Poland and the Baltic states said on Tuesday that they want to withdraw from an international treaty banning anti-personnel mines, citing Russia’s growing military threat. In a joint statement, the defence ministers of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland said they “unanimously recommend withdrawing from the Ottawa Convention”.
The 1997 treaty — which prohibits the use, production and transfer of anti-personnel mines — has been ratified or acceded to by more than 160 countries. Russia has not joined the agreement, and its full-scale invasion of Ukraine has turned the war-torn country into the most mine-laden nation in the world, according to reports.
Read more…
Source: Euronews
Sign up for Counter-IED Report Newsletter
Related:
- Afghanistan: 5 killed in mine explosion at Nangarhar
April 21, 2018
Five civilians were killed in a mine explosion in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province on Friday. As per the officials, the incident occurred near Haska Mina district of Nangarhar province as a civilian vehicle hit an IED, reports the Tolo News. Read more… Source: ANI
- Latest UN update records continuing record high levels of civilian casualties in 2018
April 12, 2018
The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) renews its call upon all parties to the conflict to increase efforts to protect civilians, as the number of civilians killed and injured by armed conflict in the first quarter of 2018 remained at the same high level recorded in 2017. From 1 January to 31 March 2018, UNAMA ...
- Improvised Explosive Devices continue to pose a grave threat to civilians in Somalia
April 4, 2018
Marking the International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action, a top United Nations official in Somalia today highlighted the danger posed by improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to the country’s civilian population. In his remarks at an observance event in the Somali capital, the Secretary-General’s Deputy Special Representative for Somalia, Peter de Clercq, drew ...
- Afghan army defuses massive bombs, landmines: government
March 27, 2018
The Afghan army personnel found 38 improvised bombs and landmines within the last 24 hours, the country’s Defense Ministry said Tuesday. “The Afghan National Army (ANA) engineering teams recovered 38 rounds of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and landmines since early Monday. And they safely destroyed the explosives across Afghanistan,” the ministry said in a statement. Taliban militants ...
- Syria: Landmines Kill, Injure Hundreds in Raqqa
February 12, 2018
Homemade landmines have killed and injured hundreds of civilians, including more than 150 children, in Raqqa, Syria since the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) was pushed out of the city in October 2017, Human Rights Watch said today. ISIS had planted the antipersonnel mines when it controlled the city. They include devices often called booby traps or ...
- Palestine Joins Global Push to Eliminate Landmines
January 22, 2018
Palestine has become the 164th state to ban antipersonnel landmines, another sign of the growing global stigma against these abhorrent weapons. Palestine acceded to the Mine Ban Treaty following the treaty’s annual meeting in Vienna in December. Palestine has expressed support the treaty for the past two decades. Despite the fact Palestine doesn’t possess these weapons, the move to join the ...
- The challenge of clearing Colombia of landmines
January 19, 2018
One year after Colombia signed a historic peace deal with FARC rebels, a key challenge is to clear the soil of anti-personnel mines and other explosives. After Afghanistan, Colombia is the world’s most densely landmined country, with the devices responsible for thousands of deaths in recent decades. The military and an army of NGOs are now ...
- Self-taught villager clears 10,000 mines from Yunnan frontier
January 18, 2018
A man who perhaps has no business messing with explosives has done just that in southwestern Yunnan, for more than two decades. Wang Kaixue (王开学) is a self-taught landmine sweeper who has identified, dug up and defused thousands of mines. His “hobby”, as he calls it, has never led to any serious injuries or mishaps. Wang ...
- Children suffer severely from Myanmar’s pocket wars: UN report
January 17, 2018
Children suffer severely from Myanmar’s decades-old pocket wars between various ethnic armed groups and government security forces, the United Nations Office of the Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict said in a statement on Tuesday. The fourth UN Secretary-General report on the impact of armed conflict on children in Myanmar, covering the period from February 1, ...
- Roadside blast in Helmand’s Marja district: 7 civilians dead
December 24, 2017
LASHKARGAH (Pajhwok): Seven civilians were killed in a landmine blast in the Marja district of southern Helmand province on Sunday morning, sources said. Kamran, a resident of the district, told Pajhwok Afghan News the explosion took place at around 9am when a coaster struck a roadside bomb in the Treekh Nawar area of the district. He said ...
- UNICEF: 220,000 children threatened by mines and other explosive weapons in eastern Ukraine
December 21, 2017
Eastern Ukraine is now one of the most mine-contaminated places on earth, endangering 220,000 children who live, play and go to and from school in areas littered with landmines, unexploded ordnance and other deadly explosive remnants of war, UNICEF warned today. “It is unacceptable that places where children could safely play less than four years ago ...
- Afghan army recovers, destroys 164 IEDs, landmines
December 18, 2017
Around 164 different Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and landmines have been detected and defused over the last 24 hours, Afghan defense ministry said Monday. “Afghan National Army engineering teams launched operations to clear landmines in different provinces since early Sunday. They found and defused 164 different IEDs and landmines over the last 24 hours in Afghanistan’s ...
- Casualties Surge From Land Mines and Improvised Explosives
December 14, 2017
Casualties from land mines and similar booby-trap explosives increased for the second consecutive year in 2016, to the highest level since a treaty banning such weapons of war took effect in 1999, a monitoring group said Thursday. The group, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, attributed the increased casualties largely to armed conflicts in Afghanistan, Libya, Ukraine and ...
- New U.S. Government Report Showcases U.S. Global Leadership in Landmine Clearance and Conventional Weapons Destruction
December 13, 2017
Since 1993, the United States has invested more than $2.9 billion for the securing and safe disposal of excess small arms, light weapons, and munitions as well as the safe clearance of landmines and explosive remnants of war in more than 100 countries, making the United States the world’s single largest financial supporter of conventional ...
- 20 Years after Ottawa: Landmines still Destroy Lives
November 29, 2017
It is 20 years since the Ottawa Convention banning anti-personnel landmines was adopted, but the legacy of these devastating weapons lives on. Landmines need just an instant to create a catastrophic injury that lasts a lifetime. And for decades, landmines were used in huge numbers, all over the world. In the years before the Convention, ...
- Pakistan: IEDs, landmines still a serious threat in FATA
November 5, 2017
Landmines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) are posing a serious threat to the lives of innocent tribesmen who after experiencing the worst kind of sizzling heat and chilly cold weather in adjacent Khyber Pakhtunkhwa districts, are returning to their homes in North and South Waziristan Agencies. Compared to North Waziristan and the rest of the Federally ...
- Egypt battles landmines 75 years after El Alamein
October 27, 2017
Fighting in the pivotal WWII battle of El Alamein may have stopped 75 years ago but Egypt is now waging another war against a hidden enemy: landmines. On a recent visit by foreign officials, personnel from the military’s Western Desert Mine Clearance Regiment swept detectors across a stretch of sand as they showcased the painstaking work ...
- OSCE’s Ukraine monitors were not target of deadly blast, inquiry finds
September 7, 2017
A vehicle belonging to an international monitoring mission in eastern Ukraine that struck a landmine in April, killing a U.S. paramedic on board, was not the mine’s intended target, an independent investigation has found. The death was the first suffered by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) Special Monitoring Mission while on patrol ...
- Myanmar laying landmines near Bangladesh border: government sources in Dhaka
September 6, 2017
Myanmar has been laying landmines across a section of its border with Bangladesh, said two government sources in Dhaka, adding that the purpose may have been to prevent the return of Rohingya Muslims fleeing violence. Bangladesh will on Wednesday formally lodge a protest against the laying of land mines so close to the border, said the ...
- French journalist dies after landmine blast in ISIS-besieged Mosul
June 24, 2017
A journalist who was injured in an explosion while covering Islamic State atrocities in Mosul has succumbed to her wounds, her employers, France Televisions, report. The same landmine blast killed two of her colleagues. “It’s with great sadness, we announce… the death of journalist Veronique Robert who succumbed to her wounds after an explosion in Mosul, ...
- Yemen: Children tormented by landmines and unexploded ordnance
July 30, 2013
Unexploded remnants of Yemen’s conflicts have killed and injured dozens of children and threaten the country’s fragile return to peace. Thirteen-year-old Nakhlah Ramadhan was tending sheep with her younger sister Fatima on the outskirts of the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, when she stepped on a landmine. She was killed instantly; Fatima was seriously injured. Read more… Source: United Nations ...