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Laying Landmines to Rest?
IRIN Web Special on Humanitarian Mine Action
(with special focus on the 2004 Nairobi Summit of a Mine Free World)
Interview with Rae McGrath, Co-laureate of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize
McGrath addressing memebrs of the House of Commons, London.
Credit: Gary Trotter
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Interview with Rae McGrath, Co-laureate of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize. McGrath is a writer, civil society campaigner and has been involved in mine action programmes for 17 years.
Despite being a main instigator and activist of the international campaign to ban landmines and a co-laureate of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize, which the campaign earned, Mr McGrath has criticisms of the progress in implementing the treaty. During a telephone interview with IRIN he argues that a redoubling of effort is required if those communities, and individuals, affected by landmines are to see tangible benefits in the coming years.
QUESTION: Surely the Ottawa Convention must be regarded as successful by any measure?
ANSWER: The Treaty made a huge step towards dealing with the problem of anti-personnel mines (APM) - it dispenses with complex legal language and goes straight to the heart of the problem.
In terms of impact on the ground, we need to be more honest. After five years of campaigning, following the start of the campaign in 1992, we have effectively stigmatized landmines making it almost impossible for major powers, even those which are not party to the treaty, to use anti-personnel mines without incurring international condemnation. This is perhaps the greatest success of the campaign to date.
Q: Hasn't the Treaty also provided for rigorous policing of signatories, to ensure they comply with their various treaty commitments?
A: On the surface it looks good, but when you get down to the details there are significant weaknesses in ensuring signatories remain consistent to the spirit of the treaty. Even some of the countries showing the highest level of commitment to the Ottawa treaty have made cynical use of perceived loopholes. For example, Canada, along with the UK and a number of other parties to the treaty, retain the Claymore-made mine type. This is a major concern, and one that weakens the treaty and, in effect, re-legalises a mine responsible for killing many innocent people.
However, the main weakness of the treaty lies in what happened at the very last minute of its formulation. At the first international ICBL conference held in London in May 1993, it was agreed to write an APM definition based on effect rather than design. We recognized that weak definitions have always damaged and weakened international treaties and we wanted to avoid that. The definition of a landmine is based primarily on its effect on humans was very explicit and was a core element of our campaigning. At a very late stage in negotiations, a definition by design was incorporated into the treaty. This meant, in essence, that manufacturers of future weapons could define whether their weapon was to be covered by the treaty by varying how they described and catalogued it. For me, this was a fundamental betrayal of the people we sought to represent, mine-affected communities, and is an obvious and damaging weakness of the treaty. If definition by effect was enshrined in the Treaty, many cluster weapons and anti-tank mines, which recently killed two international-aid workers in Darfur, would be outlawed by the Treaty.
Q: Has significant progress been made with respect to clearance of landmines?
A: A huge amount has changed since the early 90s when there was no mine clearance - but it's nowhere near enough. Mine and UXO (un-exploded ordnance) clearance will always be a problem because it relies on state funding. Until the 'polluter pays' [where belligerents in a conflict have to pay to clear the land of the debris of war] principle is recognized, no nation is willing to put its money where its mouth is; most governments, including the major parties to the Treaty are far more willing to invest money in weaponry than in saving lives. Compare what the US boasts in terms of funding of mine clearance with the colossal amounts that they spend on their invasion of Iraq. Their overall contributions to humanitarian mine action in the last decade would barely cover the cost of the first day of last year's invasion of Iraq.
Q: How impressive has the global response been to mine victims since the signing of the Treaty?
A: The world has done nothing about victims. Go to any mine-affected rural community and ask them how excited they are about what has happened since the 1997 Treaty - they would look at you blankly. It is entirely common to see people with no prostheses or crude homemade devices in hundreds of mine-affected communities. Access to prosthetic centres is possibly more centralized now than it was before and so access for rural victims is still very limited. To be blunt, the best they can hope for are some prostheses, but more commonly they merely become subjects of endless surveys and have become the subjects of popular international voyeurism. Rehabilitation, where it exists at all, is tailored to the budgets of the organizations involved and is never remotely related to the real scale of the problem.
Q: Should mine victims be given special status and special attention?
A: I have always argued against mine victims being separated from other war victims. Anyway, responding to mine victims is, in part, a response to war victims. Offering assistance to mine victims should cause a general improvement in health care at a decentralized level through a knock-on effect. However, as identified in the Ottawa Treaty, the signatories have a commitment to help mine victims in particular, but the common-sense response of relevant agencies will mean that they cannot refuse other war victims as they treat mine victims.
Q: If the most important aspect of mines is their effect on communities, why is universalisation of the treaty so important if minimal mine usage occurs and mine clearance continues?
A: In terms of the universalisation of the Treaty, international civil society is going to have to make it clear that it is not acceptable for certain major countries to stay out of the Ottawa process, especially in the United States. It is up to the people to insist that their government joins the process. The problem with major countries like the US not participating in the treaty is that it allows other non-signatories to point to the US and justify their own non-participation. Universalisation is critical because continuing wide acceptance of the treaty - in word and spirit - underpins continued eradication and victim-assistance programmes.
Q: So, is 2009 a realistic date for completion of most of the Treaty's commitments?
A: There is no way that by 2009, mine clearance will be finished or even remotely close. In some countries they have hardly started - and remember, President Bush has recently retained the right to use APM in the future. If funding continues at present levels, we will be nowhere near the treaty clearance target. Continued diversion of funds that could be used for mine clearance - towards unrealistic and sometimes irrelevant research projects -should especially be stopped, especially to those projects which are more likely to produce military spin-offs than solutions for humanitarian mine action. Millions have been spent on research already - where are the results? Neither should we forget existing mine victims whose plight the treaty tried to address - the outlook for victims is bleak if current trends continue.
Q: Some argue that the humanitarian mine sector has too many commercial interests involved. Is commercialization of the sector a problem?
A: The UN doesn't feel that commercialization is a problem in the mines-clearance sector. Quite often the UN have been in a rush to bring in commercial operators. NGOs have not done themselves any favours and in some cases, NGOs have tried to set up parallel-commercial operations in an attempt to get the best of both worlds. If commercial operations are carried out well, of course they are acceptable, and in terms of local national operators setting up as commercial units, this can provide a great alternative to international NGOs who come and go. Arms manufacturers who have 'humanitarian' spin offs double dipping, quite simply shouldn't be allowed to operate. Establishing a sustainable mine action indigenous capacity, supported by donors, must be central to any mine-action response.
Q: The head of the UN Mine Action Service recently claimed that landmines were now consigned to "the dustbin of history". Is this the case?
A: I understand his sentiment and wish it were true. But it is a dangerous statement because it gives the idea that the problem is solved. It is a neat sound bite, but in terms of the reality of what has been achieved, it is simply not true. The greatest step was to demonize landmines and make the world aware, but it will be many years, and many people will die and be maimed before Mr. Barber's claim becomes fact unless we learn to fund peace as readily as conflict.
[ENDS]
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