Landmines

June 2008
Press Contact: Jeff Abramson, Deputy Director, (202) 463-8270 x109

The Ottawa Convention, also referred to as the "Mine Ban Treaty," prohibits the use, stockpiling, production, and transfer of anti-personnel landmines (APLs). It requires states-parties to destroy their stockpiled APLs within four years and eliminate all APL holdings, including mines currently planted in the soil, within 10 years. Countries may request a renewable extension, which can be up to 10 years long, to fulfill their destruction obligations. States-parties are also required annually to report to the UN secretary-general their total APL stockpiles, the technical characteristics of their APLs, the location of all mined areas, and the status of APL destruction programs.

The convention, which is of unlimited duration and open to all nations, entered into force March 1, 1999. As of December, 2010, 156 countries had ratified or acceded to the treaty, and an additional two had signed the accord but had yet to ratify it. States-parties overwhelmingly come from Europe, Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean. Almost no countries in the Near East and only about half of the countries in the Asia-Pacific region have signed the treaty.

Some key current and past producers and users of landmines, including the United States, China, India, Pakistan, and Russia, have not signed the treaty. The George W. Bush administration announced Feb. 27, 2004 that the United States would not join the Ottawa Convention. The United States is party to the 1996 amended mines protocol of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, which restricts but does not ban APL use.

A precise accounting of the number of landmines planted globally is not possible. The International Campaign to Ban Landmines, a coalition of more than 1,400 non-government organizations working on landmine issues, has estimated that some 70 countries have landmines on their territories. The coalition also has recently estimated that as many as 170 million APLs may be stockpiled around the globe, of which roughly 14 million are stockpiled by Ottawa Convention states-parties and signatories.

The following is a complete list of all Ottawa Convention signatories and states-parties: