In 1998 I was in Cambodia, on a bus going through a village beside a river. Looking out of the window, I spied some faded hazard tape wrapped roughly round a small lump in the road. Getting closer, I realised that it was a small bomb – a cartoon-style cylinder with fins on the end, its head buried in the road. That was not a landmine or a cluster munition. In some ways, it was less dangerous than either for being more visible and more obvious. But it was a reminder that the deadly legacy of war often lingers decades after the conflict ends, and that weapons cannot, once let loose on the world, be contained to one place: a flood may well have taken that decades-old weapon to that place.
International action against landmines
That has long been understood, and at the end of the last century it led to action. Britain was a leading figure in development and adoption of the 1997 Antipersonnel Mine Ban Convention (informally known as the Ottawa treaty) – and subsequently in supporting action to clear the deadly, disastrous impact of past action. That was followed by the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions.
The success of the landmine treaty can be measured in lives. Figures from the Mines Advisory Group show there was an annual casualty rate of 24,000 before its institution, which reduced to fewer than 1,000 by 2012, although a small number of locations, particularly Ukraine and Myanmar, have seen that figure rise since. Global stockpiles of landmines have fallen from 250 million to 5.3 million, the vast majority of those held in non-party states.
Yet today, on the UN-declared International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action, the future of that progress is in doubt as never before, despite the heartwarming stories of recording-breaking mine-clear rats. In the face of Russia’s attack on Ukraine, and in the context of the political state of the US, Poland, Finland and all three Baltic states have announced they will withdraw from the Ottawa treaty, and Lithuania has withdrawn from the cluster munitions treaty.
House of Lords debate on landmines and cluster munitions
The issue – and what Britain’s continuing position should be – was the subject of a short debate in House of Lords yesterday. For that, the Mines Advisory Group set out the powerful case against these weapons: that they disproportionately impact civilians, representing 84% of landmine casualties in 2023 – 37% of them children, and 93% of cluster munition casualties. In the latter case, between 10% and 40% of the weapons fail to detonate, scattering bomblets over an unpredictable range and pattern.
Licit and illicit global trade means that a return to landmines in Europe would rapidly mean their spread to other regions – and within regions where they can easily be moved, either as a complete device or as a source of explosives for improvised devices. At a giant scale, their presence or threat means that farmers cannot go safely into their fields, children cannot play without risk of maiming or death, and often women cannot collect essential water supplies in safety.
I was pleased in yesterday’s debate to hear Baroness Chapman of Darlington for the government say “we continue to use our best efforts to promote the treaties and their norms”. That is absolutely right. As she acknowledged: “The human and financial costs of their use are devastating.”
International Day for Mine Awareness
As the Mines Advisory Group points out, nations in West Africa, the Sahel and the Horn of Africa, resisting vicious insurgencies in protracted conflicts, are still seeking to progress their obligations as treaty signatories. Even South Sudan, facing one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises amid ongoing conflict, remains committed to both treaties.
There is no case for European exceptionalism here. Abandoning the hard-won, long-campaigned-for treaties not only risks the spread of the weapons, but it also abandons the principle of a rules-based international order. That is patently under enormous threat. But, as I was saying also yesterday with regard to tariffs, that demands that states remaining committed to that approach must stick together and refuse to be divided by hostile forces.
The other issue of great concern is the continuing work of clearance, so urgently needed, and an area in which the UK has been a leading funder. With the slashing of the official development assistance budget, the fate of those programmes remains uncertain, with lives in immediate danger from past actions.
That is a threat not just to individuals, but the security of us all – to the chances of successful escape from conflict, for the rebuilding of war-torn lives. It is a reminder that security policy is not just about defence, but also about development, and diplomacy, something the government is sadly refusing to acknowledge.
Read more by Green Peer Natalie Bennett:
