LANDMINES: DEATH, DESTRUCTION AND THE SHAME OF SO MANY NATIONS

August 11, 2012. Anyone who has played Pass the Parcel would know that it is not generally the person who first receives the package who ends up exposing it and winning the prize. The chances would diminish proportionally to the number of participants. Anyone wishing to give a specific person a unique or valuable gift would be a fool if they opted for the game as a means of doing so. What the American, Russian and Chinese authorities are doing, by refusing to sign the 1997 Ottawa Treaty banning mines, is more than foolish: it is downright criminal. The same can be said of the other thirty-one countries that have not signed it and two others that have signed but not ratified it.

States party to the Ottawa Treaty (in blue)

Yesterday a six-year-old boy was blown-up by a landmine in Bosnia-Herzegovina as he was collecting wood with his father in a forest in central Bosnia. His father was injured, but has survived the blast. The Bosnian War ended in 1995 and since then, Bosnia's Mine Action Centre reports that 1,674 people have been killed or injured by mines. The global situation is equally disturbing. The NATO Website states that:

"Mines hamper reconstruction, delivery of developmental aid and kill both people and livestock years after conflicts cease. In the late 1990s, landmines caused 15,000 to 20,000 casualties a year. While that number has decreased in recent years due to a treaty banning anti-personnel landmines, there is still not one region in the world that is totally unaffected by mines."

The last assertion is not quite accurate, as many countries, including Rwanda, Burundi and Honduras have been declared mine-free, while many never had a problem with them in the first place. Unless NATO is speaking about emotional impact, which is certainly hard to ignore. The International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1997 for its efforts in promoting the Ottawa Treaty (Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-personnel Mines and on their Destruction) describe the situation even more poignantly:

"Antipersonnel landmines still maim and kill ordinary people every day. They blow off their victims' legs, feet, toes and hands. They fire shrapnel into their faces and bodies. They kill.

The vast majority of victims are civilians and not soldiers. Year after year, Landmine Monitor has reported that civilians account for 70 to 85 percent of casualties. This is not just during a conflict – most of the countries where casualties are reported are at peace."

Time Magazine 1993 Cover Story

And sadly, children's innocence and curiosity make them particularly vulnerable to the threat, so that many of the victims are just like this little boy: collateral to the machinations of scheming politicians.