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U.S. Campaign to Ban
Landmines Email Newsletter In this edition. . .
USCBL Coordinator and Chair Met with State Department Official In December, USCBL Coordinator Gina Coplon-Newfield and USCBL Chair Mary Wareham met with a State Department official who is involved with the Bush Administration’s formal review of US landmine policies. Coplon-Newfield and Wareham expressed hope on behalf of the USCBL that the review will result in improved US landmine policies that will bring the US closer to, not farther from, joining the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, that will continue the US military’s history of no new use of antipersonnel landmines since 1991, and that will sustain high levels of support for landmine victim assistance and demining. The State Department official indicated that the policy review does appear to be in its final stages, but that it is not clear when the new policies will be announced.USCBL Continues to Urge Presidential Candidates to Support Landmine Ban The USCBL is continuing its efforts organizing people throughout the country to urge all of the candidates running for president to come out strongly and publicly in favor of US accession to the Mine Ban Treaty. Over the past few months, we have been able to arrange meetings or other forms of direct communication with campaign staff members working with Senator John Kerry, Senator John Edwards, Ambassador Carol Moseley Braun, Congressman Dennis Kucinich, and Governor Howard Dean. We are currently following up with those offices and are reaching out to the other candidates as well. Due to IRS regulations, we are unable to indicate publicly which candidates have come out in favor of banning landmines. We urge you to contact the candidates –in person at campaign events in your community, by phone, by email, by fax, or by letter—and urge them to support US accession to the Mine Ban Treaty and to mention this support in their campaign speeches, debates, and on their websites. See http://www.banminesusa.org/urg_act/966_lobby.htm for more information or contact us at landmines@fcnl.org. Resources from the International Campaign to Ban Landmines The ICBL has an updated Spanish-language webpage online at www.icbl.org/es. The page has news, resources and much more to support the wonderful work of our Spanish-speaking campaigners. If you have any questions or have campaign-related news articles or resources in Spanish to add to the website please email icbl@icbl.org To avoid copyright problems, but to allow ICBL campaigners and researchers to continue to receive information to assist with campaign and research efforts, the ICBL has decided to change how it distributes media reports. From now on, the media reports distributed to the ICBLmedia listerserve (media articles pertaining to landmines) will be a member-only service, meaning that only ICBL campaign members and Landmine Monitor researchers can subscribe and access the archives. All current members of this list are being "expelled" and ICBL members will soon receive information on how to again access. The ICBL has several public newsletter distribution lists. For more information and/or to subscribe please visit www.icbl.org/info/newsletter. Conference in Chicago Weekend of February 21 Physicians for Human Rights, the coordinating organization of the US Campaign to Ban Landmines, will be holding a conference in Chicago the weekend of February 21, 2004: “The Power of the Health Professional Voice: Human Rights at Home and Abroad.” Though the conference will focus primarily on the fight against global AIDS (with keynote speaker Paul Farmer, MD) and the work to address racial and ethnic disparities in US health care (with keynote speaker Jack Geiger, MD, MSci), there will be a landmines workshop offered with USCBL Coordinator Gina Coplon-Newfield and Center for International Rehabilitation President William Kennedy Smith. For more information or to register by February 15, visit www.phrusa.org/conference2004 ICBL Deplores Continued Mine Use in Colombia Bogotá, Colombia, 28-Jan-2004 At the opening of a roundtable discussion on landmines in the Americas region, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) called for an end to antipersonnel mine use in Colombia by guerrillas and paramilitaries and urged greater adherence to the norm established by the 1997 treaty prohibiting the use, production, trade and stockpiling of the weapon. "We deplore the continued use of antipersonnel mines in Colombia. It is simply unacceptable," said Ms. Mary Wareham, Global Research Coordinator for the ICBL's Landmine Monitor initiative. The ICBL believes it is essential that the issue of antipersonnel landmines is included in any peace negotiations. Colombia is the only country in the region where antipersonnel mines continue to be planted on a regular basis. According to Landmine Monitor, mines are used by the FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) and ELN (Ejército de Liberación Nacional) guerrilla groups, as well as AUC (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia) paramilitaries. In 2002, 530 landmine casualties were reported in Colombia, more than double the number reported for 2001. "We are deeply disturbed by the growing number of innocent mine victims and urge appropriate and comprehensive assistance for them over the long-term," said Ms. Wareham Every one of the 35 countries in the Americas region is a State Party to the Mine Ban Treaty, except Cuba, the United States, and Haiti. Haiti has signed but not yet ratified. "Neither Cuba nor the United States has valid reasons to reject the Mine Ban Treaty. We encourage them to join without delay," said Mr. Álvaro Jiménez Millán of the Colombian Campaign Against Landmines/ Campaña Colombiana Contra Minas... For more information and the full article, visit http://www.icbl.org/news/2003/441.php A Note from the ICBL Mine detection rats (a cheap potential alternative to dogs) have been used in Tanzania and are currently being tested in Mozambique. A genetically engineered plant, which grows like a weed but changes color when it finds a landmine, is being developed by a Danish biotech company. The International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) and the US Campaign to Ban Landmines (USCBL) do not endorse any specific inventions or promote one over the other. However, we welcome developments that improve the speed, safety and efficiency of existing mine clearance methods. It is important that research and development (R&D) efforts are well coordinated and focused on operational needs. For example, there is no point spending a lot of money on developing a hi-tech solution that will ultimately be too expensive and unworkable in the mine-contaminated rice paddies of Cambodia or plains of Afghanistan. We believe that money spent on R&D should be in addition to, and in proportion with, funds spent on demining. For more information from the ICBL on this topic, including the full text of the message above, please visit http://www.icbl.org/news/2003/443.php For more information about the US Campaign to Ban Landmines or to donate on-line, please see our website at www.banminesusa.org U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines To stop receiving these updates and action alerts, please write to landmines@fcnl.org from the email address that receives the newsletter and ask us to take you off the list. |
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For more on the Mine Ban Treaty, go to www.icbl.org |