CALM Committee presses on
At its first meeting for 1998 the committee:

• Reviewed the Ottawa Conference and New Zealand (and CALM) presence there. There are matters to follow up with Minister of Youth Affairs Deborah Morris (who signed the Ottawa Treaty for New Zealand).
  
  
• Discussed the need to press for early New Zealand ratification of the Ottawa Treaty. This may be encouraged by having questions asked in Parliament. Matthew Broadhead explained the process that will be necessary for New Zealand to complete ratification. We can only ratify the treaty once our domestic law has been brought into line with the obligations under the treaty. This requires legislation, which the government plans to introduce during the year.
  
  
• Universalisation of the treaty remains an NGO priority. To this end CALM has plans to call on several Wellington embassies of other countries (see separate item).
  
  
• Nadi Round Table Conference. Andrew Ladley pointed out that the conference was a success. The number of Pacific countries participating at Ottawa was very satisfactory, given the short time available to raise their awareness. Airfares and hotel costs for both John and Andrew in Nadi were paid for by the Australian government. There has been no correspondence from the Pacific following the Fiji conference.
  
  
• Report from Auckland - Neil Mander had met with several groups to discuss the outcome of the Ottawa conference. He reported that Lawrence Carter was keen to set up a landmine research institute at Auckland University. His project involves researching new ways of locating landmines. It is important "cutting edge" work which needs support and funding
  
  
• Matthew Broadhead from MFAT's International Security and Arms Control Division (ISAC) is being posted overseas. He was thanked warmly for his co-operation and for the exchange of information that he had contributed to, something CALM has received from all ISAC personnel over the years.
  
  
• Election of officers. As well as the change of convenor (see separate article) Iain Sandford resigned as secretary. A new secretary was not appointed at the meeting, but John Head will look after secretarial matters until the position is filled. Brian Hayes will continue as treasurer; David Zwartz will continue as editor; John Head will act as spokesperson and will be responsible for maintaining Asia/Pacific links; Justin Frisby will handle distribution of resources.
  
  
• Peter Lowe has taken over as co-ordinator of the Canterbury campaign, replacing Peter Moore.

New CALM Convenor
At the last CALM committee meeting, founding convener John Head confirmed that he was standing down from that position. John started CALM in 1992 and has seen the achievement of the Ottawa Treaty signing in 1997 - a five-year campaign that few dreamed at the start could be so successful.

John has been the visible heart of the campaign in NZ, addressing meetings, lobbying MPs and ambassadors, writing many letters, receiving a flood of e-mail relating to the international campaign, maintaining liaison with ICBL leaders and the Pacific and Asian campaign groups, and travelling to many overseas meetings.

While attending the all-important conference in Oslo last September he found himself in a rather less familiar role, holding a placard in a street protest against the stance of the American delegation.

Although standing down as convener John will continue on the committee with the role of spokesman for CALM and will also maintain the liaison with the Pacific region.

New convenor Neil Mander has a background of telecommunication engineering and was "granted" early retirement a few years ago. Since then he has been actively involved with groups such as Engineers for Social Responsibility (newsletter editor), Register of Engineers for Disaster Relief NZ, and the Sustainable Energy Forum. He began with CALM in 1993.

Neil was part of the NZ delegation at the Sydney Colloquium last July and travelled with John Head to Ottawa last December to see the signing of the Treaty and participate in the ICBL forum which reviewed the campaign to date and considered the path for the future.

News from overseas
Mary Wareham has announced her resignation from the position of co-ordinator of the US Campaign to Ban Landmines. She was recruited from Wellington by Jody Williams to take over the position, which grew to co-ordinating a coalition effort of 285 US-based non-governmental organizations. "I intend to continue my involvement with our common efforts to eliminate antipersonnel landmines," Mary said in her resignation announcement.

John Head writes, "Mary has carried out her work in the USA with dedication and distinction and has been very prominent in the US Stigmatisation Campaign, the Alliant protests, Congress resolutions and political actions, the pre-Ottawa Ban Bus tour of the USA and of course she has been a powerhouse of information at international conferences."

• John Head and Mary Gray had a half-hour discussion on landmines with the Assistant Military Attache at the Chinese Embassy.
• The Russian Embassy had not responded to letters sent by Chris King. CALM should follow this up.
• Brian Hayes was persisting in efforts to meet with the Thai Embassy.
• The Taiwan Economic and Cultural Office had been approached by Carrick Lewis. They informed him that they supported the Ottawa treaty, but would not be able to sign because Taiwan was not a UN member.
• John Head and David Zwartz had a positive reaction from the Singapore High Commission. Singapore has recently extended indefinitely its moratorium on the export of all types of anti-personnel landmines, but has not yet signed the Ottawa Treaty.
  

Next stage
Jody Williams, Nobel Peace Prize co-winner along with the ICBL, has indicated that she does not wish to continue working in the same way as in the past, where just about every problem was brought to her to deal with.

Now that the Ottawa Treaty has been signed it is important to review the campaign's priorities. Specific tasks that have been mentioned are to provide assistance to campaigns in countries that have yet to sign the treaty, to encourage rapid ratification of the treaty by those governments that have already signed, and to encourage much more work in mine location and clearance and in victim support.

When Andrew reports back on what happened in Frankfurt (see notice of meeting on 25 March), we should have a better idea of what CALM can and should do.

The International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) and the Hungarian Campaign to Ban Landmines are co-hosting a Regional Conference on Landmines for participants from 19 countries from the Baltic states to the Balkans, with the support of the Hungarian government and Parliament.

Key speakers include the Speaker of the Hungarian Parliament; the Foreign Affairs Ministers from Canada and Hungary; the Political State Secretary for the Norwegian Foreign Affairs Ministry; and Jody Williams, 1997 Nobel Peace Prize co-laureate, ICBL.

Non-governmental and governmental representatives from 19 countries in the region will participate in the Budapest Conference. The Budapest Conference is an effort by the ICBL to expand and strengthen the campaign throughout the region, and to continue its work toward bringing the treaty into force and gaining new adherents.

Those countries in the region which have not yet signed the treaty include: Albania, Belarus, Estonia, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Macedonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russian Federation and Ukraine. Ten of the countries in the region have already signed the treaty: Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Slovak Republic and Slovenia. Now one, the host Hungary, has ratified. Ten of the countries are landmine-affected.

Through the Budapest Conference the ICBL will stimulate and strengthen NGO campaigns in the region, urging governments that have not signed to do so, and pressing signatory governments to ratify within the year. The ICBL will also urge all governments to increase resources for humanitarian demining and mine victim assistance programs.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is hosting a parallel seminar for government representatives of 19 countries of the region to address the question of the military utility of antipersonnel landmines. The ICBL and ICRC conferences will hold joint opening and closing plenaries.

Co-host Hungarian Campaign to Ban Landmines has incorporated the landmines issue in a popular summer music and cultural festival, the Island Festival 1997.

Thanks to an invitation from the producers, CALM committee members were able to display posters and give out information over the three nights of the dance-drama, She lives to dance, which was put on as part of Wellington's Fringe Festival (running at the same time as the International Festival).

She lives to dance tells the story of a young Cambodian girl whose ambition it is to be accepted into a prestigious Cambodian dance academy in Phnom Penh - until, in a land peppered with landmines, tragedy strikes. Mike Engel, an English language teacher, was inspired to write the work by the moving stories of some of his students. Profits from the production went to the Cambodian Trust to support a school in Phnom Penh where technicians are trained to make and fit artificial limbs for landmine victims.

In war-ravaged Cambodia -- with more mines per capita than any other country -- the problem is not ready to go away. Communist Khmer Rouge guerillas and royalist rebels battling Cambodian regulars in the jungles of northwest Cambodia are still laying mines, Western diplomatic sources say.

For all practical purposes, they add, the treaty signed in Ottawa last December is irrelevant, for now at least, in this troubled nation.