US delegation at the Cartagena Summit - Photo Courtesy APMBC

Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Dozens of members of ICBL, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Ban Landmines, visited US embassies and missions around the world Monday 1 March to encourage the US government to sign the Mine Ban Treaty. The treaty became international law in March 1999, just 15 months after it was adopted, the shortest time ever for an international treaty.

The US participated as an observer at the Cartagena Summit on a Mine-Free World, in December 2009 in Colombia. It was the first time the US joined an official treaty meeting and, at the time, the US said it would review its position on the treaty.

The US has not used antipersonnel mines since 1991 and it stopped exporting them the following year. Production stopped in 1997. But it is the world’s largest individual contributor to mine action and victim assistance programmes, and, argues ICBL, it should match its financial commitment with a political commitment to end the threat of the use of landmines.

“The human cost of landmines far outweighs their military utility. An overwhelming majority of states have formally recognized this,” says Zach Hudson, coordinator of the US Campaign to Ban Landmines. “The national security argument does not stand. Surely if we have been able to defend our country for the last 19 years without using landmines, we have already found alternative solutions.”

The treaty, notes ICBL, “bans all antipersonnel mines, requires destruction of stockpiled mines within four years, requires destruction of mines already in the ground within 10 years, and urges extensive programmes to assist the victims of landmines.”

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