Key developments since May 2005: As of June 2006, Guyana had not yet submitted its initial Article 7 transparency report, due by 29 July 2004.
The Republic of Guyana signed the Mine Ban Treaty on 4 December 1997, ratified on 5 August 2003, and became a State Party on 1 February 2004. Guyana is not believed to have taken any national measures to implement the treaty domestically as required by Article 9. In October 2003, the president of Guyana told the ICBL that the government would work to “ensure that the necessary legal and administrative frameworks are instituted” to facilitate “early implementation of the treaty.”[1]
As of June 2006, Guyana had not yet submitted its initial Article 7 transparency report, due by 29 July 2004. The ICBL, Canada, Belgium and others have urged Guyana to submit the report without delay.[2]
Guyana did not participate in the Sixth Meeting of States Parties in Zagreb, Croatia in November-December 2005, or the intersessional Standing Committee meetings in Geneva in June 2005 and May 2006.
Guyana has not been identified as a producer, exporter or user of antipersonnel mines in the past. Guyana has never officially declared that it has a stockpile of antipersonnel mines. Guyana’s representative at a regional stockpile destruction meeting in Buenos Aires in November 2000 said that the country had a stockpile, but declined to provide any details.[3] In June 2002, a Guyana Defence Force official told Landmine Monitor that some, if not all, of the stockpiled antipersonnel mines were PMB-2 mines manufactured by North Korea.[4] Landmine Monitor has previously reported an estimated stockpile of 20,000 antipersonnel mines. The Mine Ban Treaty requires that Guyana destroy any stockpiled antipersonnel mines as soon as possible, but no later than 1 February 2008.
Guyana is not mine-affected, but it suffered a problem with unexploded ordnance created by a series of explosions that leveled Camp Groomes Army Base in December 2000.[5]
[1] Letter from Bharrat Jagdeo, President of the Republic of Guyana, to Elizabeth Bernstein, ICBL Coordinator, 3 October 2003.
[2] On 15 August 2005, the Canadian High Commission in Georgetown wrote to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs requesting information on implementation of the Mine Ban Treaty and submission of the Article 7 report. Email from Carol Anne Persaud, Political/Economic Analyst, Canadian High Commission, to Lesley Dowridge-Collins, Acting Director, Multilateral and Global Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 15 August 2005, copied to Landmine Monitor (Mines Action Canada).
[3] See Landmine Monitor Report 2001, p. 403.
[4] Interview with Guyana Defence Force official who requested anonymity, Georgetown, June 2002.
[5] See Landmine Monitor Report 2004, p. 486.