stop the ban on anti-personnel mines. What changes (and which countries are not part of it)

Lithuania has formally abandoned the Ottawa Convention, the international treaty that bans the use, production and stockpiling of anti-personnel mines. The withdrawal became effective on Saturday 27 Decemberexactly six months after the official notification sent to the Secretary General of the United Nations.

The provision

According to Lithuanian media reports, the Ministry of Defense had already anticipated that, once the exit from the agreement was completed, the country would start talks to evaluate the purchase or production of anti-personnel mines. Latvia’s decision to withdraw from the Convention also came into force on the same date. The path that led to this choice had begun in the previous months: in March the defense ministers of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Poland had issued a joint declaration calling for an exit from the treaty, an initiative which Finland then also joined. In May, the Lithuanian Parliament gave the final green light to the withdrawal. Although the majority of European Union countries remain bound to the Ottawa Convention, some major powers – including the United States, Russia, China, India and Pakistan – have never joined it.

The history of the Ottawa Convention

The Farnesina recalls that the convention concluded in 1997 and entered into force in 1999 was initially ratified by 164 states, including Italy. The universalization of participation in the Treaty therefore remains one of the main objectives in the framework of its effective implementation. Currently, serious concerns are raised by the widespread use of these types of weapons by non-state actors, who are also capable of producing them themselves or using emergency devices known as Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). Other current areas of work concern the destruction of stocks, the clearance of mined areas (and related requests for extensions to the final deadlines for achieving these objectives), transparency measures and, above all, assistance to victims. Destruction of stocks: the Convention commits States Parties to the destruction of all anti-personnel mines in their possession or under their control“as soon as possible” but in any case no later than four years from the entry into force of the Treaty for the State concerned. The only exception to the provisions on destruction concerns mines that may be held for the purposes of training relating to detection, clearance or elimination techniques and in minimum numbers necessary for these purposes. To date, 157 Member States have eliminated the entirety of their stockpiles, which cumulatively contain over 47 million devices.

What it consists of

The Treaty requires its members to identify contaminated areas, report them and delimit them to ensure the protection of civilians until the cleanup process is completed. Total reclamation must take place within 10 years of the entry into force of the Convention for the State concernedunless an extension is requested which, in any case, cannot exceed a further period of 10 years. The provisions on victim assistance are of central importance in the Ottawa Convention and, at the time of its negotiation, represented a novelty in the panorama of disarmament and arms control instruments.