Ratifications pass halfway mark

Ratifications pass halfway mark

http://www.unicef.org/newsline/98pr32.htm

Thursday, 18 June 1998: United Nations
Secretary-General Kofi Annan and UNICEF
Executive Director Carol Bellamy congratulated the
20 countries that have now ratified the treaty to ban
anti-personnel landmines, saying their actions would
lend momentum to the urgent push to put the accord
into effect this year. Peru's ratification, the 20th thus
far, was made official today. Approval by 40
countries will make the treaty binding international
law.

"Ratification will be a giant step towards the
demining of the world," Mr. Annan said. "Delay will
only add to lives lost and to the growing expense of
removing these silent killers from the earth." He
urged all countries that have signed the treaty to
move swiftly to ratify it and expressed hope that
governments that have not signed the treaty will now
do so.

The treaty, signed last December in Ottawa,
Canada, prohibits the use, production, development,
acquisition, sale, stockpiling and transfer of
anti-personnel landmines. These weapons kill and
maim 26,000 civilians a year, about half of them
women and children.

"The agreement to abolish these horrific weapons is
being achieved with remarkable swiftness and
resolve," Ms. Bellamy said. "Now that we have 50
per cent of the requisite ratifications, we have every
hope that governments will complete the
achievement with the greatest possible haste."

More than 120 governments have taken the
preliminary step of signing the agreement. The 20
ratifiers are Belize, Bolivia, Canada, Croatia,
Denmark, Djibouti, Fiji, Holy See, Hungary,
Ireland, Malawi, Mali, Mauritius, Mexico, Niue,
Peru, San Marino, Switzerland, Trinidad & Tobago,
and Turkmenistan.

Yet the threat of landmines persists, with tens of
millions of mines laid in some 70 countries around
the world and the continuing threat of more mining.
"Wherever mining occurs," Ms. Bellamy said, "it is
part of a shameful, growing tendency to make
children and women the principal targets of violence
in conflict situations."

On the positive side, Ms. Bellamy she expressed
gratitude that the Organisation of African Unity
(OAU) has been deeply involved in the movement
to ban landmines. In February Ms. Bellamy and
OAU Secretary-General, Salim Ahmed Salim,
issued a joint call to hasten ratification of the treaty
in Africa and to make the continent a mine-free
zone.

"Besides the lives they have claimed and gruesome
injuries they have inflicted," Ms. Bellamy said,
"landmines or even the suspicion of a mine will
effectively render useless agricultural land, forests,
orchards and cuts access to water points, schools
and health services. They also prevent emergency
aid to communities except by costly air lifts."

Reports from countries such as Angola, Burundi and
Sierra Leone consistently indicate that mines are still
being laid. In Angola, for example, landmines have
reappeared in areas which had been cleared.

UNICEF has worked with several partners on
major landmine education programmes including
recent launches of multilingual Superman and
Wonder Woman comic books to alert children in
specific regions to the dangers of hidden mines. In
addition, UNICEF has helped create dramas,
games, puppet shows and songs to teach children
around the world how to recognize a mine and what
to do when they encounter one.

To help the tens of thousands maimed by mines,
UNICEF works with partners to support prosthetic
centres and to provide psychosocial care for
landmine victims.

"The world community must ensure that the
landmine treaty comes into force as quickly as
possible," Ms. Bellamy said, "to help bring the day
when these weapons are remembered as a menace
of the past."

Please email media-at-unicef-org with comments
or requests for more information, quoting
CF/DOC/PR/1998/32.