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Samoa’s Minister of Transport, Hans Joachim Keil, signed the Mine Ban Treaty in Ottawa on 3 December 1997. In a statement to the signing ceremony, Keil said that Samoa does not “use, produce, import or stockpile anti-personnel mines. However, we share the abhorrence of the indiscriminate devastation and suffering caused by these horrific weapons and have consistently maintained our support for international efforts to ban this terrible scourge.”[1] Keil said “[i]t is our earnest hope that early ratification by all signatories will lead to early entry into force at the earliest possible time” and on 23 July 1998 Samoa became the third Asia-Pacific nation to deposit its instrument of ratification after Niue and Fiji, and the twenty-eighth in total.[2] Samoa, formerly known as Western Samoa, did not actively participate in the Ottawa Process meetings but it supported the 1996 and 1997 landmine resolutions by the UN General Assembly.
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[1]Statement by Hon. Hans Joachim Keil, Minister of Transport of the Independent State of Samoa at the Signing Ceremony, Ottawa, Canada, 3 December 1997.
[2]Ibid.
