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Note: This document is from the archive of the Africa Policy E-Journal, published
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Africa: WOA Landmines Alert
Africa: WOA Landmines Alert
Date distributed (ymd): 970216
WOA Document
Washington Notes on Africa Update
MUCH AT STAKE FOR AFRICA IN CAMPAIGN TO BAN LANDMINES
This will be a decisive year for the campaign to achieve a
comprehensive global ban on anti-personnel landmines. Almost
70 countries have joined an initiative spearheaded by Canada
that is expected to culminate in the signing of a treaty in
December. The Clinton Administration, however, has thrown its
weight behind stalled negotiations in the United Nations
Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. In this forum any
agreement requires a consensus, and is therefore subject to
veto by opponents of a ban. While the White House has not
definitively rejected the Ottawa process, and the U.S. has
sent a delegation to the most recent Ottawa process talks, the
go-slow approach favored by most Pentagon officials still has
the upper hand within the Administration.
Administration officials say their preference for Geneva is
justified because an agreement that does not include major
producers of low-technology landmines notably Russia and China
would have little effect on world production of landmines. In
fact, the decision for the slow track also reflects
substantial opposition from the U.S. military establishment to
a comprehensive ban on anti-personnel landmines.
In previous negotiations, U.S. officials have sought to exempt
smart self-destructing landmines and have also argued for the
continuing need to use landmines for defensive purposes in
Korea. The White House, while expressing support for an
eventual global ban, has in practice often deferred to the
Pentagon and dragged its feet in international talks.
The cost of delay will be high. Over 100 million of these
deadly weapons are already in the ground, causing an estimated
25,000 civilian casualties each year. Low cost makes
landmines a weapon of choice in new conflicts as well. It is
estimated that for every mine cleared (at a cost of more than
$300 each), twenty new ones are planted (at a cost of as
little as $3 each).
The momentum for comprehensive bans at global and regional
levels is growing. Later this month Mozambique will host an
international meeting of nongovernmental organizations engaged
in the campaign, and there are proposals to declare Southern
Africa a mine-free zone. There are already more countries
committed to attending the Ottawa talks than the 61 countries
registered at the disarmament conference in Geneva. But the
Clinton Administration is unlikely to get on the bandwagon
unless public pressure builds significantly.
The entire world would benefit from a comprehensive ban. For
Africa, which has several of the most mined countries in the
world and is the scene of ongoing conflicts, the early
achievement of a ban is particularly urgent.
Rural People of Color Most Affected
It is often noted that landmines do not discriminate between
soldiers and civilians, or between children and adults. More
than 80% of estimated casualties are civilians.
In another sense, however, landmines do discriminate.
Vulnerability to landmines is not random, but depends on who
and where you are. The killed and maimed are predominantly
poor people of color. Africa is the most heavily mined region
in the world, followed by the Middle East, South Asia (mainly
Afghanistan), and East Asia (mainly Cambodia and Vietnam).
Post-Cold War conflicts--with the widespread use of landmines
in the former Yugoslavia, for example--may modify the regional
distribution somewhat. But new conflict zones in Africa also
provide promising markets for sellers of landmines.
The list of countries most victimized by landmines is headed
by those that were Cold War battlefields in the 1980s. Angola
and Mozambique, the most affected countries in Africa,
suffered conflicts fueled by internal strife and by South
African and superpower intervention.
Within countries, the people most likely to encounter mines
are the rural poor, especially peasant farmers and their
children. The disruption of transportation and agricultural
production hits hardest the economies of those countries with
large rural populations and little industrial infrastructure.
The Global Campaign
The International Campaign to Ban Landmines, a nongovernmental
initiative which began in 1992, has gained strong momentum in
only a few years. Consensus is growing around the world that
these weapons should be outlawed, as chemical warfare was a
generation ago. Studies such as Landmines: A Deadly Legacy
(Human Rights Watch, 1993) and Hidden Killers: The Global
Problem with Uncleared Landmines (U.S. Department of State,
1993) have documented the worldwide scope of the problem.
The use of landmines in Bosnia has reminded the Western world
that these weapons can kill people in Europe as well as in
far-off Third World countries. Veterans groups and former
high-ranking military officers have noted the limited military
value of anti-personnel landmines in wars between armies. The
International Committee of the Red Cross, notoriously
reluctant to take sides in politically controversial issues,
joined the call for a total ban in 1994 in light of the unique
humanitarian danger landmines pose.
A decade earlier, in 1983, an internationally negotiated
Landmines Protocol imposed restrictions on the legal use of
landmines in an effort to reduce harm to civilians. That
convention has been totally ineffective.
Since then, landmines have become cheaper, harder to detect,
easier to disseminate, and more effective in killing and
maiming. Military planners in late Cold War and post-Cold War
conflicts have often explicitly targeted civilians and the
civilian economy. They have found landmines to be effective
weapons in damaging these targets. The result is not only
increased civilia casualties, but also rapidly escalating
costs for supplying humanitarian relief and reconstructing
war-torn areas once peace is restored. According to some
estimates, ridding the world of all existing mine fields would
cost at least $33 billion and take more than 1,000 years.
Forty-five countries, including the United States and South
Africa, have already declared moratoria or permanent bans on
landmine exports. In 1995 and 1996 international conferences
in Vienna and Geneva reviewed the 1983 protocol, but failed to
make progress toward a total ban on landmines. Instead,
agreement was reached on limited new restrictions, such as
requiring parties to keep maps of planted landmines and to use
only smart mines built to self-destruct. Yet enforcing such
restrictions would be far more difficult in practice than
enforcing an unambiguous comprehensive ban.
In October 1996 the Canadian government convened a conference
in Ottawa bringing together 50 full participant countries and
24 observers to plan for adoption of a total ban by the end of
1997. The International Campaign, now consisting of more than
650 nongovernmental organizations in more than three dozen
countries, is working to gain the support of as many
governments as possible for a comprehensive ban.
Landmines in Africa
According to the U.S. State Department's 1993 study, Africa is
the most mined region in the world, with 18 million to 30
million mines laid in 18 countries. Of the 17 countries
around the world most severely affected by landmines, seven
are in Africa.
By far the most seriously affected country is Angola, with
estimates ranging from 9 million to as high as 20 million
mines. Next is Mozambique, with more than a million, followed
by four countries in the Horn of Africa (Somalia, Ethiopia,
Eritrea and Sudan) with half a million to a million each.
Every country in Southern Africa, with the exception of
Lesotho and Mauritius, has had people killed or injured by
landmines. The Great Lakes region, previously not
significantly affected, now has more than 250,000 mines in
Rwanda, and there are fears that the ongoing conflict in the
region may lead to much wider use of landmines. Other areas
with significant numbers of mines include the Western Sahara
and Liberia.
An estimated 70,000 Angolans have become amputees as a result
of landmines, including both civilian and military victims.
In Mozambique the National Mine Clearance Commission estimates
that at least 40 people are killed by landmines each month.
South Africa, with an existing landmine production capacity,
announced in October 1996 that it supported a global landmine
ban and would ban export of mines. Alhough veterans groups
across the political spectrum in South Africa have called for
a ban on production and stockpiling as well, the South African
Defense Force has proved reluctant to take this additional
step. South Africa has an estimated stockpile of about
300,000 anti-personnel landmines.
The International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which held its
annual conference last year in Cambodia, will hold this years
meeting later this month in Maputo, Mozambique. The
conference is being hosted by the Mozambican Campaign Against
Landmines, which has 17 nongovernmental organizations as
members, and is supported by parallel campaigns in other
countries in the Southern African region. National movements,
which have been established in Angola, Mozambique, South
Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, recently sent a joint letter to
Southern African heads of state asking them to declare the
region a mine-free zone, to adopt a permanent ban and to
destroy all stockpiles.
U.S. Bans Exports, But Not Use
The U.S. Congress, spear-headed in its efforts by Sen. Patrick
Leahy (D-Vt.), has taken a leading role in advancing the cause
of a total ban on landmines. The response of the Clinton
Administration has been ambivalent. In a message to the
United Nations in 1993, and most recently in January of this
year, President Clinton has expressed verbal support for a
global ban. The United States has adhered to a moratorium on
the export of landmines since 1992, and the President
announced in January that the export ban would become
permanent. The United States has allocated almost $15 million
a year for research on new demining technologies, and the
budget to support demining operations in other countries has
risen from $18 million in 1994 to $60 million in 1996.
The U.S. government has been unwilling, however, to abandon
its own use of landmines in Korea. Internal Pentagon studies
show that a combination of alternative measures could replace
the defensive use of landmines in Korea within the three-year
phase-out period the Canadian treaty would allow. In
international negotiations, nevertheless, the Administration
has sought to find alternatives to an immediate ban,
advocating more gradual measures that might result in a total
ban by the year 2010.
By opting for the Geneva slow track rather than the Ottawa
fast track this year, the President is giving up an
opportunity for quick progress toward a ban by the majority of
the worlds countries. Instead, he is pegging advance on the
issue to measures that will be acceptable to hold-out
countries such as Russia and China.
This negotiating course adopted by President Clinton, wrote
Sen. Leahy in The New York Times (Jan. 19, 1997) risks
delaying achievement of a real landmine ban well beyond his
final four years in office. If the Geneva process does not
show real progress by June, the Senator added, the United
States should become an active participant in the Ottawa
process.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
[Note to non-U.S. readers: This posting is provided both
for your background information and for possible forwarding
to those of your U.S. contacts you think would be interested.]
1. Contact The Administration
Write the White House and the State Department. Urge them to
give wholehearted U.S. support to the Ottawa process aimed at
achieving a total ban on anti-personnel landmines this year.
Parallel slower negotiations should continue with countries
still unwilling to give up landmine production and use.
Send your letter to:
Mr. Samuel Berger
National Security Advisor
The White House
Washington, DC 20500
Fax: (202) 456-2883
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
U.S. Department of State
Washington, DC 20520
Fax: (202) 647-6434
2. Contact Congress
Write to Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), thanking him for his
leadership in working for a total ban on landmines. Encourage
him to continue his efforts and to push strongly for U.S.
participation in the Ottawa process.
Honorable Patrick Leahy
433 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Fax: (202) 224-3595
E-mail: leahy@leahy.senate.gov
Send copies of your letters (or separate messages) to:
Honorable John Ashcroft
Chair, Senate Africa Subcommittee
170 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Honorable Edward Royce
Chair, House Africa Subcommittee
1133 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Fax: (202) 226-0335
Honorable Maxine Waters
Congressional Black Caucus
2344 Rayburn House Office Building
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515
Fax: (202) 225-7854
And of course, send copies to your own two Senators and to
your House member.
For more information, or to submit an endorsement to the
campaign, contact: US Campaign to Ban Landmines (Mary Wareham,
Coordinator), Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, 2001 S
St, NW, Suite 740, Washington, DC 20009, Ph: +202-483-9222,
Fax: +202-483-9312, E-mail: mary@vi.org. Much additional
information is available on the International Campaign's web
site at http://www.vvaf.org/htdocs/landmine.html
and on the UN's demining database
(http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/mine).
This material is produced and distributed by the Washington
Office on Africa (WOA), a not-for-profit church, trade union
and civil rights group supported organization that works with
Congress on Africa-related legislation. WOA's educational
affiliate is the Africa Policy Information Center (APIC).
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