PRESS BRIEFING ON ANNIVERSARY OF ANTI-PERSONNEL MINE CONVENTION

Under the 1999 mine-ban treaty, 30 million anti-personnel mines had been destroyed by 55 countries, and 44 of the 45 countries that had pledged to eliminate their stockpiles by the treaty’s fourth anniversary had done so, correspondents were told at a Headquarters press briefing this afternoon.

That was a great achievement, said Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs Jayantha Dhanapala.  The treaty became operational within about 15 months -– opening for signature in December 1997 and entering into force on 1 March 1999 -- about the fastest for any disarmament treaty in history of such instruments. After a country accedes to or ratifies, it has four years to destroy all its landmines, except for a limited number reserved for training; that 44 of the first  45 countries that ratified had met their disarmament goal was “a very high success rate” for a relatively young agreement .  Another 37 countries would face a stockpile-destruction deadline in the current year.

The 131 States parties to the treaty, formally known as the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction (Ottawa Treaty), have committed themselves to put an end to the suffering and casualties caused by anti-personnel mines, which kill or maim hundreds of people every week, mostly defenceless civilians and children, obstruct economic development and reconstruction, inhibit the repatriation of refugees and internally displaced persons, and have other severe consequences for many years after emplacement.

Mr. Dhanapala also read out the following statement issued today by the Secretary-General:  “Under the auspices of the mine-ban treaty, millions of mines have been destroyed -– each one potentially saving an innocent life.  I congratulate the countries that have met the deadline for destroying their stockpiles.  This is an important contribution to peace, security and the well- being of individuals and communities worldwide.  I call on other nations to follow suit as soon as possible.  I also appeal to those countries that have not yet acceded to the treaty to join the rest of the international community in this effort.  Only with universal participation will we eliminate the scourge of landmines and alleviate the misery they cause every day around the world.”

Joining Mr. Dhanapala today was Martin Berber, Director of the United Nations Mine Action Service, one of three main United Nations organizations involved in landmine clearance and victim support.  The others are the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).  The Service, in addition to coordinating programmes, assists in emergency situations in the context of humanitarian operations and peacekeeping.  The UNDP supports governments with building capacity and technical advice, while UNICEF’s special responsibility is mine-risk education.

Mr. Barber told correspondents that the Service worked with 12 other United Nations bodies to coordinate the response to the landmine problem.  Mine action meant doing everything possible to reduce the impact of landmines on communities.  That included mine-risk education, assistance to victims, mine clearance and destruction of stockpiles, and advocacy efforts.

Great progress had been made in implementing the Convention, he continued. In addition to the destruction of stockpiles, the number of producers had gone down from about 55 to 14.  Many of the countries that had not yet signed had nevertheless banned their export.  The international trade in mines had basically come to a halt, and the use of landmines was much less in current conflicts than it was five to 10 years ago.

In 2002, he noted, the conflicts had ended in Afghanistan and Angola, which were probably two of the three most heavily mine-affected countries in the world.  The fact that both countries had acceded to the Convention and had committed themselves to eliminate landmines was great progress.  Significant progress was also being made in other countries emerging from recent conflicts.

Commitments by donor governments amounted to about $200 million per year for mine clearance, victim assistance, and so forth, he said.  But, there was a need to keep them committed and to persuade them to increase their level of support.  He wished to keep that issue on the radar screen of the world’ press.  The next major deadline was 2009, when the first 45 countries were due to have completed the clearance of landmines from their territories.  So, that was not just about destroying stocks, but about destroying those in the ground, which was a much tougher task.

The United Nations was presently supporting mine action in 35 countries, he continued.  There were two constraints to its work -- shortage of resources and the lack of security in accessing those small number of countries either not yet committed to the goals of the Convention or still engaged in conflict.

Seeking clarification on a number of points, a correspondent asked why Namibia was listed as never having possessed landmines and why Mozambique and Angola were not on the list of having destroyed them.

Mr. Berber said that Angola had acceded to the Convention in the last six months, and it took a full six months for a country to be deemed a State party.  It might be a matter of just a few more days before Angola appeared on that list.  He added that Angola, one of the three most heavily contaminated countries in the world, had hardly begun the process of destroying its mines, but it was certainly committed to doing so and considerable progress was being made in its mine clearance.

Mozambique had had a mine-clearance programme for many years and had made very good progress, he continued.  The extent of the remaining problem, in terms of impact on communities there, was quite small.  It was true that fairly large areas were not fully clear, but those were not high priority areas.  He had no information about its stockpile situation.

In response to a further question, he said it was extraordinarily difficult to have an accurate estimate of disabled persons, because in most affected countries people who died from a landmine might never reach a hospital and their deaths might never be recorded.  But, estimates had been made that landmines victimized approximately 26,000 people each year.  In the last couple of years, that figure had declined to between 15,000 and 20,000.  Although those figures were dropping, the burden for caring for the cumulative number of victims over the years was very severe for mine-affected nations.

To a question about producers, he explained that 55 countries had produced landmines in the past, including all of the major industrialized countries such as Russia, China, United States, United Kingdom, France, Belgium and Italy.  They were still producing landmines, although that information might be contested, but most had stopped selling or exporting them; the international trade seemed to have stopped.

Asked about the deadlines under the treaty, Mr. Dhanapala explained that the rules required that four years after ratification or accession, a country had to destroy their stockpiles.

Replying to a question about whether landmines emplanted in the Second World War were part of the international campaign, Mr. Berber said that depended on where they were and whether they were having an immediate humanitarian or economic impact.  The priority in terms of mine clearance related to how the weapons were affecting people and their communities, not simply their age or numbers.

Elaborating on the $200 million in donor funds, he said that figure had stabilized over the last two to three years, having grown steadily from a lower figure over the previous five years.  That was not going down, but it was not going up either.  In 2004, there would be a review conference of the Convention.  That would be an opportunity to relaunch it and generate some new momentum, perhaps even to set new targets for donors.  The first mine-clearance programme had started in Afghanistan in 1990, and had built quite steadily since then, to $200 million, he added.

There were no demographically based estimates in terms of what percentages of the casualties were women and children, he replied to another question.  In some societies, the people most likely to be injured were young men because those were the ones out in the fields.  That was true for Afghanistan, where the majority of victims were young men.  In other countries, the figures might indeed be related to the high proportion of women and children, but there was no universal pattern to that.

Mr. Dhanapala, responding to a further question, said that there was another mine-ban instrument, namely, Protocol II of the 1981 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, which did not have an outright ban, but regulated landmines’ use.  A number of major countries outside the Ottawa Convention belonged to that one.  So, a lot of restraint was being exercised in the use and export of landmines, including a virtual halt in their trade.  Regarding the additional Protocol, attempts were being made by States parties to expand its scope to include certain kinds of unexploded ordinance.  A group of experts was looking into that.

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