The Medico/ Misereor Landmine Website
THE MEDICO/MISEREOR LANDMINE-WEBSITE THE MEDICO/MISEREOR LANDMINE-WEBSITE (www.landmine.de)BRIEF PROJECT DESCRIPTIONSTATUS: UNDER DEVELOPMENT/START: END OF 1998
A lot of landmine-websites are mainly a collection of links to each
other, respectively to other related websites. The Medico/ Misereor Website will offer additional and special investigated informations about the european landmine business from a more economic and technological point of view. This will happen in a critical and political way. The Ottawa-process should be seen as a first step in the direction of an overall solution of the landmine-issue. So the Website will campaign for a total ban of all existing landmine types.
The Website will also inform about national landmine policies and
budgets, revealing .the relation between the national landmine
procurement policies and the gouvernmental funding of humaitarian deminig. This includes campaigning for a conversion of national landmine-budgets in favour of mine action programms. In this connection the "Bad Honnef-Guidelines", seen as a universal framework for concrete projects, will represent an other main focus of the Website. A Email-section, open to everybody who is interested in cooperation, should help making this NGO-guideline-concept a standard for all actors involved in mine action programmes. Information sources used to built up the Website include field manuals from various countries, data provided by mine producing companies given at weapon
exhibitions, the Army and other military services as well as
information received from deminers and information resulting from an extensive military literature survey.(about 200 military journals). In addition information will be drawn from commercially as well as noncommercial databases available via internet or libraries and archives. Finally national and international patent archive reviews will be undertaken to identify and verify information on the development in the landmine business.
Main Subject Areas
o Identification and monitoring of mine producing/exporting companies, mine-clearing companies and their ownership relations (European Union), and verifing their shareholdings with existing mine-clearing/mine-producing companies (for example DASA/CMS). o
Information about the development and production of new
(multi-purpose) landmine-warefare technology (3 and 4..Generation).
This includes new area-defence mines, mine-submunitions, fragmentation charges, mines with antilift-devices and other devices, as well as minelaying systems. Most of these mines are in fact dual purpose mines (Antipersonnel/Anti-Vehicle) but they are expressly, not covered by the Ottawa-Convention. Some mineproducing companies simply rename their systems. For example Claymore mines are now often defined as
fragmenmtation charges, which are not covered from existing national export-moratories like in Austria. Other companies try to gather new export markets by running joint ventures with companies in countries with less restrictive export policies. This has to be made public.
o Monitoring of governmental funding policies for humanitarian
demining projects and landmine technologies. Identifing contractors and programmes. The Website strictly opposes that the arms industry earns money from demining, as it happens in Germany for example. The Website will make this public.
o Verification and observation of the Ottawa convention. Investigation of existing and former landmine stockpiles and their destruction. Monitoring of the ratification process, national demining and mine clearing projects and their funding. o Verification of current use, production and export of landmines by (non) member states. The Website will accuse in public those nations violating the spirit of the Ottawa-process. o Presentation, promotion and further development of the "Bad Honnef-Guidelines". Mine action programmes are only effective
if they give attention to the whole problems of mine victims in
mine-affected countries. Mine action programmes must be defined in a wider sense. Mine awareness, surveying, first aid, physical, socio-economic and psychological reahabilitation of victims as well as reconstruction and development of the affected communities are impotant and necessary parts of these programmes.
Thomas Küchenmeister (medico international)
Weimarer Str. 31
10625 Berlin
Tel&Fax 030/3131977
Sign and Ratify the Treaty * Clear Mines * Help Survivors
