Contact: Daryl Kimball, Executive Director, (202) 463-8270 x107
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 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 on March 1, 1999. As of August 2022, 164 countries (including Palestine) had ratified or acceded to the treaty, and one country, the Marshall Islands, has signed the accord but has not ratified it. States-parties overwhelmingly come from Europe, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. About half of the countries in the Middle East and North Africa, as well as the Asia-Pacific regions, have signed the treaty. For more information about the treaty, see “The Ottawa Convention at a Glance.”
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 Barack Obama administration changed that policy in 2014, expressing an intention to eventually join, banning the production and acquisition of APLs and reserving their use for only on the Korean peninsula. In sharp contrast to President Obama’s landmine policy, the Trump administration allowed the production and deployment of APLs anywhere in the world in 2020, although there was no known new use or production during his presidency . Two years later, the Biden administration announced that it would be rolling back the Trump administration’s policy, essentially returning to the 2014 approach. The Biden administration’s policy aligned U.S. APL policy outside of the Korean peninsula “with the key requirements of the Ottawa Convention – the international treaty prohibiting the use, stockpiling, production, and transfer of APL.”
The United States is a party to the 1996 amended mines protocol of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, which restricts but does not ban APL use.
Check latest status of the Ottawa Convention signatories and states-parties status at the UN website.