Getting rid of land mines worldwide

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON (JP): "The movement of countries on this issue is like a landslide," said Jody Williams, coordinator of the International Campaign to Ban Land Mines. "It's breathtaking."

In the past few months, 40 countries have declared their support for a total ban on anti-personnel mines -- and 63 countries, including all the major military powers except China, have shown up in Ottawa for a conference (Oct. 3-5) to plan a global ban on these cheap and very nasty weapons.

It is one of the fastest turn-abouts in diplomatic history, for only last May an elaborately prepared United Nations conference to curb the use of land mines ended in almost complete failure. The 'First Review Conference on Certain Conventional Weapons Which may be Deemed to be Excessively Injurious and Indiscriminate' (no, I didn't make it up) labored mightily in Vienna for months -- and gave birth to the scrawniest mouse imaginable.

The negotiators agreed that everything would remain as it is for another nine years, except that all mines must contain at least eight grams of metal to make them detectable. After the year 2005, a new rule would permit countries to possess and deploy only 'smart' anti-personnel mines that automatically self-destruct or disarm within 30 days, with 90 percent reliability.

"The impact which land mines are having, both on the civilian population and on the economy as a whole in affected countries, is so appalling, so devastating, that a total ban on all anti-personnel mines is the only solution," said UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, expressing his "deep disappointment" with the result. Most of the countries at the Vienna conference agreed -- but under UN rules, only unanimously agreed changes get through.

The final document was certainly an inadequate response to a global problem that kills or maims around 500 people a week. Anti-personnel mines are ultra-cheap (as little as US$3 each), they are designed to cause horrible wounds that will over-stress the medical resources available -- and they don't notice when the war is over.

There are an estimated 110 million anti-personnel mines lurking just beneath the soil in dozens of countries that have been visited by war in the past few decades, and everywhere they go on killing long after the conflict has ended. At least a third of the people they kill and injure are women and children. Huge tracts of agricultural land remain abandoned for decades because of the danger and the high cost (up to $1,000 per mine) of clearing them.

Making a new rule that 90 percent of mines laid after 2005 have to deactivate themselves after a month is hardly a useful way to address this ongoing calamity. As the International Committee of the Red Cross observed, the conference's "woefully inadequate decisions will encourage the production, transfer and use of a new generation of (smart) mines..." and "are unlikely to significantly reduce the level of civilian land mine casualties."

But sometimes things have to get worse before they get better. A few countries, frustrated by the way that the UN's consensus rule let a small number of mine-exporting countries thwart the will of the majority at Vienna, decided to convene another conference outside the UN system. Canada, which has lost 34 soldiers killed or maimed by mines on UN peacekeeping operations in the past five years, agreed to host it. And then the avalanche started.

At first, only about a dozen countries were expected at the Ottawa meeting, but suddenly the issue took off. Six NATO countries, including Germany, have now destroyed their stockpiles of anti-personnel mines or set deadlines for doing so. A group of 15 high-ranking former U.S. officers, including ex-Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. David Jones, and Gulf War commander Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf, have called a total ban "not only humane, but also militarily responsible."

And besides the 40 countries openly committed to a ban, a further two dozen nations (including Russia) showed up at the Ottawa conference as observers. Many are clearly ready to board this ship if it ever leaves port. But will it?

The Canadian government is cautious. "The purpose is to get as many states as possible to agree on the need to ban anti-personnel mines," said Department of Foreign Affairs spokesman John Bell, "and in the long term, to achieve an agreement on early negotiations on a global ban."

In other words, this is a meeting to prepare the ground for an eventual agreement on holding a conference where the issue is actually negotiated. A very slow-motion avalanche, you might say -- but a significant one, nevertheless. Nothing ever gets done much faster than this in multilateral negotiations, and the shift in international opinion in the past six months has been remarkable.

If the tide continues to rise, it will carry along many countries that are still reluctant, for the domestic lobby in favor of continued production and sale of anti-personnel mines is not particularly rich or influential anywhere. If governments think that opposing a ban will do them significant damage in world public opinion, they will cut their losses and change sides quite fast.

The last time I got caught in a minefield and had to walk out, in Lebanon in 1982, I happened to be on camera. I thought I had stayed fairly cool about it, but looking at the film afterwards you could see how high my feet went with each step, and how reluctantly they came down again.

I find it hard to imagine what it would be like to walk through a minefield every day on the way to work -- but that is what millions of people on this planet have to do every day. And every day another 80 or 90 of them lose their limbs, their genitals, their sight, or their lives. It really is high time to stop making these 'weapons'.

A total ban is possible, and it could come in only a year or so if the present momentum is maintained. The Ottawa conference is a good start.