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U.S.
Campaign to Ban Landmines Email Newsletter In this edition. . .
Teach/Learn About Landmines and Break Guinness World Record English-To-Go, and on-line educational service, will attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the largest simultaneous lesson. Students and teachers from around the globe will be invited to join in a lesson about the danger of landmines on November 12, 2002 —next Tuesday. It will be the largest attempt ever made anywhere in the world. Last year, English-To-Go attempted a similar exercise and managed to conduct a lesson with 2006 teachers to 79,739 students in 114 countries! This year they want it to be bigger and better and hope to pass on an anti-landmine message to as many young people as possible. If you would like to get your school involved and be presented with a certificate saying you were part of the world record attempt, then please go to www.english-to-go.com for more details. You can download the free lesson and instructions from the site. The lesson is to be held on November 12, 2002. Note: The US Campaign to Ban Landmines has not been able to read the curriculum being promoted for November, so we cannot verify its accuracy and quality. We do, however, believe that the initiative is a great way to raise awareness. New Demining Legislation Introduced On September 26th 2002, House of Representatives member Lynn Woolsey introduced the Roots for Peace Act of. If passed, the bill will authorize assistance through eligible nongovernmental organizations to remove and dispose of landmines and unexploded ordnance in agriculturally-valuable lands in developing countries. It will also authorize that at least $2,000,000 is made available to the Roots of Peace nongovernmental organization in order to carry out demining activities in the Shomali Valley of Afghanistan. To celebrate the introduction of the bill, Congresswoman Woolsey, Nobel Laureate Jody Williams, Roots of Peace President Heidi Kuhn, Congressman Jim McGovern, and others spoke on Capitol Hill of the dangers that landmines pose to agricultural development, particularly in Afghanistan. If authorized, the Secretary of State will determine how to spend up to $10,000,000 in additional demining funds for FY 03. Please contact your House member and urge him or her to co-sponsor the Roots of Peace Act (HR 5497). To find out how to contact your House Member, visit www.house.gov or www.vote-smart.org. U.S.
Loses Moral Ground 0n Land Mine Ban Bob Keeler is a member of Newsday’s editorial board and was a U.S. Army intelligence officer in Korea. October 21, 2002 Nearly five years after the ceremonial signing of an international treaty to ban landmines, these deadly seeds planted malevolently in the earth continue to bear bloody fruit around the world: severed limbs, broken lives, shattered families. And still, the United States refuses to join 129 other nations that have already ratified the treaty. Once again, our government's ungovernable urge to go it alone casts the nation in the role of pariah. Former President Bill Clinton deserves a major share of the blame, for failing to override the Pentagon's argument that the treaty would somehow endanger the defense of South Korea. But last year, eight senior retired U.S. commanders, including men who had led troops in Korea, wrote to President George W. Bush and argued that land mines were not needed in Korea. In fact, they'd slow the response by the United States and South Korea to any invasion from the North. (Right now both Koreas are removing land mines along the demilitarized zone that separates them.) Before leaving office, Clinton did say that the United States would join the treaty by 2006, provided the nation can find "alternatives" to antipersonnel land mines. After Bush took office, his administration began a review of the policy. The Department of Defense has already recommended that the United States abandon any plans to join the treaty. The policy is still under study, but advocates for the treaty fear that Bush, the ultimate unilateralist cowboy, will reject even Clinton's feeble plan for America to do the right thing eventually. The truth is that the protection of Korea is not the real reason for the Pentagon's intransigence. What the generals really fear is the precedent that joining the treaty would set: If a bunch of civilians can band together and force the Pentagon to abandon one of its weapons, then none of its weapons would be safe. So this is not about Korea at all. It's about generals protecting their toys from rampaging peacemakers. That movement of non-governmental organizations to rid the planet of these hideous weapons started gathering in 1991. The International Campaign to Ban Landmines formally began in October 1992. Five years later, the campaign and its coordinator, Jody Williams, won the Nobel Peace Prize. In December 1997, just days before Williams accepted the prize, 122 nations signed the treaty in Ottawa. It took less than a year to gather the needed 40 ratifications to put the treaty in force. It became binding under international law in March 1999. The treaty has produced some good news. Under its terms, nations have destroyed more than 34 million antipersonnel mines, including 7 million last year. Over the past decade, the treaty has led to the expenditure of $1.4 billion on such activities as mine clearance and survivor assistance. Most important of all, it has cut the number of new casualties from an estimated 26,000 a year to 15,000-20,000. Both the citizen movement and the treaty have worked. Early on, Clinton spoke out in favor of the treaty. But the Pentagon didn't like it, and he caved. Since the treaty took effect, the United States has honored most of its requirements-without joining. Clearly, joining will not damage our nation's security, but refusal to join causes real damage to our image. "The country has not exported land mines since 1992; has not used since the first Iraq war in 1991; has not produced since 1997; has destroyed several million mines from its stockpiles; and is one of the largest contributors in the world to mine action," Williams said. "It would seem a logical step to sign the treaty." Despite the disturbing placement of mines by India and Pakistan recently, the trend is toward the elimination of these weapons, which keep producing death and serious injury long after a war ends. "Even countries like China, which has not been pro-ban, have responded to the global sentiment against land mines," Williams said. "While it still retains them, it announced that it has stopped producing land mines for export - a very significant step forward, since China has been one of the biggest producers and exporters of land mines in the world." The shame is that the United States, once a leader in this heartening effort to make the world safer, now stands on the sidelines, an outcast. Copyright © 2002, Newsday, Inc. Thank You to Nathaniel Raymond Nathaniel Raymond, who has served as the Media and Public Affairs Coordinator at Physicians for Human Rights for the past three years and who has contributed immensely to the media outreach for the US Campaign Ban Landmines, is leaving next week to take a job at Oxfam America. The USCBL is incredibly grateful to Nathaniel for his well-written news releases and Op Eds, his work with reporters to educate them about landmines, his coordination of press conferences, his counsel on military issues, and his sense of humor. Thank you Nathaniel and good luck! Physicians for Human Rights has hired John Heffernan to take on the media outreach for all of PHR's initiatives, including its coordination of the USCBL Warlord
Calls for Landmine Ban in Somalia www.news24.com/News24/Africa/East_Africa/0,1113,2-11-997_1279305,00.html Somali faction leader Hussein Mohamed Aidid on Friday urged rival warlords in Somalia to agree to a total ban on the use of landmines. "I urge the Somali factions, which signed a peace deal at the weekend, to end the decade-old civil war in Somalia, to end the use of landmines to prove that they are against all kinds of violence," Aidid said in an interview on Friday. "I am making a humane appeal for an end to the use of landmines, as women and children are prime victims," Aidid said, pointing out: "It has brought terrible human losses to nomads in the war-affected areas." Aidid denied allegations by other warlords that he is among leaders of Somalia's warring factions that have received landmine consignments from neighbouring Ethiopia in the past several years. "I swear it is not a bluff, my faction never used and will not not use landmines in future, as they have killed or maimed many Somalis and left scary memories in their minds that will not go away," Aidid said. Landmine victims need expensive and specialised medical treatment, which is unaffordable in Somalia, Aidid said. "A poor child whose limbs are blown off by a landmine can't have plastic surgery," Aidid said. "If a child's smiling face is destroyed once by a landmine, it would be difficult to give back his or her natural beauty and strength." He said the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) gives little help to landmine victims in Somalia. Aidid, a US citizen and a former corporal in the US marines reserves, is chairperson of the United Somali Congress/Somali National Alliance (USC/SNA) faction. He is also co-president of the Somali Reconciliation and Restoration Council (SRRC), a grouping of Somali warlords established in Ethiopia in 2001 and opposed to the Somali Transitional National Government (TNG). Aidid said tens of thousands of people have died because of landmines since 1977, when Ethiopia and Somalia went to war over Ethiopia's southeastern Ogaden region. "It is a pity that some factions use landmines in their fiefdoms at main entrance gates and in most highways to force commuters to use roads controlled by their fighters," Aidid said, without naming any faction. However, the remark was probably a reference to the Rahanwein Resistance Army (RRA) and TNG fighters, who plant landmines on the edges of their territory to enable them to collect hefty taxes in the southern Wanlaweyn district of Lower Shabelle region. Somalia has not had a fully functional government and has been ruled by clan warlords since dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown in January 1991. Weapons of all kinds, including landmines, can be purchased freely at Mogadishu's weapons' markets, such as Bakara, while thousands more are imported into the country by the major clan and sub-clan warlords. Aid agencies have removed landmines from parts of Somalia, mainly in the breakaway Republic of Somaliland, which seceded from the rest of Somalia five months after Barre was ousted. - Sapa For more information about the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines or to donate on-line, please visit www.banminesusa.org
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