Mennonite Central Committee

Send a message to Congress: Calling for a bold step from the U.S. in 2010

Click here for the MCC Washington Office action alert

 

Will the United States soon join 80% of the world’s nations in banning the production, stockpiling, sale and use of landmines? The year 2010 offers a significant opportunity for U.S. citizens to influence the answer to this question. For the first time since the Mine Ban Treaty was signed in 1997, the administration has agreed to conduct a comprehensive review of U.S. policy on landmines.

To date, 156 nations have signed the Mine Ban Treaty, including all the major U.S. allies. The U.S. joins China, Russia, Israel, Pakistan and India in withholding its support from the treaty.

Despite not signing the treaty, the U.S. has been in virtual compliance with many of the treaty’s provisions. The U.S. has not used landmines since 1991, despite wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. Current U.S. policy forbids the use of “dumb” anti-personnel landmines beginning in early 2010.

The Mine Ban Treaty has dramatically reduced the use and the risk posed by landmines in the past decade:

• Some 3,200 square kilometers of land have been cleared of mines and explosive remnants of war;
• The number of new mine and explosive remnants of war casualties has significantly reduced each year, down to 5,197 recorded casualties in 2008, compared to an estimated 26,000 recorded and unrecorded casualties per year in the 1990s; and
• More than 44 million stockpiled antipersonnel mines have been destroyed by states party to the Mine Ban Treaty.
• The number of nations using landmines has dwindled from 15 in 1999 to 2 (Russia, Burma) in 2009.  (Human Rights Watch)

You can help make it easy for the U.S. to sign this important treaty. Using the action alert from our MCC Washington Office, you can add your voice to the call for the U.S. to join the Mine Ban Treaty.

For more information on the Mine Ban Treaty and why it is in U.S. interests to sign on, visit: http://www.uscbl.org