Destruction of Anti-Personnel Mines in Mined Areas and Status of Mine Action Programs in Mine Affected State Parties (Article 5)

The ICBL Mine Action Working Group (MAWG) has at various times raised the issue of Article 5 reporting and the inadequate information on status and progress made in relation to clearance of mined areas and status of mine action programs. Hence, as a result of this concern the MAWG calls for standardization and greater detail in Article 7 reports when reporting on Article 5. The reporting should include information on total funding for mine action by donors and recipients, data on impact and size of suspected mine infested areas, and a clear definition and registration of area cleared or otherwise discharged of suspicion. MAWG continues to call for the development of strategic mine action plans with defined priorities and priority setting methodologies by national authorities and other mine action actors. Furthermore, the timeframe for strategic plans should be consistent with the 10-year deadline in the Mine Ban Treaty.

• Some 37 of the total number of 45 mine affected State Parties have submitted their Article 7 reports[1].
• Eritrea, Liberia, Malawi, Namibia, and Sierra Leone are late submitting their reports, and three have yet to reach their respective due date Afghanistan, Angola, and Cyprus.
• Among the submitted Article 7 reports from mine affected State Parties, four have not reported on the mined areas in the country: Bangladesh, El Salvador, Hungary, and the Philippines.
• Nine of the 39 reporting mine affected State Parties lack information regarding the status of clearance programs: Bangladesh, Republic of Congo, Denmark, El Salvador, Guatemala, Hungary, Niger, the Philippines, and Uganda.
• Examples of Article 5 reports completed in accordance with format and requested information and where all relevant data can be found are Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, Croatia, Mozambique, Nicaragua and Yemen. However, there remains a general lack of reporting on the size, i.e. square meters, of cleared land. Reporting continues to be referred to in numbers of cleared mines.

As of 13 May 2003 the following mine affected State Parties have reported on Article 5 in their transparency report [2]:

[1] According to postings on http://disarmament.un.org/MineBan.nsf as of 13 May 2003. Internal deviations in the reporting, among them the reporting on Falkland Malvinas and Djibouti included in the UK, Argentina and French reports, and recent updates on mine affected areas in the Venezuela report affects the total number of mine affected countries.
[2] The information can be found at http://disarmament.un.org/MineBan.nsf