RIGHTS: More Countries Pledge ‘No More Landmines’ – Report

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Sep 12 2002 (IPS) - Despite some notable setbacks during the past year, the coalition spearheading efforts to abolish the production and use of anti-personnel landmines says it is advancing toward its goal.

The biggest disappointment in the past year occurred along the disputed border between India and Pakistan, where both countries have laid tens of thousands of new mines since they moved to the brink of war last December, according to the latest annual report by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL).

The 922-page documents also notes that Burma and Russia, both of them non-signatories of the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, have also used landmines during the past year in efforts to subdue insurgents, while Iran, which pledged itself to an export moratorium on anti-personnel mines in 1997, supplied the weapons to allies in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

But there were also major advances, including the ratification by eight countries of the Treaty, bringing the total number of state parties to 125, or close to two-thirds of all the world’s nations. Eighteen more countries have signed the treaty and are moving toward ratification.

“A few holdout governments are undercutting the progress of all the rest,” according to Stephen Goose of Human Rights Watch (HRW), a founding member that co-ordinates ICBL activities, including publication of the annual ‘Landmine Monitor Report’, the 2002 edition of which was released here Friday.

“Three quarters of the countries in the world have renounced the anti-personnel mine, and together they need to bring more pressure on the recalcitrant few,” he said.

The report, which covers the period between May 2001 and May 2002, was released on the fifth anniversary of the negotiation of the Treaty, which took effect in March 1999, after it had been ratified by the required 40 nations. That was only 16 months after the Treaty was opened for signing, the fastest entry-into-force ever of a major multilateral treaty.

The speed with which the Treaty was both negotiated and ratified testifies to the effectiveness of an unprecedented coalition of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), friendly Northern governments with diplomatic clout, and Third World governments whose peoples were forced to deal with the deadly legacy of an inexpensive weapon that has wreaked havoc on old Cold War battlegrounds.

They were motivated by the terrible toll in innocent civilian lives and bodies taken by anti-personnel mines in countries such as Angola, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Central America, and Mozambique, not only during externally-fuelled civil wars there during the 1980s, but long afterwards.

In the early 1990s, when most of the wars had ended, anti-personnel mines were still killing or maiming more than 26,000 people a year. Many of the victims were children.

A similar coalition of NGOs, Western and Third World governments was behind the approval and swift entry into force of the 1998 Rome Statute that created the new International Criminal Court (ICC).

In its new report, the ICBL, which received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997, hailed what it called a “marked reduction” in the number of governments using anti-personnel landmines over the past year, from 13 cited in the last report to only nine. Of the nine remaining countries, two – Angola and Sri Lanka – ceased using mines earlier this year, bringing the actual number down to seven.

Angola was also one of the eight countries that ratified the Treaty over the past year. The other seven included two countries – Eritrea and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) – that, like Angola, had only ceased using them recently. Two other new state-parties, Nigeria and Chile, were also significant because of their status as regional powers, says the report.

A number of important signatories – including Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Yugoslavia, Burundi, and Indonesia – are also moving swiftly toward ratification.

As it stands, Finland is the only member of the European Union (EU) that has neither signed nor ratified the Treaty, while, in the Western hemisphere, only the United States and Cuba have neither signed nor ratified the treaty. Forty-five of 48 sub-Saharan countries have either signed or ratified.

Other key holdouts against the Treaty include Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Libya, Iran, Iraq, and Israel. The interim government of Afghanistan, one of the world’s most heavily mined countries, approved accession to the treaty just six weeks ago.

The report took Russia to task for its use of anti-personnel mines in Chechnya and noted that, despite a declared moratorium on using the weapon, Georgian forces are reported to have laid mines in the Kodori Gorge near the rebellious Abkhazia region.

It called Iran’s apparent supply of landmines to Afghanistan during the past year “disturbing” and noted as well that all major Afghan factions, including the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance, used them during fighting. U.S. forces do not deploy them, according to the report.

The document also notes that the yearly number of mine casualties is now between 15,000 and 20,000, thanks to countries abiding by the Treaty and mine-clearance efforts.

About 34 million stockpiled anti-personnel mines in 61 countries, including seven million in the past year, have been destroyed by 61 countries, while governments have spent 1.4 billion U.S. dollars on de-mining operations over the past decade, it adds.

While the United States remained the largest single donor with 69 million dollars for de-mining efforts in 2001, that was 13 million dollars less than what it provided in 2000, according to the report.

The number of mine producing countries has declined sharply, from 55 in the 1990s to only 14 today, while the global trade in the weapon is now limited to illegal or covert supplies, the documents said.