AUTHOR: Jessica Giovanella
On the 8th of May, 2025, the Lithuanian Parliament voted in favour of the recent decision to leave the Ottawa Convention, a convention banning anti-personnel mines. Lithuania is not an isolated case, as Finland also started withdrawing from the Convention in April 2025. Those withdrawals seem to follow a global trend. Indeed, the defence ministers of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Poland issued a joint statement in March to call out of the Convention. Further, the Estonian government, as well as Lithuania, approved the proposal to withdraw from the Convention on Cluster Munitions. This global withdrawal from several conventions, but notably from the Ottawa Convention, represents a serious step back and reintroduces the dangers of landmines. Two predominant types of landmines exist: anti-personnel and anti-vehicle mines, both causing great suffering.
The Ottawa Convention
The Ottawa Convention, originally named the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and their Destruction, is also referred to as the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention. The latter was concluded in Oslo on September 18th, 1997. It remained open for signatures at Ottawa from December 3rd to December 4th 1997, and remained open in the United Nations Headquarters in New York until it entered into force on March 1St, 1999. The Convention now includes 165 state parties.
The Convention led to many benefits, including a virtual halt in global production of anti-personnel mines and a drastic reduction of their deployment, as well as the development of improved risk reduction tools. Indeed, more than 40 million stockpiles have been destroyed, and countries are now more capable of managing complex mine action programmes. Moreover, assistance was provided to victims of anti-personnel mines, showing great progress in victim assistance.
During the fifth review conference for the state parties of the Ottawa Convention held in Cambodia, Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana, the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, delivered António Guterres’ message, the UN Secretary General (SG). In this message, the SG shared not only the dangers of anti-personnel mines and the importance of holding such conferences to show commitment to their reduction, but also emphasised the progress made thanks to the Convention. This progress includes the destruction of over 55 million anti-personnel mines across 13000 square kilometres in over 60 countries.
Nonetheless, despite this development, António Guterres also shared the difficulties faced as some parties are still renewing the use of anti-personnel mines and even considering pulling away from the Ottawa Convention, as Lithuania and Finland, despite the great risks presented by anti-personnel mines.
The risk of anti-personnel mines
To better understand the gravity of such countries pulling away from the Convention, it appears necessary to expose the countries still witnessing the dangers of anti-personnel mines.
The first country affected by those mines is Syria. According to Stéphane Dujarric, the spokesman of the UN Secretary General, Syria still has many people who either lost their lives or were left with life-altering wounds due to anti-personnel mines. While UN workers still seek progress in Syria by clearing minefields and conducting awareness sessions, mine victims in North Syria still have limited access to trauma care and post-injury rehabilitation.
Syria is closely followed by Ukraine, making the latter the second country in the world with the most landmine casualties due to the Russian occupation. Indeed, after August 2022, Russia was expelled from Mykolaiv, Kherson, and Kharkiv oblasts, but left behind anti-personnel mines, presenting evidence of gross human rights violations. Indeed, the use of anti-personnel landmines is prohibited under customary international humanitarian law. Furthermore, their use against a particular population may discriminate and lead to war crimes. Russia is part of the countries that did not ratify the Ottawa Convention, contrary to Ukraine, which became a party in 2005. Consequently, Ukraine recorded 608 landmine casualties in 2022, most of them coming from anti-personnel mines. Mine clearance, which should not be done by civilians, is called artisanal in Ukraine as it is done by civilians due to the difficulty in affording and waiting for the help of Ukrainian authorities or international Non-Governmental Organisations.
Colombia is another example of a mine-affected country, as it is one of the most affected countries in America. Indeed, more than 12500 people have been registered as anti-personnel mine victims, with around 2500 people killed.
As stated by the UN Security General Antonio Guterres, anti-personnel mines present a clear danger for civilians and may even affect them after the war stops, as it does in Ukraine, even after the removal of Russian occupation. Countries such as Syria, Ukraine, Colombia, and many others (e.g. Afghanistan, Sudan, Occupied Palestinian Territory) show the dangers of anti-personnel mines and the importance of creating conventions such as the Ottawa Convention to reduce those effects and arrive in a world without anti-personnel mines.
Sources:
https://disarmament.unoda.org/anti-personnel-landmines-convention
https://press.un.org/en/2024/sgsm22474.doc.htm
https://press.un.org/en/2024/db241125.doc.htm
Source Picture:
https://www.unmas.org/sites/default/files/History-of-mine-action/