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UNICEF hails landmine treaty

Friday, 5 December 1997: UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy today hailed the signing of a comprehensive ban on anti-personnel landmines as a momentous and inspiring event, but one tempered by the magnitude of the task still ahead.

"Any time that so many nations -- 122 as of today -- can act with such swiftness and resolve on so compelling a humanitarian issue it is an occasion for rejoicing. It is the first time that a major international convention has been negotiated and signed in so short a time. The credit must go to the way the movement grew, bringing together, in unique fashion, this extraordinary coalition of civil society, governments and international agencies.

But Ms. Bellamy added: "We are also mindful that the daily agony will not end until we uproot the million of mines that still lie hidden around the world -- and until we persuade the non-signing governments that their participation is vital. Half-way measures will not work... These obscene weapons must be swept, completely and utterly, from the earth."

The treaty, signed on Wednesday and Thursday in Ottawa, prohibits the use, production, development, acquisition, sale, stockpiling and transfer of anti-personnel landmines which kill and maim 26,000 civilians a year, about half of them women and children.

Ms. Bellamy pledged UNICEF's commitment to work with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines to make this treaty a reality.

UNICEF will continue to encourage those governments that did not sign the treaty, like China, India, Pakistan, the Russian Federation and the United States of America, to rethink their position. UNICEF will also urge those that did sign, to ratify as soon as possible. "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 except Somalia and the United States -- we are confident of formal ratification during 1998," Ms. Bellamy added.

At least 40 Governments need to ratify the treaty before it becomes binding international law.

With the treaty ratified, one of the greatest challenges is to remove the estimated 110 million landmines scattered in 68 countries -- one for every 12 children.

Landmines can cost as little as $3 to $10 to produce. They cost up to $1,000 to remove. Although this week's pledges for the de-mining and victim assistance fund may top $500 million, it still falls far short of the billions needed to de-activate all mines with the currently available detection and labour-intensive de-mining technology.

Because people will inevitably have to live with mines for decades to come, UNICEF has been asked by the United Nations to take the lead in the critical task of educating communities about ways to reduce mine accidents and also to assist the victims. UNICEF will work within the UN family to that end.

Angola, Mozambique and Bosnia-Herzogovina are just a few of the countries to benefit from massive UNICEF-assisted mine awareness programmes, which use radio, theatre, posters, comic strips and songs to transmit life-saving information.

However, not a day passes without a person being killed or injured by a landmine. In Angola, last month in Kuito town, 27-year-old Emilia Paulina stepped on a mine while walking along a path that had already been cleared of mines. She believes the mine had been recently laid. The mine blew off both her legs above the knee and she lost her unborn baby.

"Those people maimed by mines must now receive much more support than they have in the past," Ms. Bellamy said. "The international community must take up the challenge and implement the terms of the treaty to give the hundreds of thousands of people like Paulina a reason for hope."