COLOMBIA 30 Nov-4 Dec 2009 Colombia hosts 2nd Review Conference for Mine Ban Treaty

Stakeholders in the Anti-Personnel Mine-Ban Treaty meet in Cartagena to review the impact the agreement has made in the 10 years since it came into force. It prohibits the use, trade, production and stockpiling of antipersonnel landmines. It also obliges countries to clear all their mined areas within 10 years of signing. New technology could make mine clearance safer and cheaper. President Barack Obama has been asked to reconsider United States opposition to global treaties prohibiting the weapons.

The United States, Russia, China, India and Israel are among the countries refusing to sign the ban, and did not sign the landmark ban on cluster munitions of 2008.

Cluster bombs and landmines wreak havoc on communities trying to recover from war. They kill and disable people, destroy livelihoods, impede reconstruction and the rehabilitation of agricultural land and destroy livestock. As mine clearance is a slow, extremely dangerous and costlly process, progress is ofter intermittent.

A Canadian company, Mine Clearing Corp., has acquired licensing for technology that can locate and map landmines from the air, before anyone sets foot in the minefield. The company says the technique is three times faster, half the price of conventional detection methods, and that it is so sensitive it can pick out the tiny electromagnetic reflections emitted by buried objects from as high as 200 feet in the air. It is among new technologies that could speed up global mine clearance.

Sixty-seven US organizations, in a letter organized by the US branch of the ICBL and delivered on February 10, called on Obama to launch a review of the past administration's decisions to "stand outside of" the Mine Ban Treaty, signed by all but 39 countries in the world in Mar 1999; and the Convention on Cluster Munitions, completed and signed by 95 countries in Dec 2008. The USCBL is a coalition of religious, veterans, medical, peace, humanitarian, and human rights organizations and thousands of individual members who support US participation in the Mine Ban Treaty. The campaign also encourages the government to increase US funding for mine clearance and landmine victim assistance programs.

Though Obama was supportive of efforts to restrict landmines and cluster munitions in the Senate, the new president and his administration have not yet taken a position on either treaty.

The treaty, also known as the Ottawa Convention, came into force on 1 Mar 1991, with 40 signatures. The International Campaign to Ban Land Mines, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997, reports that the number of countries joining the treaty continues to grow, and stands at 156 in 2009.

RELATED READING:

Letter to President Obama (Friends Committee on National Legislation)
http://news.prnewswire.com/DisplayReleaseContent.aspx?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/02-10-2009/0004969903&EDATE=

Pinpointing landmines from the air (CNet news 22 Jan 2009)
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13639_3-10147815-42.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20