Jerry White's Speech
Ban Landmines Week Press Conference, Thursday March 8, 2001

Good Morning. Welcome. My name is Jerry White, and I serve as the chair of the United States Campaign to Ban Landmines, which is a coalition of 500 religious, children's, human rights, humanitarian, medical and veterans' organizations. We're a subset of the broader global coalition, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, comprised of over 1500 organizations from around the world, dedicated to a ban on landmines. So on behalf of the US and International Campaign to Ban Landmines, welcome.

The ICBL is a people's movement with over 500 people from over 90 countries and every state gathered here today during Ban Landmines Week in Washington, D.C. And we represent millions of citizens belonging to these groups around the world. We are organizations like Physicians for Human Rights, World Vision, Handicap International, Jesuit Refugee Service, Human Rights Watch, Save the Children, Amnesty International, UNICEF and hundreds more.

And many of us here today have met this weapon and survived without a leg, or an eye, or a hand. And I think all of us here hate this weapon, and we condemn its use, production, stockpile and transfer. You may already have heard the shocking statistics: up to 80 million mines in over 80 countries, representing a man-made epidemic.

But the good news today is we've found a cure. And it is residing in the historic 1997 Mine Ban Treaty that has been signed by 139 countries around the world. But not the United States. Today the United States stands alone in this hemisphere with Cuba as the only two countries who have not banned the use, stockpile, production and transfer of anti-personnel mines. Today the United States stands in the non-banned minority, with countries like Iraq, Iran, Pakistan Russia, China, Vietnam, and others.

Behind me, or actually, next to me, stands a mountain of shoes representing millions of people around the world whose lives have been forever blasted by this menace. Each shoe, each artificial leg reminds us why we're here today. To call on the United States to forever ban landmines and to address this humanitarian disaster and not look away. We believe and expect that there is a new opportunity today, this year, with this administration, to accelerate the timeline for the United States to join the ban. And by that we mean now, in 2001. We are watching. We will not look away.

All it takes is one false step in a minefield. I know. It happened to me one day. I was a junior at Brown University and had taken my junior year abroad to travel in Israel, the Holy Land, and I went camping. In a mine field. I didn't know what a landmine was - it wasn't part of my vocabulary whatsoever. Not until I was standing on a Russian-made mine that was laid during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and waiting sixteen years until it found me. I stepped on it, I was deafened by the blast, and I had that moment as many of us here have experienced or seen, of looking down and being disconnected from your body, literally. Your leg missing, your foot dangling, life is changed forever.

And the thing is, I'm not the only American who has been injured as a civilian by a landmine. We have many with us today: Ken Rutherford, Marianne Holtz, Irv Axelrod, Jack Wack, Duane Robey, and others. They're here. Did you know that 100,000 Americans have been casualties to a landmine in the last century? Landmines, I say, are as American as apple pie. But we don't think of them that way, do we? They are a weapon buried in 80 countries around the world, most of them in the developing world, with someone stepping on one every 20 or 22 minutes.

But, we don't think of Duane, Ken, Jerry, Marianne, or the American survivors, do we? It's the others, the hundreds of thousands around the world who have been injured by the weapon. So here today must stand an appeal to the United States and to other non-ban countries such as Russia, China, India, Pakistan and about 50 countries total who are not yet parties to the ban. Please give up this cruel, inhumane, illegal, immoral, insane weapon.

In his inaugural address President Bush said that when there is suffering there is duty. He also said that he pledged our nation, the United States, to a goal. Quote: "When we see the wounded traveler on the road to Jericho, we will not pass to the other side." President, thousands of wounded landmine survivors without legs, arms or sight, wait on that road to Jericho in the hope that the United States, at its best a just and compassionate nation, will join the global landmine ban. So today I stand before you and ask, with all of you, to join in this call for action for President Bush to do the right thing. We believe it will happen.

So today we have an order of excellent speakers. First we will have Rep. Jim McGovern, from my home state of Massachusetts, and one of the co-sponsors of the new legislation to move the United States further ahead toward joining the Mine Ban Treaty. Following Rep. McGovern we will have Rev. Dr. Bob Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of Churches. Following Dr. Edgar will be Song Kosal, a seventeen year-old landmine survivor from Cambodia, and finally, our ICBL Ambassador Jody Williams, co-lauriat 1997 Nobel Prize for Peace. Thank you for listening and not looking away.