Jody Williams Reflects on Working Toward Peace

The desire to ban land mines is not new. In the late 1970s, the International Committee of the Red Cross, along with a handful of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), pressed the world to look at weapons that were particularly injurious and/or indiscriminate. One of the weapons of special concern was land mines. People often ask why the focus on this one weapon. How is the land mine different from any other conventional weapon?

Land mines distinguish themselves because once they have been sown, once the soldier walks away from the weapon, the land mine cannot tell the difference between a soldier or a civilian-a woman, a child, a grandmother going out to collect firewood to make the family meal. The crux of the problem is that while the use of the weapon might be militarily justifiable during the day of the battle, or even the two weeks of the battle, or maybe even the two months of the battle, once peace is declared the land mine does not recognize that peace. The land mine is eternally prepared to take victims. In common parlance, it is the perfect soldier, the eternal sentry. The war ends; the land mine goes on killing.

Since World War II most of the conflicts in the world have been internal conflicts. The weapon of choice in those wars has all too often been land mines-to such a degree that what we find today are tens of millions of land mines contaminating approximately seventy countries around the world. The overwhelming majority of those countries are found in the developing world, primarily in those countries that do not have the resources to clean up the mess, to care for the tens of thousands of land mine victims. The end result is an international community now faced with a global humanitarian crisis. . . . Estimates range between one and two hundred million mines in stockpiles around the world.

When the ICRC pressed in the seventies for the governments of the world to consider increased restrictions or elimination of particularly injurious or indiscriminate weapons, there was little support for a ban of land mines. The end result of several years of negotiations was the 1980 Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW). What that treaty did was attempt to regulate the use of land mines. While the Convention tried to tell commanders in the field when it was okay to use the weapon and when it was not okay to use the weapon, it also allowed them to make decisions about the applicability of the law in the midst of battle. Unfortunately, in the heat of battle, the laws of war do not exactly come to mind. When you are trying to save your skin you use anything and everything at your disposal to do so.

Throughout these years the Cold War raged on, and internal conflicts that often were proxy wars of the superpowers proliferated. Finally with the collapse of the Soviet Bloc, people began to look at war and peace differently. Without the overarching threat of nuclear holocaust, people started to look at how wars had actually been fought during the Cold War. What they found was that in the internal conflicts fought during that time, the most insidious weapon of all was the antipersonnel land mine-and that it contaminated the globe in epidemic proportion. . . .

It was the NGOs, the nongovernmental organizations, who began to seriously think about trying to deal with the root of the problem. To eliminate the problem, it would be necessary to eliminate the weapon. The work of NGOs across the board was affected by the land mines in the developing world. Children's groups, development organizations, refugee organizations, medical and humanitarian relief groups-all had to make huge adjustments in their programs to try to deal with the land mine crisis and its impact on the people they were trying to help. It was also in this period that the first NGO humanitarian demining organizations were born-to try to return contaminated land to rural communities.

It was a handful of NGOs, with their roots in humanitarian and human rights work, which began to come together in late 1991 and early 1992 in an organized effort to ban antipersonnel land mines. In October of 1992, Handicap International, Human Rights Watch, Medico International, Mines Advisory Group, Physicians for Human Rights, and Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation came together to issue a Joint Call to Ban Antipersonnel Land mines. These organizations, which became the steering committee of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, called for an end to the use, production, trade, and stockpiling of antipersonnel land mines. The call also pressed governments to increase resources for humanitarian mine clearance and for victim assistance.

From this inauspicious beginning, the International Campaign has become an unprecedented coalition of one thousand organizations working together in sixty countries to achieve the common goal of a ban of antipersonnel land mines. And as the Campaign grew, the steering committee was expanded to represent the continuing growth and diversity of those who had come together in this global movement. We added the Afghan and Cambodian Campaigns and Radda Barnen in 1996, and the South African Campaign and Kenya Coalition early [in 1997] as we continued to press toward our goal. And in six years we did it. In September of [1997], 89 countries came together in Oslo and finished the negotiations of a ban treaty based on a draft drawn up by Austria. . . . [In November 1997,] 121 countries came together again to sign that ban treaty. . . .

The Oslo negotiations gave the world a treaty banning antipersonnel land mines which is remarkably free of loopholes and exceptions. It is a treaty which bans the use, production, trade, and stockpiling of antipersonnel land mines. It is a treaty which requires states to destroy their stockpiles within four years of its entering into force. It is a treaty which requires mine clearance within ten years. It calls upon states to increase assistance for mine clearance and for victim assistance. It is not a perfect treaty-the Campaign has concerns about the provision allowing for antihandling devices on antivehicle mines; we are concerned about mines kept for training purposes; we would like to see the treaty directly apply to nonstate actors and we would like stronger language regarding victim assistance. But, given the close cooperation with governments which resulted in the treaty itself, we are certain that these issues can be addressed through the annual meetings and review conferences provided for in the treaty.

As I have already noted . . . 121 countries signed the treaty. Three ratified it simultaneously-signaling the political will of the international community to bring this treaty into force as soon as possible. It is remarkable. Land mines have been used since the U.S. Civil War, since the Crimean War, yet we are taking them out of arsenals of the world. It is amazing. It is historic. It proves that civil society and governments do not have to see themselves as adversaries. It demonstrates that small and middle powers can work together with civil society and address humanitarian concerns with breathtaking speed. It shows that such a partnership is a new kind of superpower in the post-Cold War world.

 

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