Abstract
Some rare good news for arms control advocates: In March, the Bangladeshi Army announced that it had become the first South Asian nation to destroy its stockpile of antipersonnel landmines.
It was only last June that Bangladesh feared it would not be able to meet the destruction deadline set by the Ottawa Convention, or Mine Ban Treaty, to which it belongs. Funding from the U.N. Development Project had been stalled thanks to a bureaucratic hitch, and the country worried the monsoon season would hamper its work. But money came through from the Canadian government, and the rains weren't problematic. Bangladesh demolished its stockpile of nearly 200,000 antipersonnel mines by March, making the deadline.
Not a bad outcome for a treaty that critics derided as mere “parchment pacification” when it first came into force in 1999. [See “Political Minefield,” March/April 1999 Bulletin.] Six years on, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), a global network of organizations, reports that nearly 40 million mines have been destroyed, and another 10 million are slated for destruction in coming years. And the treaty has had unusual success in getting states to follow through with their commitments. Bangladesh's accomplishment brings to 69 the number of countries that have eliminated their stockpiles. Only 14 states parties have stockpiles still to be destroyed, including Turkey, Sudan, Angola, and Ethiopia, all of which face deadlines in coming years. (Nearly half of the 145 states parties did not have stockpiles to begin with.)
“Stockpile destruction has been one of the most successful areas of implementation of the Mine Ban Treaty,” said Steve Goose of Human Rights Watch at a mid-June meeting of treaty members in Geneva. “All states who have reached their four-year deadline have completed destruction.” Only two states were late, he noted–Guinea and Turkmenistan.
That's an enviable record for a treaty operating in an international environment that has seen the stagnation or decline of other arms control measures. But despite the Mine Ban Treaty's early success, enormous hurdles remain. Some 41 countries–including the United States, China, and Russia–refuse to join the treaty, and according to the U.N. Mine Action Service, nonmember nations hold an estimated 200 million antipersonnel mines in their arsenals.
Apart from China, which has said it plans to accede to the treaty at some future date, few of the remaining nonmembers seem inclined to join. The United States, which continues to work on the landmine problem outside the convention and contributes more money to the cause than any other nation, steadfastly refuses to join. The February 2004 State Department fact sheet on U.S. landmine policy explains: “With the exception of non-self-destructing antipersonnel landmines, the United States has landmines available for use worldwide, where their use would be necessary to ensure the safety of our men and women in uniform and the success of their mission.”
Minesweeper: An NGO worker stores live mines cleared from a Sri Lankan field in June.
The treaty's lack of verification measures has also been a source of concern. Without verification, doubts could arise about whether countries are actually disposing of mines as they claim. But Kerry Brinkert, head of the Implementation Support Unit, the treaty's quasi-secretariat housed at the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining, argues that such fears have thus far proved unwarranted. Brinkert notes that no country has ever challenged any of the destruction declarations; nor have any nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), which have full observer status to the convention. He also cites the destruction events that treaty members hold, saying: “Most states are savvy enough to know that if they have a destruction event and invite a number of observers, journalists, and other interested parties, this helps build confidence.”
Further, countries simply don't have much incentive to deceive the international community or donor states like Canada, which pay out large amounts of cash to poorer countries to help them draft comprehensive inventories, develop expertise in demining, and destroy stockpiles.
“We've succeeded in creating such a strong taboo against mines that it is not in a country's interests to lie about its stockpiles,” says Tamar Gabelnick, the ICBL's representative in Geneva. “If it is violating or lying about it, sooner or later its use of mines will come out, and small states in particular need the goodwill of the international community.”
Others worry that some countries have retained large numbers of mines for “training” purposes, which is allowed under the treaty. Bangladesh, for example, kept 15,000 landmines, a number much higher than the average of 5,000, in order to train soldiers stationed abroad with U.N. peacekeeping missions. It's a plausible explanation; according to press reports, Bangladeshi troops have served in more than 30 peacekeeping operations in the past 15 years and have cleared landmines in Kuwait, Eritrea, and Ethiopia.
Less plausible was Turkmenistan's claim. In 1997, the country began destroying more than 6 million mines it inherited from the Soviet Union. In early 2003, Turkmenistan notified the United Nations that it had completed the destruction but announced that it would keep 70,000 landmine cassettes–the equivalent of nearly 600,000 individual mines. A year later, after being roundly criticized by other states parties and the United Nations, Turkmenistan changed its mind and declared it would destroy its entire stockpile.
The next major trial facing the treaty comes in 2009, when 22 countries are slated to have completely cleared all antipersonnel mines from their territories–far harder than simply destroying stockpiles. “This is clearly the biggest challenge,” says Brinkert.
Indeed, Richard Kidd, director of the State Department's Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement, told a U.N. Association of the United States meeting in March that the economics of mine clearance might be the treaty's most significant hurdle. “In a world of scarce resources and competing humanitarian demands–HIV/AIDS, malaria, poverty, food security, etc.–we cannot afford the opportunity costs of spending $3 million to clear eight landmines, as one NGO did in Chad.”