Latest news with #MineBanTreaty
Boston Globe
08-07-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Land mines, a Cold War horror, could return to fortify Europe's borders
Recent moves by Poland, the three Baltic states and Finland — and a vow by President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine — to quit a mine ban treaty that came into force in 1999 won't result in any immediate surge in the use of antipersonnel mines. Formally leaving the treaty is a six-month process. But the recent rush of countries rejecting a pillar of the post-Cold War order has outraged antimine campaigners. Advertisement 'We are furious with these countries,' said Tamar Gabelnick, director of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which in 1997 won a Nobel Peace Prize for its work clearing antipersonnel weapons and its role as the driving force behind the Mine Ban Treaty, known as the Ottawa Convention. 'They know full well that this will do nothing to help them against Russia,' Gabelnick said, dismissing a retreat from the global accord as 'just political games' by officials trying to present themselves as defenders of national security. Advertisement Senior military officials in at least three of the five countries whose parliaments recently voted to withdraw from the treaty have said in the past they saw little military utility in reviving antipersonnel mines. The weapons mostly kill civilians and offer limited defense against modern mechanized armies. The war in Ukraine 'changed everything,' said Veronika Honkasalo, a left-wing member of the Finnish parliament who is opposed to leaving the treaty, a move supported by an overwhelming majority of her fellow legislators in a recent vote. Because of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, she added, 'people got really scared because we have a 1,300-kilometer border with Russia and long history of war with our neighbor.' Of the European countries that share a land border with Russia, only Norway has stayed steadfast in its commitment to the Mine Ban Treaty. The treaty, according to the United Nations, led to the destruction of more than 55 million antipersonnel mines. The weapons were widely used in the Cold War era, in conflicts in Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Myanmar, and many other countries, but continued to kill people long after fighting ended. Eighty percent of the casualties from antipersonnel mines are civilians, many of them children, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which estimates that the number of people killed or maimed each year has fallen to around 3,500 from more than 20,000 over the last two decades. 'It is a horrible weapon,' Honkasalo said. Russia, the United States, China, and a few other countries never signed up to the Ottawa Convention, but more than 160 others did. Advertisement Mary Wareham, a campaigner against antipersonnel mines who was involved in treaty negotiations in the 1990s, said the announced departures were a setback after decades of work to limit civilian casualties. They also 'set a terrible precedent,' she added, for the stability of a vast edifice of international law governing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and the conduct of war itself. 'Once an idea gets going it picks up steam,' said Wareham, who is the deputy director of the crisis, conflict and arms division at Human Rights Watch. 'Where does it stop?' The push by countries near Russia to leave the treaty started last year after a visit to Ukraine by Laurynas Kasciunas, then the defense minister of Lithuania. Told by Ukrainian military officers that the ban on antipersonnel mines made it difficult to hold back Russian troops, he called for a review of their use by Baltic states. 'I understand the concerns about antipersonnel mines — they've caused immense suffering in many places,' he said in an interview. But, Kasciunas added, claims that they are of little military use are untrue. 'They do not directly stop a mechanized division, but they force the enemy to either take significant risks or commit time and resources to clearing operations,' he said. Russia's widespread use of antipersonnel mines played a significant in role in blunting a major Ukrainian offensive in 2023. In March, the defense ministers of the three Baltic states and Poland, all members of NATO, said their countries needed to pull out of the mine ban accord because 'military threats to NATO member states bordering Russia and Belarus have significantly increased.' Finland said in April that it, too, wanted out. Advertisement Ukraine, which formally joined the treaty in 2006, initially saw little reason to revive the use of antipersonnel mines. But, after its failed 2023 offensive and Russia's increasing reliance on foot soldiers to lead assaults, it decided they were needed. In an early blow to the treaty, the Biden administration last year approved supplying Ukraine with American antipersonnel mines. Zelensky this month announced he had signed a decree to withdraw Ukraine from the Ottawa Convention because Russia, never a party to the treaty, was 'using antipersonnel mines with utmost cynicism.' This article originally appeared in .
Arab News
07-07-2025
- Politics
- Arab News
What We Are Reading Today: Ridding the World of Landmines
Authors: Kjell Bjork This book offers a study on how global treaties can be used to establish successful national programs concerned with mine action programs, focusing on the capacity of world governments to implement the convention on the prohibition of the use, stockpiling, production and transfer of anti-personnel mines. Afghanistan and Angola are two of the countries, among other nations, with a large number of landmines. This book sets out to answer the research considering the disparate levels of success among countries committed to implementing the Mine Ban Treaty, according to a review on
Canada News.Net
02-07-2025
- Politics
- Canada News.Net
Five European States Withdraw from Mine Ban Treaty
(New York, July 1, 2025) - The withdrawal of five European countries from a longstanding and effective international treaty prohibiting antipersonnel landmines unnecessarily puts civilians at risk, Human Rights Watch said today. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania deposited their instruments of withdrawal from the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty with United Nations headquarters on June 27, 2025, and they will take effect in six months. Earlier in June, Finland and Poland's parliaments formally approved proposals to leave the treaty and their withdrawal deposits are understood to be imminent. "The five European countries leaving the Mine Ban Treaty put their own civilians at risk and walk back years of progress to eradicate these indiscriminate weapons," said Mary Wareham, deputy crisis, conflict and arms director at Human Rights Watch. "These countries have first-hand experience of the long-term danger caused by antipersonnel landmines, which makes their acceptance of these widely discredited weapons hard to fathom." Antipersonnel mines are designed to explode in response to a person's presence, proximity, or contact. They are typically placed by hand, but can also be scattered by aircraft, rockets, and artillery or dispersed from drones and specialized vehicles. They are inherently indiscriminate weapons that cannot distinguish between soldiers and civilians. Uncleared landmines pose a long-term danger, until they are cleared and destroyed. The Mine Ban Treaty, which entered into force on March 1, 1999, comprehensively prohibits antipersonnel mines and requires countries to destroy their stockpiles, clear mined areas, and help mine victims. A total of 166 countries have ratified the Mine Ban Treaty, most recently Tonga on June 25 and the Marshall Islands on March 12. Russia has not joined the treaty, and its forces have used antipersonnel landmines extensively in Ukraine since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, causing civilian casualties and contaminating agricultural land. Ukraine, a Mine Ban Treaty member state, has also used antipersonnel mines since 2022 and received them from the United States in 2024, in violation of the treaty. On June 29, President Volodymyr Zelensky said he had signed a decree proposing Ukraine withdraw from the Mine Ban Treaty. This measure will now be considered by Ukraine's parliament. Under article 20 of the Mine Ban Treaty, withdrawals do not take effect until six months after the state formally submits its notice to the UN. Particularly relevant to Ukraine's situation, if a state party is engaged in armed conflict at the end of that six-month period, it is not allowed to withdraw from the treaty before the end of the armed conflict. The treaty is also not subject to reservations. "Because Ukraine is in the midst of a war, its proposed withdrawal is effectively a symbolic move to gain political cover while disregarding the core prohibitions on developing, producing, and using antipersonnel mines," Wareham said. "Expanding the use of antipersonnel mines risks causing further civilian casualties and suffering over both the short and long terms." Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine has killed more than 13,300 civilians and injured more than 32,700. Civilian casualties during the first five months of 2025 were 47 percent higher than the same period in 2024, according to the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine. The five European Union member states expressed security concerns raised by Russia's continuing invasion of Ukraine as the main reason for leaving the treaty. Each withdrawing country went through a formal, but rushed, parliamentary-approval process. Member states of the Mine Ban Treaty, including the withdrawing countries, spent five hours discussing the implications of the withdrawals at a meeting in Geneva on June 17-20. A group of African countries led by South Africa urged the withdrawing states to"reconsider and return to negotiation table" as "the challenges we face today require more cooperation, not less." The groups said, "we must collectively preserve [the Mine Ban Treaty's] integrity and universality." On June 16, the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was"gravely concerned" by the Mine Ban Treaty withdrawals, describing the action as "particularly troubling, as it risks weakening civilian protection and undermining two decades of a normative framework that has saved countless lives." Guterres announced a new global campaign to boost support for humanitarian disarmament instruments such as the Mine Ban Treaty and for mine clearance efforts. A total of 101 Nobel laureates issued a joint statement on June 17 cautioning against withdrawals due to the likelihood of civilian harm and to avoid undermining longstanding legal and humanitarian norms. The laureates specifically criticized Russia and the United States, two countries that have not prohibited these weapons, for undermining the Mine Ban Treaty's norms and putting civilians at risk. Individual Nobel Peace laureates who endorsed the call include the Dalai Lama and former presidents Lech Walesa of Poland, Juan Manual Santos of Colombia, Oscar Arias Sanchez of Costa Rica, and Jose Ramos-Horta of Timor-Leste as well as Nobel Women's Initiative members Jody Williams, Shirin Ebadi, Leymah Gbowee, Tawakkol Karman, Narges Mohammadi, and Oleksandra Matviichuk. Human Rights Watch is a cofounder of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, which also endorsed the statement. On June 17, ICBL ambassador and Cambodian landmine survivor Tun Channereth presented the Mine Ban Treaty president with the Nobel laureates' appeal and a joint statement from 21 eminent people, including former Canadian foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy, who led the "Ottawa Process" that created the Mine Ban Treaty. The signers urged the withdrawing states to reconsider, stating that, "[u]pholding [the Mine Ban Treaty] is not only a legal and moral obligation-it is a strategic imperative for all who seek to limit suffering in war." All EU member states are currently parties to the Mine Ban Treaty and in April 2025, the EU reaffirmed its long-standing common position supporting implementation and universalization of the Mine Ban Treaty. Finland and Poland have produced antipersonnel mines in the past and have indicated they may restart production. Finland completed the destruction of its stockpile of one million mines in 2015, while Poland destroyed its stocks of more than one million antipersonnel mines in 2016. Finnish and Polish civilians were harmed by landmines and unexploded ordnance during World War II and other conflicts. More than 80 years later, local authorities still receive requests to clear residual contamination from landmines and explosive remnants of war. "Countries withdrawing from the Mine Ban Treaty will be closely watched as there's now a real danger that they will start producing, transferring, and using antipersonnel mines," Wareham said. "These governments should instead be investing in measures to keep civilians away from mined areas, caring for landmine victims, and promoting mine clearance."
Canada Standard
02-07-2025
- Politics
- Canada Standard
Five European States Withdraw from Mine Ban Treaty
(New York, July 1, 2025) - The withdrawal of five European countries from a longstanding and effective international treaty prohibiting antipersonnel landmines unnecessarily puts civilians at risk, Human Rights Watch said today. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania deposited their instruments of withdrawal from the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty with United Nations headquarters on June 27, 2025, and they will take effect in six months. Earlier in June, Finland and Poland's parliaments formally approved proposals to leave the treaty and their withdrawal deposits are understood to be imminent. "The five European countries leaving the Mine Ban Treaty put their own civilians at risk and walk back years of progress to eradicate these indiscriminate weapons," said Mary Wareham, deputy crisis, conflict and arms director at Human Rights Watch. "These countries have first-hand experience of the long-term danger caused by antipersonnel landmines, which makes their acceptance of these widely discredited weapons hard to fathom." Antipersonnel mines are designed to explode in response to a person's presence, proximity, or contact. They are typically placed by hand, but can also be scattered by aircraft, rockets, and artillery or dispersed from drones and specialized vehicles. They are inherently indiscriminate weapons that cannot distinguish between soldiers and civilians. Uncleared landmines pose a long-term danger, until they are cleared and destroyed. The Mine Ban Treaty, which entered into force on March 1, 1999, comprehensively prohibits antipersonnel mines and requires countries to destroy their stockpiles, clear mined areas, and help mine victims. A total of 166 countries have ratified the Mine Ban Treaty, most recently Tonga on June 25 and the Marshall Islands on March 12. Russia has not joined the treaty, and its forces have used antipersonnel landmines extensively in Ukraine since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, causing civilian casualties and contaminating agricultural land. Ukraine, a Mine Ban Treaty member state, has also used antipersonnel mines since 2022 and received them from the United States in 2024, in violation of the treaty. On June 29, President Volodymyr Zelensky said he had signed a decree proposing Ukraine withdraw from the Mine Ban Treaty. This measure will now be considered by Ukraine's parliament. Under article 20 of the Mine Ban Treaty, withdrawals do not take effect until six months after the state formally submits its notice to the UN. Particularly relevant to Ukraine's situation, if a state party is engaged in armed conflict at the end of that six-month period, it is not allowed to withdraw from the treaty before the end of the armed conflict. The treaty is also not subject to reservations. "Because Ukraine is in the midst of a war, its proposed withdrawal is effectively a symbolic move to gain political cover while disregarding the core prohibitions on developing, producing, and using antipersonnel mines," Wareham said. "Expanding the use of antipersonnel mines risks causing further civilian casualties and suffering over both the short and long terms." Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine has killed more than 13,300 civilians and injured more than 32,700. Civilian casualties during the first five months of 2025 were 47 percent higher than the same period in 2024, according to the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine. The five European Union member states expressed security concerns raised by Russia's continuing invasion of Ukraine as the main reason for leaving the treaty. Each withdrawing country went through a formal, but rushed, parliamentary-approval process. Member states of the Mine Ban Treaty, including the withdrawing countries, spent five hours discussing the implications of the withdrawals at a meeting in Geneva on June 17-20. A group of African countries led by South Africa urged the withdrawing states to "reconsider and return to negotiation table" as "the challenges we face today require more cooperation, not less." The groups said, "we must collectively preserve [the Mine Ban Treaty's] integrity and universality." On June 16, the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was "gravely concerned" by the Mine Ban Treaty withdrawals, describing the action as "particularly troubling, as it risks weakening civilian protection and undermining two decades of a normative framework that has saved countless lives." Guterres announced a new global campaign to boost support for humanitarian disarmament instruments such as the Mine Ban Treaty and for mine clearance efforts. A total of 101 Nobel laureates issued a joint statement on June 17 cautioning against withdrawals due to the likelihood of civilian harm and to avoid undermining longstanding legal and humanitarian norms. The laureates specifically criticized Russia and the United States, two countries that have not prohibited these weapons, for undermining the Mine Ban Treaty's norms and putting civilians at risk. Individual Nobel Peace laureates who endorsed the call include the Dalai Lama and former presidents Lech Walesa of Poland, Juan Manual Santos of Colombia, Oscar Arias Sanchez of Costa Rica, and Jose Ramos-Horta of Timor-Leste as well as Nobel Women's Initiative members Jody Williams, Shirin Ebadi, Leymah Gbowee, Tawakkol Karman, Narges Mohammadi, and Oleksandra Matviichuk. Human Rights Watch is a cofounder of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, which also endorsed the statement. On June 17, ICBL ambassador and Cambodian landmine survivor Tun Channereth presented the Mine Ban Treaty president with the Nobel laureates' appeal and a joint statement from 21 eminent people, including former Canadian foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy, who led the "Ottawa Process" that created the Mine Ban Treaty. The signers urged the withdrawing states to reconsider, stating that, "[u]pholding [the Mine Ban Treaty] is not only a legal and moral obligation-it is a strategic imperative for all who seek to limit suffering in war." All EU member states are currently parties to the Mine Ban Treaty and in April 2025, the EU reaffirmed its long-standing common position supporting implementation and universalization of the Mine Ban Treaty. Finland and Poland have produced antipersonnel mines in the past and have indicated they may restart production. Finland completed the destruction of its stockpile of one million mines in 2015, while Poland destroyed its stocks of more than one million antipersonnel mines in 2016. Finnish and Polish civilians were harmed by landmines and unexploded ordnance during World War II and other conflicts. More than 80 years later, local authorities still receive requests to clear residual contamination from landmines and explosive remnants of war. "Countries withdrawing from the Mine Ban Treaty will be closely watched as there's now a real danger that they will start producing, transferring, and using antipersonnel mines," Wareham said. "These governments should instead be investing in measures to keep civilians away from mined areas, caring for landmine victims, and promoting mine clearance." Source: Human Rights Watch
Telegraph
30-06-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
When the Devil drives: Ukraine will deploy a truly horrible weapon
The decision by Ukraine to withdraw from the Ottawa Convention, known as the Mine Ban Treaty, comes as no surprise given the gravity of the situation that the embattled Ukrainians find themselves in in this third year of all-out war. Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine there has been constant domestic pressure on the government and on President Zelensky to withdraw from the treaty, mainly for protective pragmatic reasons and in light of the fact that Russia is not a signatory to the treaty and is a prolific user of landmines. The treaty of 1997 bans the use, production, stockpiling or transfer of anti-personnel landmines (APLs). It further requires signatory nations to destroy stockpiles and to clear laid minefields. Ukraine ratified the treaty in 2005. It is a fact that APLs are horrible things. They do not only maim and kill soldiers, but anyone who may approach including children and other non-combatants. They are extremely difficult and dangerous to clear up, and often render stretches of land unusable for many years. But they are extremely effective, particularly as a means of defence against an attacker. In the face of the widespread use of mines by Russia since 2014 and especially post 2022, when Ukraine has been engaged in full-scale war with Russia, it increasingly looks nonsensical to have this significant disadvantage – designed for a world where the rules of the international order are followed by all sides and therefore a world that simply does not exist. The invasion by Russia has seen the increased use of mines of all sorts, though the use of anti-personnel mines by Ukraine has drawn scrutiny due to treaty obligations. Ukrainian officials and military have floated the idea of leaving or suspending the treaty citing the need to defend territory more effectively, asymmetry in military tools and tactics between Ukraine and Russia and the fact that whilst Ukraine adheres to the treaty the aggressor faces no such limitations in what, for Ukraine, is an existential war. It comes at a time when Russia's near neighbours in Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Finland have withdrawn from the treaty this year, once again citing the fact that Russia has no such restrictions and learning the lesson of the surprise invasion of February 2022. The fighting in Ukraine has also shown just how easy it is to clear anti-tank mines – which are allowed under the Treaty – when these are not mixed with APLs. The move is likely to be seen as a pragmatic move and looking to the USA – which is also not a signatory to the treaty but maintains a voluntary non-use outside of the Korean Peninsula – it is not ultimately one that should not upset too many of Ukraine's backers. The danger is that from a humanitarian, legal, and diplomatic standpoint, withdrawal would be controversial and potentially damaging. That said – if your country no longer exists would that matter? Needs must when the Devil drives, I believe.
