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Nobel prize will 'speed landmine ban'

Friday, 10 October 1997: UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy welcomed the news that the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) and to its coordinator Jody Williams, calling it a "triumph of civil society".

"This is a victory for all the people who have fought to end the senseless maiming and killing of civilians by raising their voices in the name of peace," said Ms. Bellamy. "It is through a groundswell of individual action, led by the ICBL, that the world is now on the brink of consigning landmines to history."

UNICEF hopes that this recognition by the Nobel Committee of the work done by the ICBL will give fresh impetus to the Ottawa process. It will encourage governments -- including China, the Russian Federation and the United States of America -- to join other nations in committing themselves to a total ban on the use, production, sale and stockpiling of anti-personnel landmines.

The treaty will be open for signature beginning on 3 December in Ottawa, Canada. It requires ratification by a minimum of 40 national legislatures to make the treaty into an instrument of binding international law.

UNICEF has pledged to join the ICBL in a major effort towards ensuring speedy and universal ratification of the treaty.

"Based on the experience we have gained in working for ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child -- now ratified by every country on earth except Somalia and the USA -- I have committed UNICEF to working tirelessly to encourage the widest possible support for this historic treaty to ban landmines," Ms. Bellamy said.

"Landmines pose one of the most insidious and persistent dangers for civilians during armed conflicts and for decades thereafter," she said in her letter to the Nobel Committee in support of the nomination of ICBL for this year's prize.