Interesting article in New Scientist about engineers at a Sri Lankan university mating Robots and Mongeese to find landmines. You can read the introduction to the article here (access to the full article needs a subscription to New Scientist). Luckily there is a link to the research article http://people.seas.harvard.edu/~thrish/Books/Hedem_chap.pdf

Geneva, 3 April 2008 – The year 2008 will be critical in the struggle to free the world from antipersonnel mines, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) said today, on the eve of the thirdUN International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action (4 April).

Under the Mine Ban Treaty, States Parties have 10 years to clear all their mined areas. The first deadlines – for 20 mine-affected states – will occur in 2009. States can ask for an extension of the deadline for up to 10 years, and consideration of these requests will take place at the 9th Meeting of the States Parties this November.

“Governments need to show that they are taking the Mine Ban Treaty’s clearance obligations seriously,” said Tamar Gabelnick, ICBL Treaty Implementation Director. “The credibility of the treaty’s mine clearance obligation will depend in large part on how extension requests are dealt with this year,” she added.

Mine action worldwide has saved countless lives and made thousands of square kilometres of land safe to work and walk on again. However, in a number of countries, progress has been slower than expected and in some cases unacceptable.

Alarmingly, more than three-quarters of the states with 2009 deadlines appear set to miss them, including: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Chad, Croatia, Denmark, Ecuador, Jordan, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Niger, Peru, Senegal, Thailand, United Kingdom (Falklands), Venezuela, Yemen and Zimbabwe. Many of these states are likely to request long extensions of their deadlines.

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Article 4 of the Mine Ban Treaty requires States Parties to destroy their stockpile of antipersonnel landmines as soon as possible but not later than four years after joining the treaty. It is one of the positive obligations of the treaty, along with the obligation to clear all mined areas and to provide assistance to landmine victims. There is no possibility for an extension of the four-year deadline.

The obligation to destroy all stockpiles serves both the treaty’s disarmament and humanitarian goals. First and foremost, destroying mines is a cornerstone of a treaty aiming to eliminate a class of weapons. Their destruction also ensures that the mines can never be laid in the ground and can therefore never claim a victim.

The good news:

• The stockpile destruction obligation of the Mine Ban Treaty is one of its most successful provisions
• 83 States Parties have finished destroying their stockpiles, destroying around 41.8 million antipersonnel mines total. 60 states declared no stockpiles; 5 states have not yet reported on stockpiles but are not believed to have any.
• Only four of those states missed their deadlines over the past nine years:
  • Cape Verde and Guinea, each of which only had very small stocks;
  • Turkmenistan, which mistakenly believed it could retain tens of thousands of mines for training purposes; and
  • Afghanistan, which had to convince a regional leader to hand over a stockpile of around 1,000 mines under his control.
• Both States Parties with 1 April 2008 deadlines met them just on time: Burundi destroyed its stockpile of 610 mines on 17 March, and Sudan finished destroying its last 6078 AP mines on 31 March.

The bad news:

• Three countries missed their 1 March 2008 deadline: Belarus (3.4 million remaining), Greece (1.6 million remaining), and Turkey (2.9 million remaining)
• None have predicted an end date for the destruction of these large stockpiles
• Belarus’ remaining mines are PFM mines, which contain a chemical explosive that is particularly difficult and expensive to destroy.
• Turkey presented has a new high-tech weapons disposal facility but is still incapable of predicting when it can finish the destruction of its stockpile. In 2006, Turkey destroyed 94,111 mines by open detonation.
• Greece has not informed other States Parties about its failure to comply with its deadline and apparently has not yet finalized a contract for their destruction. It has not destroyed any mines to date.
• No State Party has yet publicly reacted to these severe treaty infractions.
• Of the other States Parties with upcoming stockpile destruction deadlines:
  • Ethiopia (deadline of 1 June 2009) has not yet submitted its initial transparency report, due on 28 November 2005, that should have provided details about its stockpile among other critical information
  • Ukraine (deadline of 1 June 2010) has around 6 million PFM mines. In the spring of 2007 an EC-funded contract to destroy these mines was abruptly cancelled by the contractor. The contractor did not destroy any mines before leaving.

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