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Key developments since May 2001: Landmine Monitor verified the presence of a small minefield at a Navy base near the Colombian border. Venezuela has not publicly acknowledged having landmines on its territory. As of July 2002, Venezuela had not yet submitted its initial Mine Ban Treaty Article 7 transparency report, due by 29 March 2000. Landmine Monitor has been told that Venezuela stockpiles approximately 40,000 antipersonnel mines. In December 2001, a media report indicated that a Colombian guerrilla group, EPLA, had used explosive devices inside Venezuela.
Venezuela signed the Mine Ban Treaty on 3 December 1997, ratified on 14 April 1999, and the treaty entered into force on 1 October 1999. Venezuela has not yet enacted any national implementation measures. An official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs told Landmine Monitor that when Venezuela ratifies an international treaty, it immediately becomes national law, and therefore Venezuela considers that there is no need for a domestic implementation law.[1]
Venezuela attended the Third Meeting of States Parties to the Mine Ban Treaty in September 2001 in Managua, Nicaragua. It cosponsored and voted in favor of UN General Assembly Resolution 56/24M in support of the Mine Ban Treaty on 29 November 2001. Venezuela participated in the “Mine Action in Latin America” conference, held in Miami from 3-5 December 2001. Venezuela did not attend the Mine Ban Treaty intersessional meetings in January 2002, but did participate in the meetings in May 2002.
As of June 2002, Venezuela has not yet submitted its initial Mine Ban Treaty Article 7 transparency report, due by 9 March 2000. In September 2001, Venezuelan Ambassador Miguel Gómez told the plenary at the Third Meeting of State Parties to the Mine Ban Treaty, “The Ministry of Defense has submitted the report to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs where it is being reviewed so as to be sent to the appropriate agency as soon as possible.”[2] According to Defense Ministry officials, that information was incorrect.
In January 2002, the officer who prepared the Article 7 Report for the Ministry of Defense told Landmine Monitor that the report was completed and submitted to the Director of Operations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the end of January 2002.[3] The Director of Operations told Landmine Monitor that the report was approved by the Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Vice Admiral Bernabe Carrero, on 30 January 2002, and added that it would be submitted to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at any moment.[4] Apparently, following the political crisis in April 2002,[5] the Ministry of Defense decided to delay its submission of the report to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
On 17 June 2002 the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Defense of the Andean Community (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Perú and Venezuela) met in Lima and issued the “Lima Commitment.”[6] In the Lima Commitment, six points were outlined related to the Mine Ban Treaty, including complete destruction of stocks, establishing national programs for victim assistance and socioeconomic reintegration, and a call for non-state actors to comply with the international norm against antipersonnel mines.
Venezuela is not a party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW). It did not participate in the third annual meeting of States Parties to CCW Amended Protocol II in December 2001, but did participate in the Second CCW Review Conference in December 2001, as an observer.
Officials state that Venezuela has never produced or exported antipersonnel mines.[7] As previously reported by Landmine Monitor, the US Department of Defense has identified Venezuela as the producer in the past of the MV-1 improvised fragmentation antipersonnel mine.[8] In January 2002, Brigadier General José Esteban Godoy Peña told Landmine Monitor that the Venezuelan state had not produced mines, and explained that the MV-1 was a mine used by guerrillas in the 1960s, known as “trampas caza bobos” (fool-catcher booby-traps).[9]
No reliable information is available on illegal trafficking of weapons, including antipersonnel mines, within Venezuelan territory. While there have been various reports of illegal trafficking of weapons along the Colombian-Venezuelan border, Landmine Monitor has not found any evidence of trafficking in antipersonnel mines.
Venezuela has not yet formally and publicly provided information regarding its stockpile of antipersonnel mines. However, a government official told Landmine Monitor that the Army and Navy stockpile approximately 40,000 antipersonnel mines, of more than ten types, mostly US-manufactured.[10]
According to Brigadier General Godoy Peña, the Directorate of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law of the Armed Forces recommended to the Joint Chiefs of Staff that a stockpile destruction plan be prepared, with 20 percent of stockpiled mines retained for training.[11] Aside from this recommendation, there are no other indications that Venezuela is developing a stockpile destruction plan.
According to the retired military officer contacted by Landmine Monitor, the Armed Forces have “some small minefields” at Navy bases in Apure and Amazonas states, on the border with Colombia.[12] He said the minefields are inside the military posts, and are properly marked. He said, “There have been no accidents because only military personnel are near the minefields, there are no civilians.” A government official has confirmed this information.
In May 2002, Landmine Monitor traveled to the small community of Guafitas, in Páez municipality, Apure state, and verified the presence of a small minefield inside a Navy post on the Arauca River, on the Colombian border.[13] The minefield, approximately five meters in width, is around the perimeter of the Navy post and is fenced, with ten warning signs. A local resident told Landmine Monitor that the Navy post was established in 1997 and that he did not know of any incidents involving the landmines.
Venezuela has not publicly acknowledged the existence of minefields on its territory, and has not yet publicly declared any plans to remove the minefields as required by the Mine Ban Treaty. It is not known if the Armed Forces has engaged in maintenance of these minefields since Venezuela became a State Party to the Mine Ban Treaty in October 1999.
According to a December 2001 media report, guerrillas belonging to a little known Colombian group called the Latin American Popular Army (EPLA, Ejército Popular Latinoamericano) are using “explosive mines” to surround and protect their camps in Venezuelan territory.[14] The EPLA and other Colombian non-state actors are active in the border regions between Colombia and Venezuela.
According to the report, Venezuelan military and police forces found two temporary camps where two kidnapped individuals were being held, in the mountains of San Joaquín de Navay, in Fernández Feo municipality, southern Táchira state. When asked by a reporter if security forces had found it difficult to reach the site because of the presence of “minas quiebrapatas” (leg-breaking mines), the Chief of the First Regional Command, General Irwin Marval Molina, was quoted as saying that this was true, explosive objects had been placed throughout the site, but there had been no casualties among the security forces.[15]
If the media report is correct, this would mark the first time since 1997 that Venezuelan security forces have found these types of explosives, and an investigation on their origin is being conducted.[16]
Since 1996, Venezuela has contributed 23 military mine action supervisors to the MARMINCA mine clearance efforts by the OAS in Central America, including four in 2001 and four in 2002.[17]
There are no known landmine victims in Venezuela.[18]
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[1] Telephone interview with Victor Manzanares, First Secretary for Security and Disarmament, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Venezuela, 4 February 2000.
[2] Miguel Gómez, Venezuelan Ambassador to Nicaragua, intervention at the Third Meeting of State Parties, Managua, Nicaragua, September 2001.
[3] Telephone interview with Frigate Captain Lino Poleo, Ministry of Defense, 28 January 2002.
[4] Telephone interview with General Velázquez Luque, Director of Operations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 31 January 2002.
[5] The political crisis that led to an attempted coup d’etat on 11 April 2002 and subsequent restoration of President Hugo Chávez on 13 April 2002 resulted in serious disruptions in national institutions, including the Armed Forces.
[6] “Compromiso de Lima” (aka the “Andean Letter for Peace and Security towards Limits and Control of External Defense Spending”), 17 June 2002, at: www.rree.gob.pe; see also Statement by Ambassador Jorge Voto-Bernales, Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva, at the Conference on Disarmament, 27 June 2002.
[7] See Landmine Monitor Report 2001, p. 389; also, on production, interview with Mayor Josman Castillo Benítez, Armaments Service, Air Force of Venezuela, Buenos Aires, 6 November 2000; and interview with General Alberto Müller Rojas, Army of Venezuela, 30 November 2000.
[8] US Department of Defense, “ORDATA II, Version 1.0,” CD-ROM. This contains a photo and schematic drawing of the mine.
[9] Interview with Brigadier General José Esteban Godoy Peña, Director, Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law, Armed Forces of Venezuela, 30 January 2002. He showed Landmine Monitor a drawing of the MV-1 in which the acronym “FALN” was visible. The Armed Forces for National Liberation (FALN, Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional) were non-state actors active in Venezuela in the 1960s. The Spanish acronym for Venezuela’s Armed Forces is FAN (Fuerza Armada Nacional).
[10] Telephone interview with government official who requested anonymity, 10 June 2002.
[11] Interview with Brigadier General José Esteban Godoy Peña, Director, Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law, Armed Forces of Venezuela, 30 January 2002.
[12] Interview with retired Venezuelan military officer who requested anonymity, and telephone interview with government official who requested anonymity, 10 June 2002.
[13] Landmine Monitor field visit to the community of Guafitas, Páez, Apure state, 31 May 2002.
[14] This use was confirmed in the article by General Irwin Marval Molina, Chief of Regional Command No.1 of the National Guard. Eleanora Delgado, “Muertos seis subversives y desmantelado campamento de insurgents. Guerrilleros tiended campo minado para aislar a personas secuestradas,” El Nacional (Caracas), 2 December 2001. The EPLA is a splinter group of the former Popular Liberation Army (EPL, Ejército Popular de Liberación) of Colombia.
[15] Eleanora Delgado, “Muertos seis subversives y desmantelado campamento de insurgents. Guerrilleros tiended campo minado para aislar a personas secuestradas,” El Nacional (Caracas), 2 December 2001.
[16] Ibid.
[17] The 23 supervisors constitute 10% of the total contributions to the program from regional countries, and include: three in 1996, three in 1997, four in 1998, three in 1999,and two in 2000. Contributing Countries (International Supervisors) to the OAS Program of Demining in Central America, Table provided in email to Landmine Monitor (HRW) from Carl Case, OAS, 18 June 2002.
[18] Landmine Monitor consulted with human rights groups in border regions, who confirmed there are no known victims in border communities.
