Printed from: www.icbl.org/Treaty/MBT/Annual-Meetings/9MSP/Statements/Statements/comments_chad
In addition to the good points made by the Analyzing Group, we would like to make two short comments and raise a technical question.
The ICBL recognizes that political instability and continued conflict have had a serious impact on Chad’s ability to meet its deadline. However, we find that far greater progress should have been achieved by the mine action program in Chad after many years of significant UN and donor support. For example, it is troubling that Chad cannot make use of the data it has collected over the past several years.
Second, we note that while Chad aims to put forward a plan in its next request to complete the removal of all emplaced antipersonnel mines, this plan will not include most of the Tibesti region, which is not under Chad’s control at present. We want to underscore that this area will of course eventually need to be cleared before Chad can declare completion of Article 5 obligations.
As we said earlier, unrealistically large estimates of contamination make it difficult if not impossible to conduct effective planning. We therefore welcome the request for a short amount of time to conduct the necessary surveys to clearly determine the remaining contaminated area.
We do have one technical question about the time requested, however. Chad is asking for an extension until January 2011 but anticipates asking for a second extension in 2011, after the additional survey work is done. In concrete terms, this would mean a request submitted at the MSP in the fall of 2011, meaning Chad will effectively be in breach of the treaty between January 2011 and this MSP. We therefore recommend that either Chad revise its extension period to take it up to the time of the next planned extension request submission (fall 2011) or plan to submit a request at the 10th MSP in the fall of 2010, though this may be too early according to the initial request).