Landmine Action Week: legal loopholes must be closed

3.33.05pm UTC (GMT +0000) Mon 3rd Nov 2003

Landmines injure and maim 10,000 people every year worldwide.

Liz Lynne, Liberal Democrat MEP for Warwickshire, commenting on the start of Landmine Action Week, said:

"This year is the European Year of People with Disabilities and the European Parliament also recently voted to support the creation of a UN Convention on the rights and dignity of disabled people. But for all our talk on the rights of disabled people, nothing gets away from the fact

that roughly 10,000 people are injured and 10,000 people are killed worldwide due to the deployment of landmines. Due to our failure to sort this situation out, we are creating more and more disabled people at an alarming rate.

"The Ottawa Treaty, which was ratified in 1999, made the deployment of anti-personnel mines illegal, but there remains much more to be done. The international community must put real money behind its rhetoric about eliminating mines and helping mine-survivors. Furthermore, we need to close the loophole that dictates that mines are acceptable as long as they are not classified as 'anti-personnel'.

"As we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan, the UK and US military think nothing of deploying anti-tank mines and cluster bombs, regardless of the risks to the local population. Mines will continue to kill and maim innocent civilians whether they are classified as anti-personnel or not."

Liz Lynne was the rapporteur for the European Year of Disabled People 2003 and was author of the report recently adopted by the European Parliament to support a UN Convention on the rights and dignity of disabled people.

For more information on Landmine Action Week, please refer to: http://www.landmineaction.org/.