Sidestepping the Ottawa Mine Ban Treaty

Abstract

This week, more than 200 antipersonnel-mine survivors, mine clearers, and representatives of the Nobel prize-winning International Campaign to Ban Landmines will meet with US campaigners in Washington, DC. Planned events include more than 300 meetings with members of Congress, a prayer service for landmine victims, and a giant shoe-pile on the Capitol Hill. The ICBL coalition has come to the USA for the first time and one of its aims is to urge George Bush's administration to sign the 1997 Ottawa Mine Ban Treaty, which became binding in international law on March 1, 1999. So far, 139 countries have signed up. 111 nations have ratified the treaty by stopping use and production of landmines and declaring that they will destroy stockpiles over the next 4 years and clear mined areas within 10 years. This is an important international achievement, which we thought almost impossible only 6 years ago (Lancet 1995; 346: 715). When ICBL released its second annual report, the Landmine monitor report 2000: toward a mine-free world, in September last year, there was cause for cautious optimism. More than 22 million landmines had been destroyed in 50 nations and the number of mine-related casualties in heavily mined countries such as Afghanistan, Cambodia, and Mozambique was declining. However, there were still as many as ten casualties in Afghanistan every day, and overall 71 countries reported mine-related deaths and an additional 30 countries non-fatal mine victims. Most of those who suffer landmine injuries live in less-developed countries where medical support is lacking. Subsequent disabilities have wide-ranging implications for the livelihoods of their families. Unfortunately, the USA is, together with Turkey, the only non-signatory NATO country to the Ottawa treaty and one of only 16 remaining countries, including Russia and China, that produce antipersonnel mines. The USA did not sign the Ottawa convention on the grounds that landmines are needed to maintain US military personnel security in the Korean peninsula, a reason that is becoming increasingly obsolete. The plan in the Clinton era was to sign up in 2006 but only if alternatives to antipersonnel landmines had been developed by then. President Bush has yet to comment on the issue. The US government's reason—many would call it an excuse—for not signing the treaty has now come under scrutiny in a report, Alternative anti-personnel mines—the next generations, published by Landmine Action last week. At the heart of the Ottawa treaty is the indiscriminate use of antipersonnel mines. The treaty clearly states that “mines designed to be detonated by the presence, proximity or contact of a vehicle, as opposed to a person, that are equipped with anti-handling devices, are not considered antipersonnel mines as a result of being so equipped”. However, the report argues that landmine technology has moved on and distinctions between mines designed to kill or injure people and mines labelled antitank or antivehicle are not always clear. For example, some antivehicle mines can be detonated by as little pressure as 50 kg, a force easily exerted by a running person. Other alternatives currently tested by US companies include the nonlethal TADD (taser area denial device), which is activated by a trip mechanism and shoots barbed electrical darts carrying 50 000 V into victims, causing temporary incapacitation. Signatory countries, such as Germany and the UK, are developing equally gruesome alternatives for future use. Whereas, strictly speaking, these devices are legal under the Ottawa convention, some are clearly not. The RADAM (remote area denial artillery munition) system, which has a scheduled US decision about production in 2002, is a combination of antipersonnel and antitank mines. A necessary first step in Washington this week would be for the US government to join the signatory countries in opposing use of antipersonnel mines. For the survivors of landmines nothing less is acceptable.