Home

landmines

Anti-Landmine Activists See Hope for US Shift

GENEVA - Campaigners to halt the use of landmines hope finally to bring the United States under President Barack Obama into the fold of countries that have banned a weapon that maims and kills thousands every year.

They said the United States has registered to send a delegation to a major review conference of the Mine Ban Treaty which will be held in Cartagena, Colombia from Nov. 29- Dec. 4.

Posted in landmines

The Rotten Fruits of War

Five months ago, shortly after the Pakistani government had begun a military offensive against suspected Taliban fighters in the northernmost area of the country, we arrived in Islamabad, the capital, as part of a small delegation organized by Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org). Our initial travel plans had focused on learning more about civilian suffering caused by U.S. drone attacks.

Posted in drone attacks, Human Rights, landmines, War/Empire, Pakistan

Remnants of Vietnam War Still Scarring Lives

A demining team worker search for landmines in the central Vietnamese province of Quang Tri in 2006. (AFP/File/Hoang Dinh Nam) It’s been nearly 35 years since bombs were dropped in the Vietnam War. Last month, Pham Quy Tuan became one of the latest casualties.

Tuan, 42, is married with two children. Few jobs are available in the poverty-stricken Quang Tri province, the war’s former demilitarized zone. To keep his family fed, Tuan resorts to collecting scrap metal for the local market.

On Aug. 1, he lost both his hands and suffered burns across his body when a bomb detonated. He was attempting to dismantle it for money.

Posted in cluster bombs, landmines, Vietnam

Unexploded Ordnance 'May Take Centuries to Clear' in Vietnam

A demining team worker search for landmines in the central Vietnamese province of Quang Tri in 2006. Over a third of the land in six central Vietnamese provinces is lethally contaminated with unexploded bombs and land mines left over from the Vietnam War, a study has said. (AFP/File/Hoang Dinh Nam)

HANOI - At the current pace, it will take 300 years and more than $10 billion to clear Vietnam of left-over bombs, shells and mines, a humanitarian and economic scourge in parts of the country, a senior military officer said on Friday.

With aid, the agency in charge of clearing unexploded ordnance estimated that only about half could be cleared by 2050, said Phan Duc Tuan, an army colonel and deputy head of the military's engineering command.

Posted in landmines

Unmanned Drones Could Be Banned, Says Senior Judge

The MQ-9 Predator B unmanned drone (Photo: REUTERS)

Lord Bingham, who retired last year as a senior law lord, said the aircraft could follow other weapons considered "so cruel as to be beyond the pale of human tolerance" in being consigned to the history books.

He likened drones, which have killed hundreds of civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Gaza, to cluster bombs and landmines.

Lord Bingham made the comments to the British Institute of International and Comparative Law in an interview which addressed the issue of the state being bound by the rule of law.

Posted in cluster bombs, drones, landmines, War/Empire, Afghanistan, Israel/Palestine, Pakistan

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 20, 2009
1:30 PM

CONTACT: International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL)

Phone: +41 (0)22 920 03 25
Email: media@icbl.org

Nobel Peace Laureate Campaign Denounces Taliban Use of Landmines in Pakistan's Swat Valley

GENEVA - May 20 - The International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) denounces recent use of antipersonnel landmines by the Pakistani Taliban (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan) in Pakistan's Swat Valley. According to reports from the area including most recently from Human Rights Watch, an ICBL member, residents of Mingora, the epicenter of the fighting, have seen Taliban militants laying antipersonnel mines in the town.

Landmines could rapidly claim casualties among the civilians fleeing the conflict zone.

###
The International Campaign to Ban Landmines is committed to an international ban on the use, production, stockpiling, and sale, transfer, or export of antipersonnel landmines.  
International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) Links:
Posted in landmines, Pakistan

Unexploded Bombs in the Land of a Million Elephants

I was one of those Sally Struthers' babies in the Christian Children's Fund brochures, a young child running around my village in Laos, barefoot and naked, playing in the rice paddies.  One afternoon I was playing by a pond when I spotted a water snake swimming toward me hissing, as if delivering a message.  Running away, heart thumping, I heard a distant buzzing sound from above.  I saw an airplane and a small voice told me that one day I would ride that iron eagle to America--a place my sister Samountha had moved to some years before.  I was probably 6 years old.  Tha

Posted in cluster bombs, landmines, laos

Mine-Filled Iraq to Accelerate Clearance

Iraqi incendiary experts walk in line as they survey the ground for mines in the Rumayiah oil fields (AFP)

BAGHDAD - Mine-filled Iraq plans to accelerate the clearance of anti-personnel mines that threaten to kill up to five percent of the country's population, officials announced on Monday.

"Iraq has one of the world's largest contamination problems of landmines, unexploded ordnance and other explosive remnants of war," Iraq's environment minister Narmin Othman said in a statement.

"Clearing these mines is essential and urgent. We intend to increase coordination within the government on this is important issue," she said.

Posted in cluster bombs, landmines, Iraq

Landmine Victims Defeat Diplomats in Soccer Match

A team made up of Lebanese victims of land mine explosions, gather as they prepare for a soccer game against a team of foreign embassies of Australia, Britain and Norway in the village of Ansar, south of Lebanon, on Saturday April 4, 2009, as part of events marking the International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action. The U.N. says unexploded ordnance and cluster munitions leftover in south Lebanon from the 2006 war with Israel claim an average of two civilian casualties a month in south Lebanon. Landmines and explosive remnants of war affect at least 78 countries and injure or kill between 15,000 and 20,000 people every year. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

ANSAR - A football team made up entirely of the victims of landmines and cluster bombs defeated a combined diplomatic team from Beirut in a special event held to mark International Mine Awareness Day on Saturday. The event drew large crowds and media coverage as a side boasting three ambassadors went down 2-1 to team determined to prove that their
disabilities would not put them at a disadvantage on the football field.

Posted in cluster bombs, landmines

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 2, 2009
2:42 PM

CONTACT: International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL)
Ms. Shushira Chonhenchob, Handicap International/TCBL. Tel. +66-87-098-9379 or shushira@gmail.com

Ms. Mary Wareham, Human Rights Watch/ICBL. Tel. +66-2255-2930 x 1114 or +64-21-996-905, media@icbl.org

New Mine Victims Reinforce the Need for Treaty

Regional Meeting on Landmines Opens in Bangkok

BANGKOK - April 2 - Continued landmine casualties in a number of Asian countries reinforce the need for these states to ban the weapon, said the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) today at the opening of a regional meeting on landmines.

###
The International Campaign to Ban Landmines is committed to an international ban on the use, production, stockpiling, and sale, transfer, or export of antipersonnel landmines.  
International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) Links:
Posted in landmines
12next ›last »
Syndicate content