Dushanbe to host regional mine action conference

Dushanbe will host a regional anti-land mine conference on Thursday for representatives of Afghanistan, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Sponsored by the Tajik government and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the two-day event is a concerted effort to advance dialogue on the problems of landmines in Central Asia. "This effort is to promote an understanding that unless the Ottawa Convention is universally adopted, there will never be an end to the menace that has blighted the lives of millions of people in so many countries," Peter Isaacs, chief technical advisor for Tajikistan's Mine Action Cell, a UNDP sponsored project, told IRIN from the Tajik capital Dushanbe. As of December 2003, a total of 141 states have formally accepted the Convention on the Prohibition on the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-personal Mines and on their Destruction - otherwise known as the Ottawa Convention and first signed in December 1997. Of the Central Asian countries, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan are state parties to the Convention. Article 12 of the Ottawa Convention states that the Secretary-General of the United Nations shall convene a Review Conference five years after its entry into force. The purpose of the Review Conference is to: review the operation and status of the convention; consider the need for further meetings of the State Parties; take decisions on submissions of State Parties as provided for in Article 5; and, adopt, if necessary, conclusions related to the implementation of the Convention. The first Review Conference will be held in Nairobi at the end of November. In addition to highlighting the humanitarian impact of anti-personal mines in Central Asia and promoting the acceptance of the Convention in the region, the meeting will also address concerns expressed by some countries in the region that have not been able to join the Convention, thereby facilitating progress towards acceptance by those countries, in time for the conference in Nairobi. The meeting is expected to attract some 150 participants from the region, as well as HM Queen Noor of Jordan, an internationally respected advocate of the Ottawa Convention, who is expected to address participates on the final day of the conference on Friday. According to Landmine Action, a network of UK-based NGOs involved in advocacy and awareness-raising work on landmines and other explosive remnants of armed conflict, there are millions of active mines scattered in over 70 countries waiting to explode. Estimates vary between 100 - 120 million (International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and United Nations) and 85-90 million mines (US Pentagon). These approximate figures translate into one mine for every 17 children or 52 people in the world. A further 110 million are reported to be stockpiled ready for use. Some 2,000 people are involved in landmine accidents every month, one victim every 20 minutes, according to ICRC estimates. Around 800 of these will die, the rest will be maimed. Many victims are civilians, because landmines remain hidden in the ground for decades after the conflict in which they were laid, and they cannot distinguish between the footfall of an enemy soldier and an innocent civilian. It is estimated that up to 85 percent of children who suffer landmine injury die before they reach hospital. Landmines also deny people the use of land vital to their survival in subsistence economies, the group maintained. Isaacs noted that Tajikistan destroyed its last stocks of anti-personal mines at the end of March, fulfilling its obligation under the Ottawa Convention one day before the 1 April deadline.