The philosophy of the convention

(Monday 18 June 2001 Warsaw) Statement by Sylvie Brigot
ICBL Government Relations Officer
Understanding the Ottawa Convention Conference
18-19 June 2001 in Warsaw, Poland

Mr Undersecretary of State Meller, Mr Director Handzlik, Ambassador Livermore, dear Colleagues from the International Committee of the Red Cross, UNMAS, GICHD and ICBL, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, it is an honour and a privilege to be asked to speak this morning here in Warsaw, at this regional conference entitled "Understanding the Ottawa Convention".

I would like to thank the governments of Poland and Canada for organising the conference. There have also been conferences on landmines in Eastern Europe before in Budapest, Zagreb and Ljubljana, last year. This definitely shows the importance of the issue in the region and the willingness of States to move forward toward a mine free North Eastern Europe.

When the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, now a coalition of 1300 organisations in 91 countries, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997, the Nobel Committee stated that the International Campaign "started a process which in the space of a few years changed a ban on antipersonnel mines from a vision to a feasible reality." The process to eradicate antipersonnel mines has continued since that time, and is more than ever a dynamic and on going process led by very committed people, whether they are governmental or non governmental. The recent session of the Intersessional Standing Committees at the beginning of May in Geneva showed this very well.

But a lot of work remains to be done to reach our mutual goal which is a mine free planet , therefore the ICBL hopes that this conference today will bring on board countries that have signed but not yet ratified the Treaty, including Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine and encourage those who have not signed, including Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Belarus and Russia to take steps that will move them closer to their accession.

The title of my presentation may surprise more than one in the room. Actually I don't remember exactly how this title came about but what I wanted to address here is how and why this Convention is an exception in the field of disarmament and Humanitarian Law and what is the challenge ahead of us today to turn words into reality.

The Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Antipersonnel Mines and on Their Destruction is not like any other Treaty for two main reasons : one is because it deals with antipersonnel landmines which are not like any other conventional weapon, second is because of its history.

How is the landmine different from any other conventional weapon?

Landmines distinguish themselves because once they have been sown, once the soldier walks away from the weapon, the landmine cannot tell the difference between a soldier or a civilian -- a woman, a child going to school or playing on the ground, a grandmother going out to collect firewood to make the family meal. The crux of the problem is that while the use of the weapon might be militarily justifiable during the battle, once peace is declared the landmine does not recognize that peace, and it is precisely the reason why the scale of the epidemic is so wide today. And here I just would like to mention one of the key conclusion of the ICRC study "Friend or Foe": antipersonnel landmines have never been militarily decisive, as we will hear later from other speakers. But landmines are eternally prepared to take victims. The war ends, the landmine goes on killing.

The second reason why this Convention is an exception is its history. Without going too much into details, I would like you to come back with me to 1997 ; we are in Oslo and Jody Williams and the ICBL just awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Jody Williams, now one of the ICBL Ambassador, in her lecture, is sharing with the audience the extra-ordinary way the ban on antipersonnel mines has been reached.

" The desire to ban land mines is not new. In the late 1970s, the International Committee of the Red Cross, along with a handful of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), pressed the world to look at weapons that were particularly injurious and/or indiscriminate. One of the weapons of special concern was landmines. The end result of several years of negotiations was the 1980 Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW). What that treaty did was attempt to regulate the use of landmines. While the Convention tried to tell commanders in the field when it was okay to use the weapon and when it was not okay to use the weapon, it also allowed them to make decisions about the applicability of the law in the midst of battle. Unfortunately, in the heat of battle, the laws of war do not exactly come to mind. (…)

(…) It was a handful of NGOs, with their roots in humanitarian and human rights work, which began to come together, in late 1991 and early 1992, in an organized effort to ban antipersonnel landmines (…).Part of the strategy was to get the governments of the world to review the CCW and in the review process -- try to get them to ban the weapon through that convention. We did not succeed. But over the two and one-half years of the review process, with the pressure that we were able to generate -- the heightened international attention to the issue -- began to raise the stakes, so that different governments wanted to be seen as leaders on what the world was increasingly recognizing as a global humanitarian crisis.

So during the final days of the CCW review, we invited them to a meeting and they actually came. A handful of governments agreed to sit down with us and talk about where the movement to ban landmines would go next. Historically NGOs and governments have too often seen each other as adversaries, not colleagues, and we were shocked that they came. Seven or nine came to the first meeting, 14 to the second, and 17 to the third. By the time we had concluded the third meeting, with the conclusion of the Review Conference on May 3rd of 1996, the Canadian government had offered to host a governmental meeting in October of the same year, in which pro-ban governments would come together and strategize about how to bring about a ban.

From the third to the fifth of October , 50 governments were there as full participants and 24 observers met in Ottawa. The International Campaign was also participating in the Conference. At the end of the meeting, the Canadian government challenged the world to return to Canada in a year to sign an international treaty banning antipersonnel landmines.

(…). The treaty itself was based upon a ban treaty drafted by Austria and developed in a series of meetings in Vienna with 111 countries participants, in Bonn (120 countries), in Brussels where 117 like-minded pro ban States, in the final declaration, committed themselves to sign "an agreement banning landmines before the end of 1997". This culminated in the three-week long treaty negotiating conference held in Oslo in September.

The treaty negotiations in Oslo were historic. They were historic for a number of reasons. For the first time, smaller and middle-sized powers had come together, to work in close cooperation with the nongovernmental organizations of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, to negotiate a treaty which would remove from the world's arsenals a weapon in widespread use. For the first time, smaller and middle-sized powers had not yielded ground to intense pressure from a superpower to weaken the treaty to accommodate the policies of that one country. Perhaps for the first time, negotiations ended with a treaty stronger than the draft on which the negotiations were based! The treaty had not been held hostage to rule by consensus, which would have inevitably resulted in a gutted treaty."

The Mine Ban Treaty did not create a heavy nor intrusive mechanism to ensure that it is respected. Right from the beginning, this Treaty has been in the hands of like minded and willing States who defended this unusual way of banning a conventional weapon because they thought it was the only possibility to achieve this goal. Transparency, annual reporting and confidence building measures were the key elements retained to ensure that State Parties meet the Treaty obligations. What was agreed then ?

A total ban "never under any circumstances" on use, development, production, acquisition, stockpiling, retention and transfer of antipersonnel landmines. A total ban on assisting, encouraging or inducing anyone to do so, and the adoption of national legislation including penal sanctions for any violators of these provisions;

A timetable for the implementation of the Treaty : 4 years maximum to destroy the stocks and 10 years (with possible extension) for clearing all mined areas.

An obligation for each State "in a position to do so", to provide assistance for Victims and Mine clearance. The ICBL strongly believes that it is not only a question of financial resources and that each State is actually in a position to do something in this regard.

An obligation for international cooperation for the implementation of the Convention's other aspects.

Transparency through an annual reporting mechanism which would allow to measure the progress made toward the eradication of landmines.

121 States signed the Treaty in December 1997 in Ottawa, and 3 of them simultaneously ratified it.

Once again, more quickly than any other Treaty of that kind, the Convention entered into force on March 1st 1999, when Burkina Faso deposited the 40th instrument of ratification. Since then the momentum around the implementation of the MBT has not decreased.

In May 4 countries have ratified or acceded to the Convention and on June 7, Uruguay ratified it thus bringing the number of States Parties to a total of 117. All of the European Union has signed except Finland. All of the European NATO members have either signed or ratified or, as in the case of Turkey, have said that they will do so soon. All of the Western Hemisphere has signed except the US and Cuba. And in Africa, the most heavily mined continent in the world, nearly all African States have signed the Mine Ban Treaty.

117 States are Parties to a Treaty which is a framework to eradicate landmines and provide assistance to their victims. The last Intersessional Standing Committee meeting show very much the global effort made by all States in regards to the implementation of the Convention and we have also been able to hear about steps taken by countries who are not full member of the Treaty yet. My colleague from the Landmine Monitor will elaborate on this in detail, tomorrow morning .

This Treaty is a unique and comprehensive instrument to eradicate a weapon which causes unacceptable devastation every day in more than 88 countries. According to Landmine Monitor research, 69 countries and 8 territories registered new antipersonnel landmines since May, 2000.

Time has come now for all the countries in this region to be fully part of this unique Treaty which is the fastest growing treaty of this type ever, or at least to take now concrete steps which will bring them closer to this target.

117 States have already joined and are implementing the Treaty worldwide. The ICBL hopes that by the Third Meeting of States Parties, which will be held in Nicaragua next September, 120 States will have ratified the Convention, and we certainly hope that at least one country from this region will be among them.

Thank you.