December, 03 2012, 04:05pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Jared Bloch, ICBL-CMC Media and Communications Consultant
Geneva (GMT+1), mobile +41-78-683-4407
Email: jared@icblcmc.org
Finish the Job! Says Nobel Prize Winning Campaign on 15th Anniversary of Mine Ban Treaty
WASHINGTON
Nobel peace laureate Jody Williams, International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) campaigners, and landmine survivors from nearly 40 countries are calling on governments to commit to eradicating antipersonnel landmines in years, not decades. The call comes at the opening of the Twelfth Meeting of States Parties (12MSP) to the Mine Ban Treaty, taking place from 3-7 December in Geneva. More than 100 governments are expected to participate
The 12MSP begins 15 years to the day after the Mine Ban Treaty was opened for signature in Ottawa in 1997 where it was signed by 122 states. "Twenty years after we began the international campaign and 15 years after achieving the Mine Ban Treaty, we are close to global acceptance of the landmine ban, and we are closing in on a mine-free world. Now we need to finish the job to ensure landmines don't claim any more limbs and lives," said Williams. The ICBL delegation also includes landmine survivor Tun Channareth of Cambodia, who accepted the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of ICBL, alongside Williams.
Since the signing of the Mine Ban Treaty vast tracts of land have been cleared. Nineteen states have declared their territories mine-free to date and four more - the Republic of Congo, Denmark, Jordan, and Uganda - are expected to announce completion of mine clearance at this year's meeting. More than 46 million stockpiled mines have been destroyed under the treaty. Most importantly, the annual casualty rate from landmines and explosive remnants of war has decreased dramatically since the treaty came into force.
Today 160 countries, or more than 80% of countries worldwide, have joined the treaty, with another - Poland - expected to announce its ratification during the meeting. With Poland, all of the European Union and all of NATO, with the exception of the United States, will be States Parties.
Serious concerns to be raised at the 12MSP include use of antipersonnel landmines by Syria in 2012 and the use of these weapons by non-state armed groups in six additional countries. Three States Parties remain in violation of the treaty, having missed their deadlines for destroying all their stockpiled antipersonnel mines: Belarus, Greece, and Ukraine. A growing number of states have requested extensions to their mine clearance deadlines since 2008. This number is expected to exceed 30, with four new requests anticipated during the 12MSP.
"It is sad to note on this International Day of Persons with Disabilities [3 December] that there has been a decrease in direct financial support for victim assistance programs," said ICBL Ambassador Tun Channareth. "Ensuring access to education, job training, and other services that victims need, and having victims involved in decisions that affect their lives is essential to realizing the promise of the treaty," he said.
States discussions during the 12MSP are expected to include: the number of states still remaining outside the treaty, the need for increased mine clearance to ensure land is released as soon as possible, completing stockpile destruction, and fulfillment of the rights and needs of survivors under the treaty.
Representatives from many states that have not yet joined the treaty are expected to attend, including Lao People's Democratic Republic, Lebanon, Libya, Myanmar, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, United States, and Vietnam.
Civil society has been a driving force behind implementation and monitoring of the landmark treaty which brings together NGOs, governments, and international organizations, and which has been an effective catalyst for mine action globally.
"This week, and for as long as it takes, we will continue to challenge the international community to finish the job we started some 20 years ago, to definitively end use of these weapons, to fully address consequences of past use, and to do so as quickly as possible. The giant steps taken over the past 15 years prove that this is not only possible, but imminent," said ICBL Director, Katarzyna Derlicka.
Links:
- Mine Ban Treaty Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaYp4vXMUWM
- ICBL 12MSP webpage - https://www.icbl.org/index.php/icbl/Treaty/MBT/Annual-Meetings/12MSP
- ICBL 20th Anniversary webpage - https://www.icbl.org/index.php/icbl/Library/News-Articles/20th_anniversary
- ICBL 20th Anniversary Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUkDYneqeuE
- ICBL on Twitter at https://twitter.com/minefreeworld
- ICBL on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/minefreeworld
- International Campaign to Ban Landmines on Flickr at https://www.flickr.com/photos/minefreeworld
- Landmine Monitor 2012 and related documents at https://www.the-monitor.org/index.php/publications/display?url=lm/2012/
- Detailed individual country profiles for all countries of the world and seven other areas are available at https://www.the-monitor.org/index.php/cp/display/region_profiles/https://www.icbl.org/index.php/icbl/Treaty/MBT/Annual-Meetings/12MSP
- 12MSP Biographies
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.
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Critics Warn Manchin-Barrasso Permitting Bill 'Is Taken Straight From Project 2025'
"You thought Project 2025 was just a threat after the election? It's actually happening *right now,*" said one climate campaigner.
Jul 26, 2024
Climate and environmental defenders on this week implored U.S. senators to block a permitting reform bill introduced this week by Sens. Joe Manchin and John Barrasso that one campaigner linked to Project 2025, a conservative coalition's agenda for a far-right overhaul of the federal government.
Common Dreamsreported Monday that Manchin (I-W.Va.) and Barrasso (R-Wyo.)—respectively the chair and ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee—introduced the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) noted that although the proposal "includes several positive reforms for the accelerated development of transmission projects," it also advocates "limiting opportunities for communities to challenge projects, loosening oversight for drilling and mining projects, extending drilling permits and fast-tracking [liquified natural gas] permits, and several other provisions friendly to fossil fuel giants."
"This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
These are nearly identical policies to what's proposed in Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership. The plan, which was spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, calls for "unleashing all of America's energy resources," including by ending federal restrictions on fossil fuel drilling on public lands; limiting investments in renewable energy; and rolling back environmental permitting restrictions for new oil, gas, and coal projects, including power plants.
While Manchin has been trying—and failing—to pass fossil fuel-friendly permitting reform legislation for years, Brett Hartl, director of public affairs at the Center for Biological Diversity, said that his "Frankenstein legislation is taken straight from Project 2025, and it's the biggest giveaway in decades to the fossil fuel industry."
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Hartl added that "to preserve a livable planet," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) "must squash this legislation now."
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NRDC managing director of government affairs Alexandra Adams said Wednesday that "this bill is a giveaway for the oil and gas industry that will ramp up drilling and environmental destruction at a time when we need to be putting a hard stop to fossil fuels."
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Jul 26, 2024
Sudan's military is blocking United Nations aid trucks from entering at a key border crossing, causing severe disruptions in aid in a country that experts fear may be on the brink of one of the worst famines the world has seen in decades, The New York Timesreported Friday.
The border city of Adré in eastern Chad is the main international crossing into the Darfur region of Sudan, but the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the state's official military, which is engaged in a civil war with a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has refused to issue permits for U.N. trucks to enter there, as it's an RSF-controlled area.
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Last week, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the United States ambassador to the U.N., said that the SAF's obstruction of the border was "completely unacceptable."
Both warring parties in Sudan continue to perpetrate brazen atrocities, including starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. This piece focuses on the SAF's ongoing obstruction of essential aid. The situation is catastrophic. The policy is criminal. https://t.co/FKhqQh3EI9.
— Tom Dannenbaum (@tomdannenbaum) July 26, 2024
The Sudanese who've made it out of the country and into Adré reported dire and unsafe conditions in their home country.
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Another mother, Dahabaya Ibet, said that her 20-month-old boy had to bear witness to his grandfather being shot and killed in front of his eyes when the family home in Darfur was attacked by gunmen late last year.
Now the mothers and their families are refugees in Adré, where 200,000 Sudanese are living in an overcrowded, under-resourced transit camp.
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An unnamed senior American official told the Times that the looming famine in Sudan could be as bad as the 2011 famine in Somalia or even the great Ethiopian famine of the 1980s.
In April, Reutersreported that people in Sudan were eating soil and leaves to survive, and The Washington Postcalled it a nation in "chaos," reporting that World Food Program trucks had been "blocked, hijacked, attacked, looted, and detained."
In late June, a coalition of U.N. agencies, aid groups, and governments warned that 755,000 people in Sudan faced famine in the coming months.
The U.S. last week announced $203 million in additional aid to Sudan—part of a $2.1 billion pledge that world leaders made in April, which some countries have not yet delivered on.
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The comments in question were made by Vance to then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson when Vance was running for the Senate.
Calling out Buttigieg—who, the secretary disclosed this week, was struggling at the time to adopt a child with his husband—and Vice President Kamala Harris, a stepmother of two and the Democratic Party's presumptive presidential nominee, Vance said people without biological children "don't really have a direct stake in" the future of the country and therefore shouldn't hold higher office.
In separate remarks that same year, Vance said parents should "have more power" at the voting booth and that "if you don't have as much of an investment in the future of this country, maybe you shouldn't get nearly the same voice."
He also specifically categorized people who don't have children as "bad" in an interview in 2021, saying the government should "reward the things that we think are good" and "punish the things that we think are bad," with people taxed at a lower rate if they have children.
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In his interview with Kelly on Thursday, Vance attempted to pivot away from his own comments, saying his point was to criticize "the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child" and claiming without evidence that the Harris campaign had "come out against the child tax credit"—a signature policy of the Biden-Harris administration.
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Vance and Kelly went on to lament the anxiety "hardcore environmentalists" and progressive lawmakers such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) have expressed about the damage fossil fuel extraction is doing the planet, accusing them of pushing people to forgo having families—but said nothing about Republican policies that have made child-rearing less accessible.
In recent years, the entire Republican caucus in Congress was joined by conservative then-Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia in blocking the extension of the enhanced child tax credit, which had been credited with cutting the national child poverty rate in half. Republicans also allowed a pandemic-era universal school meal program to expire, while several Democratic-led states have passed state-level programs to ensure all children can have meals at school, regardless of their family's income.
Under Republican abortion bans, numerous stories have cropped up of pregnant people who have been forced to carry pregnancies to term despite finding out that their fetuses had fatal abnormalities and would die soon after birth—as have stories of children who were forced to give birth or had to cross state lines in order to get abortion care.
As with his position that nonparents should be "punished" for not having children, "who else does 'pro-child/family' Vance think should 'face consequences and reality' by way of curtailing choices, rights, and freedoms?" asked writer Alheli Picazo. "Women and girls who become pregnant through rape/incest."
University of North Carolina law professor Carissa Byrne Hessick said that one could test "empirically" Vance's claim that Democratic policies are anti-family.
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