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.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The United States provided the first clue to its unchanged landmine treaty policy Tuesday 1 December in Cartagena, Colombia, saying its ongoing review of the policy will take time. The US baffled the world a week ago by first saying it had decided not to sign the Ottawa Convention, then two days later saying the matter was still under review. No explanation was given at the time. The Ottawa Convention, signed by 156 countries and in force since 1999, is also known as the international Mine Ban treaty. The Cartagena Summit in Colombia this week is the second five-year review of the progress made under the treaty.
The US issued a brief statement at the conference, saying that “the Administration’s decision to attend this Review Conference is the result of an on-going comprehensive review of US landmine policy initiated at the direction of President Obama.
Danger sign for landmines
Updated 17:20 Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The goal of the Cartagena Summit on a Mine-free World, meeting in Colombia 29 November to 4 December, is to eradicate the suffering caused by anti-personnel mines once and for all.
Colombia has had the dubious distinction until recently of being the country with the most casualties from anti-personnel mines. It was overtaken by Afghanistan in 2009. Colombia alone counts 8,081 casualties of landmines since 1990, but it also has 6,285 survivors, people who have lost a limb. Landmines caused almost 5,200 casualties worldwide in 2008, one-third of them children. The 2009 Landmine Monitor Report points out that deaths from landmines are steadily decreasing, down from an average of 7,300 a year for the previous 10 years. Landmine ban groups are keen to get rid of the mines but they are also focusing more on helping survivors.
In Colombia, too, the number of casualties has been falling: 777 deaths in 2008, compared to 895 the previous year.
In Colombia, rebel groups such as Farc and the ELN, as well as paramilitary groups, have planted anti-personnel mines on an estimated 60 percent of the territory. Insurgents increasingly finance themselves through the drugs trade, reported Human Rights Watch in a section on Colombia in its World Report 2009, published in January. They have been invading peripheral regions in the south of the country on the border with Ecuador, ejecting the indigenous populations, and protecting their territories from army incursions by the simple means of sowing anti-personnel mines, many home-made and attractive to children.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The United States heads into the Cartagena Summit, which opens Sunday 29 November in Colombia, now saying that it is continuing to review its policy on signing the international Mine Ban treaty. The US is sending a sizeable official observer team to the summit, with groups from the State Department, Pentagon, US Agency for International Development and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Cartagena Summit is the second review of the 1997 Ottawa Convention that bans the use, stockpiling, production and transfer of antipersonnel mines. More than 1,000 delegates, including several heads of state, will participate in the summit, which will assess progress made in clearing the world of landmines.
Cause of US shift unexplained
The US said in a statement issued Wednesday 25 November that it is still reviewing its position on signing the 10-year-old Mine Ban treaty – the opposite of what it said the previous day, but it was unclear if the statement was a correction of an error, a change in tactics ahead of the Cartagena Summit that opens 29 November in Colombia, or a change of heart following harsh criticism.
US to be observer only at Cartagena summit
Demining demonstration in Tirana (photo: Cartagena Summit)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The United States will be attending the Cartagena Summit on a Mine-free World in Colombia 30 November as an observer only, following a review and recent decision not to sign the landmine treaty, US State Department spokesperson Ian Kelly said at a daily briefing in Washington Tuesday 24 November. The summit is the Second Review Conference of the Ottawa Convention, informally known as the landmines ban treaty. CNN reports that the decision comes as a surprise to observers who believed the US has been considering joining the 156 other nations who have signed the treaty, citing Human Rights Watch’s reaction. The decision also dashes hopes of the Geneva-based Cartagena Summit secretariat that the US would soon be a party to the treaty.
The official name of the treaty is the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Antipersonnel Mines and on Their Destruction. It’s also often referred to as the AP (anti-personnel) Mine Ban Convention. It entered into force in 1999. China and Russia are the only other major powers not to have signed the convention.
Not in interests of US defense needs
Kelly’s response when asked why the US is not signing the treaty was that “we made our policy review and we determined that we would not be able to meet our national defense needs, nor our security commitments to our friends and allies if we sign this convention.”
What landmines do: an eloquent image
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Good progress has been made in reducing the number of landmines throughout the world, but much more work remains to be done, with 70 countries still having mines or explosive remnants of war, concludes the Landmine Monitor Report 2009: Toward a Mine-Free World, an annual report published Thursday 12 November by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. This year’s report includes a 10-year summary since the reports began in 1999. The group is the research and monitoring programme of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Ban Landmines.
Eighty percent of the world’s countries are party to the treaty but the report notes that “Thirty-nine countries—including China, India, Pakistan, Russia, and the United States—have yet to join the treaty, but most are in de facto compliance with many of the treaty’s key provisions. In recent years, Myanmar and Russia are the only states using antipersonnel mines. Use by non-state armed groups decreased from a high of 19 countries in 2001 to seven countries in 2008.”
Juanes, Cuban Peace Without Borders Concert (image: 4VFnet)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Colombian superstar, 17-time Grammy award winning musician Juanes, is giving his voice to the Cartagena Summit on a Mine-free World that takes place in Cartagena, Colombia 29 November-4 December. Juanes, who has sold more than 9 million albums worldwide, in 2006 became the first musician ever to perform in the European Parliament’s debating chamber, as part of the European Union’s commitment to eradicate landmines. He organized the Peace Without Borders concert in September 2009 in Cuba, which Entertainment Daily called “the largest open air gig since the 1959 Revolution”, with half a million people attending.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland will lead efforts to backup a major conference that opens 29 November in Colombia, the Cartagena summit on a mine-free world. The conference marks the 10th anniversary of the Ottawa Treaty entering into force and provides the opportunity for its second review conference to assess progress and how well the convention is being respected.
(IRAQ) Ayat Suliman’s brother brought an unexploded cluster munition into their house in Samarra, Iraq. The munition exploded and caused burns to form over 65% of Ayat’s body. In Iraq, the United States used at least 1,206 clusters, containing more than 200,000 submunitions; this number represents 4 percent of the total number of air-delivered weapons used by the Coalition (text, image: Magnus Fröderberg for Cluster Munitions Coalition)
Update 11:45 Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Several countries, including Switzerland, have begun to destroy their stockpiles of landmines ahead of the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions going into effect. The United Kingdom and France are among larger manufacturers of landmines who have made “dramatic progress” in reducing their stocks, reports Landmine Monitor, which 29 May published a country-by-country report on landmines and the convention.
A total of 96 countries have signed since December 2008. The treaty was drawn up in Dublin, Ireland in May 2008.
Three major cluster munition users, Israel, Russia, and the United States, have not signed the convention. The US alone is estimated to have between 730 million and 1 billion cluster submunitions, which it has transferred to “at least 30 countries,” according to Landmine Monitor.
Broken Chair, broken again - Photo © Jared Bloch
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Landmine victims Monday 2 March called for more nations to join the Ottawa Mine Ban Treaty which went into effect 10 years ago. The call for action in Geneva was made during the launch of the “Road to Cartagena,” the second Review Conference of the Convention, chaired by Norway, to be held in Colombia in November 2009.
Speaking next to the UN broken chair in Geneva, Firoz Ali Alizada, who lost his legs to a landmine in his native Afghanistan, says he was “unhappy to survive.” So was Edgar Moreno who at 16 years of age suffered a similar fate in his native Colombia and had to wait two days before reaching the closest medical center.
The US remains outside the group of 100 countries that Wednesday signed an agreement in Oslo to ban cluster bombs and get rid of stockpiles, saying that although the US shares the humanitarian concerns of the other nations, the ban would endanger American soldiers. Xinhua Afghanistan reportedly had a last-minute change of heart, showing a growing distance from the US Bush administration, and it will now sign the treaty, according to the San Jose Mercury in California. (Ed. note: related article, “Switzerland signs cluster bombs ban Wednesday,” GenevaLunch, 2 December 2008)
Raphael Dallaporta
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Raphaël Dallaporta’s landmines are things of great beauty: small, perfectly designed for the job they are meant to perform, fine colours and shapes. Elegantly photographed, simply framed, starkly displayed, they are at first sight remarkable for their esthetic value. View five and wonder at the art, view two more and shivers start to go down your spine as the realization sinks in that they have one purpose: sheer cruelty.
Dallaporta’s images are part of an effort by Switzerland and Geneva to use art and theatre to draw public attention to the deadly damage caused by landmines and cluster bombs.
Bern, Switzerland and Oslo, Norway (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland on Wednesday will join more than 100 other countries in Oslo, Norway to sign the Convention on Cluster Munitions, a convention which the Swiss successfully lobbied to have approved by consensus when national states met 30 May 2008 in Dublin, Ireland. The Geneva-based ICRC has been active in getting the convention to this point.
Jerry White
Updated 16 October 2008
Given the times and the title of Jerry White’s book, I Will Not Be Broken, you could be forgiven for thinking it is about financial markets’ victims; as he writes in the book, “We hate to call bad news normal, but it is.” (GL book review, 16 October 2008)
White, an American who lost his leg to a landmine in Israel at age 20 while out hiking with friends, is promoting the book in Geneva while visiting the office of Survivor Corps. He co-founded the group, which before 2008 was called Landmine Survivors Network. White is also known as a leader of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Ban Landmines
White is addressing a group hosted by GWIT, Geneva Women in International Trade, Tuesday noon. The day before the meeting White, who is a frequent public speaker, reflected on why people attend his talks about five steps to overcoming a life crisis. Some, of course, are facing or have recently faced a crisis and are looking for guidance. But in a city like Geneva, he says, where many people work for non-profit groups and NGOs (non-governmental organizations), he is likely to “find people in the audience who come because they’ve said to themselves ‘Let me see how one of my peers talks about this.’”
Their response often catches them by surprise, he says. Some of them may not fully understand their motivation for being involved in their work but during the course of the conversation about life crises “you get closer to identifying with survivors” and their own particular wounds start to surface.
White’s talks help spread the word about the work of Survivor Corps, which is known for its peer support programme that encourages survivors to help others recover from war injuries and trauma. His goal in talking to the public “is to have you identify yourself as a survivor. I don’t think we can really ask people to care about some unknown girl in Phnom Penh.” He is looking for more than just an emotional connection to survivors: he wants people to better understand that we all have crises, we are all survivors. As such, we can provide effective support as part of a survivor movement.
The organization changed its name, despite having a clear reputation with the earlier name, partly because “if you’re trying to mobilize people and build bridges, you have to make sure there are not lines drawn around them” that define but also set apart landmine victims, rape victims or other groups.
Survivor Corps works with war survivors in particular, but White’s book is aimed at a much larger audience. He writes that “Experience has taught me that happy endings can never be taken for granted. They must be chosen.” No matter what the personal crisis, whether it’s a lost limb, an illness that carries a death sentence, the loss of a loved one, a painful divorce, he argues that “we have to tap inner sources and develop some emotional muscle. It’s both a discipline and our responsibility.”
Five key steps to doing this, White says, are:
- face facts
- choose life
- reach out
- get moving
- give back.
Jerry White’s presentation 14 October: details, GWIT
Title: Jerry White on Crisis Management
Location: Geneva
Description: Co-Founder of Survivor Corps, co-recipient of Nobel Peace Prize, author: “I Will Note be Broken”
Start Time: 12:00
Date: 2008-10-14
End Time: 14:00
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Efforts to reduce risks to humans from cluster munitions are making slow progress despite failure to adopt a proposal to address these risks. However, a group of governmental experts meeting at the UN says progress was indeed made by addressing international humanitarian law, building political momentum and laying the foundation for further negotiations.
The next round of talks will take place in July in Geneva. Sixty-eight countries have voiced their support for a partial ban of cluster munitions with the exception of Russia and China, two of the arms producers.
Cluster munitions are intended to destroy fields or make terrain impassable and can remain dormant for years. Unexploded bomblets can detonate later at the slightest disturbance posing special danger to civilian populations.
Related story, GenevaLunch, “Cluster bombs will remain a reality”
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – An annual U.N. weapons conference ended in Geneva November 13 agreeing only to negotiate a "proposal" to address the humanitarian impact of cluster munitions. No specific time frame was given except to say it would be in 2008.
68 countries had voiced their support for a partial ban with the exception of Russia and China, two of the arm producers. The United States said it supported negotiations but not a ban as it considers cluster munitions a legitimate weapon “when used properly and in accordance with existing international humanitarian law." The ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) considered the news “regrettable” as it lacked legally binding instruments to limit the use of the weapon.
Cluster munitions are intended to destroy fields or make terrain impassable and can remain dormant for years. Unexploded bomblets can detonate later at the slightest disturbance posing special danger to civilian populations.
Related story, UN broken chair is reminder of cluster munitions damage, GenevaLunch, 7 December 2006
