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An international ban on anti-personnel mines: History and negotiation of the “Ottawa treaty”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 November 2010

Stuart Maslen  and
Peter Herby
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Extract

As the First Review Conference of the 1980 Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) closed in Geneva on 3 May 1996, there was widespread dismay at the failure of the States Parties to reach consensus on effective ways to combat the global scourge of landmines. The CCW Protocol II as amended on 3 May 1996 (Protocol II as amended) introduced a number of changes that were widely welcomed, but it fell far short of totally prohibiting these weapons, a move already supported by more than 40 States. Keen to sustain the international momentum that might otherwise have slackened, the Canadian delegation announced that Canada would host a meeting of pro-ban States later in the year to develop a strategy to move the international community towards a global ban on anti-personnel mines.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of the Red Cross (1961 - 1997) , Volume 38 , Issue 325 , December 1998 , pp. 693 - 713
Copyright
Copyright © International Committee of the Red Cross 1998

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References

1 United Nations Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May be Deemed to be Excessively Injurious or to have Indiscriminate Effects, of 10 October 1980.

2 Protocol on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Mines, Booby-Traps and Other Devices as amended on 3 May 1996 (Protocol II as amended on 3 May 1996), annexed to the CCW, supra note 1.

3 Fifty States were full participants at the first Ottawa Conference: Angola, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Colombia, Croatia, Denmark, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Gabon, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Guinea, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, Mozambique, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Trinidad and Tobago, the United Kingdom, the United States, Uruguay, and Zimbabwe. A further 24 countries — Albania, Argentina, Armenia, the Bahamas, Benin, Bulgaria, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Cuba, the Czech Republic, Egypt, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the Holy See, India, Israel, Malaysia, Morocco, Pakistan, the Republic of Korea, Romania, the Russian Federation, Rwanda, and Ukraine — attended as official observers.

4 Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction, of 18 September 1997, reprinted in IRRC, No. 320, September-October 1997, pp. 563–578.

5 Article 2, para. 3, of Protocol II as amended defines an anti-personnel mine as one “primarily designed to be exploded by the presence, proximity or contact of a person”. The use of the phrase “primarily designed” was strongly opposed by the ICRC which feared its abuse in cases where a munition which was clearly an anti-personnel mine could be claimed to have another “primary” purpose.

6 Geneva Protocol of 17 June 1925 for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or other Gases and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare.

7 See APL/CW.46 of 3 September 1997.

8 11th preambular paragraph.

9 Article 2, para. 2.

10 “Mines designed to be detonated by the presence, proximity or contact of a vehicle as opposed to a person, that are equipped with anti-handling devices, are not considered anti-personnel mines as a result of being so equipped.”

11 See APL/CW.9 of 1 September 1997.

12 See APL/CW.2 of 1 September 1997.

13 See APL/CW.4 of 1 September 1997.

14 “Anti-handling device means a device intended to protect a mine and which is part of, linked to, attached to or placed under the mine and which activates when an attempt is made to tamper with the mine.” See Protocol II as amended, Art. 2, para. 14.

15 See APL/CW.32 of 2 September 1997.

16 See Art. 1, para. 1(b).

17 Art. 1, para. 1(c).

18 See APL/CW.8 of 1 September 1997.

19 Art. 5, first Austrian draft treaty text.

20 See APL/CW.10 of 1 September 1997.

21 Art. 3, para. 1, Ottawa treaty.

22 Canada stated it would retain around 1,500, the Netherlands 2,000, and Germany “thousands, not tens of thousands”. Belgium supported this interpretation.

23 Comments of the International Committee of the Red Cross on the Third Austrian Draft (13/5/97) of the Convention on the Prohibition of Anti-personnel Mines, Informal Working Paper for the Oslo Negotiations, September 1997. A similar extension period is contained in section C (paras. 24–28) of the Verification Annex of the 1992 Chemical Weapons Convention.

24 Art. 2, para. 5.

25 Art. 5, para. 1.

26 Art. 6.

27 Supra, note 23.

28 Article 6, para. 3.

29 Idem.

30 See Art. 8.

31 See Art. 10, Second Austrian Draft.

32 Art. 19.

33 Art. 17.

34 Art. 18.

35 Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the protection of victims of international armed conflicts (Protocol I), Article 99.

36 Art. 20.

37 See Coupland, R. M. (ed.), The SIrUS Project, Towards a determination of which weapons cause “superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering”, ICRC, Geneva, 1997.Google Scholar

38 Doswald-Beck, Louise, “New Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons”, IRRC, No. 312, May-June 1996, pp. 272–299.CrossRefGoogle Scholar