Mines

© V.Braun

Handicap International's teams in Cambodia, Mozambique, Angola and elsewhere quickly realised that they needed to do more than fit orthopaedic devices and rehabilitate patients. Faced with the distress and suffering of an increasingly large number of anti-personnel mine victims, the association decided to work towards achieving a mine ban by condemning the cynicism and baseness of these weapons.

Handicap International therefore teamed up with five other NGOs  to found the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) in 1992.
For more than five years, Handicap International and other members of the ICBL challenged the status quo by organising petitions, public debates, media appearances, and international and national events to raise public awareness of these atrocious weapons. As a result, several million citizens signed the mine ban petition and showed their support for mine victims. This unprecedented civil society campaign, and the ICBL's work with governments, led to the signing of the Ottawa Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction on 3 December 1997.

On 10 December, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to the associations belonging to the ICBL.

Handicap International now focuses on improving the living conditions of civilians affected by these weapons. It does this in several ways:
- Through demining (link to humanitarian demining, our know-how)
- Through mine risk education (link to mine risk education, our know-how)
- Through victim assistance (link to ...)
- Through the international campaign to ban these weapons (link to a historic victory)
  

The fight goes on...

Almost fifteen years after the signing of the convention, the Landmine Monitor¹ continues to paint a bleak picture: although the use of mines is declining, these weapons still cause bloodshed in some 80 countries and territories, killing and mutilating one victim every 90 minutes.

The campaign is more necessary than ever, for humanitarian reasons, of course, but also to put pressure on the remaining 40 non-signatory states and to increase the amount of international funds devoted to demining and victim assistance, now largely inadequate to meet the gigantic scale of current needs.
   

^{1The Landmine Monitor is a body created by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, designed to monitor the application of the Ottawa Mine Ban Treaty by State parties, and more generally to assess the international community's response to the issue of antipersonnel landmines.  Published annually since 1999 the Landmine Monitor Report is coordinated by an editorial committee composed of four organisations: Mines Action Canada, Handicap International, Human Rights Watch and Norwegian People's Aid.}