Land Mines Are Taking Smaller Toll, Group Says

Land Mines Are Taking Smaller Toll, Group Says

By Rick Gladstone, The New York Times

3 December 2014

Deaths and injuries from land mines and other explosive remnants of war fell to the lowest level ever recorded last year, and production of the weapons appeared to have practically ceased, a leading disarmament group reported on Wednesday.

The group, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, attributed the declines to increased compliance with the Mine Ban Treaty, which was first signed 17 years ago and took effect two years later.

A coalition of human rights and disarmament advocates, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines won the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for its work in promoting the treaty. The accord outlaws the use and production of land mines and the trade in those weapons, and it sets deadlines for decontaminating areas where they remain, dormant but deadly vestiges of old conflicts.

With Oman’s accession in August, the Mine Ban Treaty now has 162 signatories. Of the 35 nations still outside the treaty, the group said, nearly all honor its main provisions, reflecting the persuasive power of disarmament agreements even among those that do not sign them.

The treaty received an important validation in June when the United States, which is among those that have not signed, announced steps to limit the use of land mines, reduce the American stockpile and halt production. The United States also said for the first time that it aspired to sign the treaty eventually, without saying when.

In its annual report released Wednesday, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines said the recorded number of casualties caused by old mines and other leftover explosives buried from previous wars had fallen to 3,308 in 2013. That figure is nearly 25 percent less than the year earlier and the lowest since the group began keeping track in 1999.

“While far too many people are still losing their lives and limbs to land mines, new casualties are at their lowest level ever recorded — possibly the best measure of how successful the Mine Ban Treaty has been,” said Megan Burke, an editor of the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor, the group’s research unit.

The 2013 tally was roughly the equivalent of nine victims per day, compared with 25 per day in 1999.

Land mines were once commonly used in wars, designed to detonate when people stepped on or near them. They can remain lethal for decades and are now almost universally regarded as insidious because they are indiscriminate. Most victims of leftover land mines are civilians who unwittingly walk on them, and roughly half are children, disarmament advocates say.

The annual report said the use of land mines had been confirmed in Myanmar and Syria, which have not signed the treaty, as well as in Nagorno-Karabakh, an area over which Armenia and Azerbaijan have been in a conflict.

While the report said production of land mines had nearly stopped, it acknowledged that producers might still be making them in four countries: India, Myanmar, Pakistan and South Korea.

Featured image: Wikimedia Commons