Statement on the Article 5 Extension Request Decisions

ICBL Statement on the Article 5 Extension Request Decisions

10th Meeting of the States Parties to the Mine Ban Treaty

3 December 2010

Mr. President,

We wanted to take the floor again on this issue to make two brief points. First, as we have said time and again, the provision for extensions under Article 5 was only meant for exceptional circumstances, and therefore States Parties need to be exceptionally rigorous when preparing, examining and deciding on requests for additional time. We find that the analyses of these requests were thorough and solid, but this was in spite of the fact that most of the requests had too little specific information on the extent of the remaining contamination and the plans for the extension period and in spite of the fact that only one of the requesting states submitted it on time. We also note that participation in the preparation of the analyses and subsequent comments on the requests were limited to a very small number of states, which is not in keeping with the duty of ALL States Parties to assess and decide on the requests. We also would like to note that the assessments and comments on requests should be analytical, not political.

Secondly, Mr. President, we want to emphasize that the same careful attention paid to extension requests must also extend to the period after the decisions are made. The decisions taken today include many concrete benchmarks for states to follow in the extension period. They also refer generally to all time-bound commitments in the plans submitted with extension requests and call upon states to report on progress on those specific commitments. Given that these are formal decisions of the Meeting of States Parties, we want to remind States Parties receiving extensions that it is the collective will of States Parties for those benchmarks to be respected and progress to be monitored. We would like to point out that in the case of Colombia, the time-bound benchmarks only extend through the first three years of the 10-year extension period. We would therefore like to suggest that when Colombia submits its post-2013 work plan in 2013 in accordance with today's decision, States Parties set out additional milestones based on that plan.

Thank you.