alex Vines. “India, Pakistan and Singapore should be especially embarrassed to be among the rapidly dwindling number of countries still producing these insidious, indiscriminate weapons.”

Even the countries outside the ban have faced increasing pressures not to export mines. India, although not known for exporting the M-14 and M-16A1 landmines it produces, formally declared a moratorium on anti-personnel mine exports last year. Pakistan, which HRW says has supplied mines to Afghanistan, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somaliland, declared a uniliateral moratorium on mine exports this March.

Goose noted that several of the previous major mine exporters, including Russia and China, are not believed to have supplied mines to other countries in any significant quantities for the past three years; Russia has recently extended its own moratorium on mine exports, he added.

Still, some countries are expected to hold out. “The United States, despite its lovely words, is not ready for a ban,” Williams conceded. But given the stigma attached to a weapon which the United Nations estimates kills 800 people every month, Washington’s current stance remains an uneasy one.