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National
Press Club
Washington,
DC
8
March 2001
Last
spring, three young girls were playing in a field on the outskirts of
Sarajevo. A landmine exploded. Two of the girls died
instantly; one remained alive, severely injured. But no one
dared to enter the minefield. The deminers couldn’t clear a
path fast enough. Neighbors and NATO peacekeepers watched in
helpless frustration as the girl clung to life for two desperate
hours, pleading in pain and terror to be rescued. And then,
silence. The deminers and frightened onlookers could do nothing
but weep and look away.
This
story is tragic enough, but what is worse is that it is not unique —
not even unusual. The human suffering and economic devastation
landmines cause is an insidious day-to-day threat to the lives of
millions around the world. Just last month in the Lebanon a 13
year old girl, Nahla Basha, was playing with her sister near where her
father was tilling a field. Nahla left her sister to go inside
for a moment. And then she heard a loud bang. She ran
outside and stepped on a mine, seriously injuring her eye – her arm
and leg were severed. Her sister, however, was killed instantly.
Over
the past 25 years, reading news reports, driving past Jordan valley
minefields fenced off by barbed wire, or visiting victims, I have
grieved for children and adults in Jordan and the Middle East –
which some consider the landmine heartland of the world – routinely
maimed or killed by this menace. About 10% of
Jordan’s population lives in areas now rendered desolate, even
deadly, by landmines. And because landmines are small, and
ravage lives one by one, their horrific effects have long gone as
unnoticed as the murderous weapons themselves.
Landmines
murder or maim another man, woman or child roughly every 20 minutes.
Somewhere in the world, in the brief time we are here together today,
5 landmines will explode and 5 individuals, at least 4 of them
civilians, possibly children – who are 1/3 of all anti-personnel
landmines – will be maimed for life, or killed. 70 today, 500
this week, more than 2,000 this month and more than 26,000 this year.
It is a killer that takes only minutes to deploy, yet can survive 10,
20, 50 years or even more – long enough to slaughter the grandchild
of whoever originally laid it.
President
Ryan, members of the National Press Club, on behalf the International
Campaign to Ban Landmines, I thank you for the opportunity to speak to
you today about these weapons of mass destruction in slow motion.
The
80 million or so landmines that lie hidden today in the fields,
forests and roads of approximately 80 countries, and the 250 million
stockpiled around the world waiting to be deployed, amount to a
landmine for every twelve children on earth. They comprise one
of the greatest public health hazards of our time – a modern,
man-made epidemic.
Landmines
are indiscriminate killers, unable to distinguish between a
soldier’s heavy boot and a toddler’s bare foot. Indeed, some
mines are designed in shapes that attract the innocent eyes and hands
of children. Because they are cheap and easily obtained, they
are frequently used by informal militias and guerillas in local
conflicts – groups that are more likely to turn mines against
civilians, and less likely to keep records of where they were planted.
They are often placed in rural areas explicitly to shatter the morale
and integrity of the family, clan, tribe and village. And,
cruelest of all, even in long hoped-for peace, these insidious
left-overs are a bitter reminder of past conflict and a threat to
future progress.
In
my work as advisor to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, and
with the Landmine Survivors Network, the first international
organization created by and for landmine survivors, I have personally
witnessed the heartbreaking consequences for those striving to
overcome the devastation wrought on their bodies, their lives and
their families in rural Jordan, in Lebanon, in the former Yugoslavia,
and in Southeast Asia, another of the most mine-infested regions of
the world.
When
I visited that region with LSN in October 1999, 30 years after my own
student activism to contribute to the efforts to persuade the US
Government to end what we believed was an inhumane, illegal and
immoral war in Vietnam, I came face to face with the lingering human
and economic toll of that war which is hard to fathom, even today.
In Vietnam and Cambodia, one out of every 236 people has lost at least
one limb, and the carnage continues; between 1200 and 2000 people are
maimed or killed each year. In Vietnam, some 3.5 million mines
remain in the ground and there are an estimated 180 landmine
casualties per month. There are over 36,000 landmine survivors
in Cambodia alone, where there are over a million mines. Nearly
one in 300 has been injured by landmines or unexploded ordinance, and
less than 10% of these survivors have access to medical care or
rehabilitation.
It
is meeting these survivors that brings home the humanitarian costs of
this curse: above and beyond the $3 or $300 to manufacture a mine, or
even the $1,000 to get rid of it, or even the $1,000 to $12,000 it
takes to fit a prosthetic limb.
The
greatest toll can’t be quantified: the initial numb sensation giving
way to acute pain and shock; the heart-stopping anguish of watching
your rescuers risk their lives to save yours; the multiple surgeries
to salvage what remains of an arm or a leg; the trips a young child
must make to the hospital to fit a new prosthesis, only to grow out of
it every six months, and need another, and another, and another; and
the psychological scars and shattered dreams of knowing your body will
never be whole again.
Often
those disabled by conflict face humiliation, neglect and
discrimination. They can’t find jobs. They become
dependent on others. Their futures are stolen, their hopes are
destroyed, without provocation or purpose. These survivors want
and deserve the means to help themselves and support their families,
earning not only income but also self-respect and the respect of their
communities. Victim assistance has remained the poor relation of
the global movement to ban landmines – the least publicized tragedy
of landmines’ hidden menace.
But
even those who never set foot on a mine can be held hostage by these
weapons for many years. Imagine a family returning to a village
where mines have been sown. Their precious farmland, perhaps
handed down through generations, now infested by this evil crop, is
useless. They dare not graze livestock, search for firewood, let
their children run and play. Even the mere perception of a mine
threat is enough to destroy a village’s livelihood. In
Cambodia, where there are millions of mines still in the ground, 85%
of the population are farmers, but have little safe land to farm.
And war-torn societies can never be rebuilt if people continue to fear
for their lives with every step they take. Peace will forever
remain on fragile footing and conflict recovery quite impossible while
these deadly reminders of war remain.
The
good news is that we have witnessed the extraordinary compassion and
commitment among survivors whether American, Arab, European or Asian
who are trying to help other survivors recover and resume their roles
in society. I have seen the courage of children who refuse to
lose their smile along with a limb.....of disabled mothers who still
work incessantly to care for their families…..of amputees learning
new job skills, strong in spite of their suffering. We owe it to
them to do all we can to make their lives whole in a way their broken
bodies never will be.
Those
who make, sell and deploy landmines claim they are a necessity of war.
But these weapons, even if originally designed for a specific
battlefield objective, have proliferated into a source of random
terror that respects neither time nor territory.
In
1995, the International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent
commissioned a military study of the fundamental effectiveness of
landmines. The Committee had been alerted by
their surgeons in the field that a quarter of their patients, in
places like Angola, Cambodia and Afghanistan, were landmine victims.
Examining 26 conflicts since 1940, the study found that anti-personnel
landmines played no significant role in the outcome of any of them.
More
than 50 high ranking military figures from 20 countries endorsed the
study’s conclusion: that the appalling suffering and waste caused by
landmines far outweighs their questionable military utility.
Landmines
have never been militarily decisive. And if ever they were
useful at all, they are now obsolete. More than fifteen retired
U.S. Generals including General Norman Schwartzkopf, General David
Jones, General John Galvin, Lt. General Robert Gard and others tell us
that anti-personnel mines have outlived their military usefulness.
The generals also say that the effectiveness of US forces will not be
compromised by banning landmines.
In
fact, quite the opposite. U.S. and allied forces have far more
reason to fear landmines than feel protected by them. Since
WWII, over 100,000 Americans alone were injured or killed by
landmines. The first American soldiers to die in Vietnam and,
later, in Bosnia, were killed by anti-personnel mines, and mines were
responsible for a third of the U.S. casualties in Vietnam and in the
Persian Gulf War. The tragic irony is that 90% of the landmines
in these conflicts were largely of U.S. manufacture or of components
of U.S. manufacture.
What
is more, in today’s highly mobile battlefields, landmines can
rapidly become subterranean terror – “friendly fire” underground
– posing a substantial hazard to the troops themselves who planted
them. My two sons currently serve in the Jordanian Army. I
wouldn’t be here if I thought banning mines would endanger them in
any way – they are among the millions we are fighting to protect.
That
fight inspired a new kind of coalition activism, which brought the
Ottawa Landmine Ban Treaty into force in record time – the first
international arms treaty to encompass humanitarian obligations to the
weapons’ victims. This remarkable treaty evolved from a unique
coalition: for example, the International Committee of the Red Cross;
Lloyd Axworthy, former Foreign Minister of Canada; leading governments
such as Norway, Austria, and Canada; activists from organizations such
as Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation; Physicians for Human
Rights; Handicap International;Human Rights Watch; Mines Advisory
Group; and landmine survivors themselves, like ICBL’s Cambodian
Ambassador Tun Channereth, and Jerry White and Ken Rutherford,
founders of LSN.
Working
together in unprecedented networks, they have united in a pledge to
win back blighted land, to fulfill our humanitarian duties to the
survivors and to eradicate these obstacles to recovery and peace.
The Mine Ban Treaty prohibits the use and trade of landmines, demands
global demining, orders governments to destroy their stockpiles, and
calls for a range of assistance to mine victims. 139 nations –
two-thirds of our world – have signed and already around 20 million
antipersonnel mines have been destroyed from global stockpiles.
Jordan was one of the first Middle Eastern states to join the
international Mine Ban Treaty in 1998. My husband, who despised
this scourge, in 1993 set a goal of the year 2000 for a landmine-free
Jordan valley, and vowed to make our beloved country free of landmines
forever.
It was a bold move in a region long distinguished by the highest per
capita military spending in the world, and a deplorable stockpile of
weapons of all kinds including around half of the world’s stock of
landmines. In fighting this wasteful militarism, King Hussein
envisaged Jordan as a model for the rest of our region and elsewhere.
Currently, we are in full compliance with all the terms of, and the
timetable set by, the Ottawa Treaty.
Since 1993, we have cleared the Jordan Valley of over 300,000 mines,
to allow those who had tilled the earth many years ago, to cultivate
it again, and others to unearth once more our region's precious
history. Now, although the task is not fully complete, our most
holy ground is no longer desecrated by mines, and pilgrims who wish to
walk in the paths of the prophets can do so in safety near the Baptism
site of Jesus and other landscapes sacred to the World's major
religions. It is my hope that one day we
will have a holy land entirely free of landmines and conflict.
Yet, much more remains to be done to rid the world of landmines.
Without the support of regional powers like Russia, China, India,
Pakistan, and especially the United States, the treaty will never
achieve its aims. Everyone who cares about this issue is deeply
concerned that the United States has not joined the Ban.
Retired Lt. General James Hollingsworth, a former commander of U.S.
forces in Korea, has stated that “the world’s civilians as much as
American soldiers do not deserve to be tragically disfigured, horribly
maimed or blown apart by a weapon emplaced in yesterday’s
battlefields where children now play.”
I believe it is a geopolitical reality that U.S. leadership is
essential to transform aspirations into action. We need your
influence to stigmatize landmine-abusing nations. We need your
example and energy to rally the resources for the task. As long
as some of the world’s major producers and users continue to flout
the global consensus, we will never fully root out this menace from
our earth. It is therefore a moral imperative for the United
States to lend your full authority to this issue, as soon as possible.
People
living in the United States do not live with landmines day to day.
Children in schools across this country, whatever other threats they
may tragically face, do not have to fear landmines in their
playgrounds. Many say that “Main Street USA” has little
concern about what happens to the farmer in Cambodia, the new mother
in Eritrea, the small child in Afghanistan, or the grandmothers in
Kosovo and El Salvador.
I am told again and again that the United States has a national
aversion to international treaties. Perhaps this is so, but I
cannot imagine that any American I have ever known could ignore the
screams of that dying child in the field outside Sarajevo…or that
young girl in Lebanon.
My
confidence that the American people will support this Ban was
reaffirmed yesterday when I met two inspiring gentlemen, highly
decorated veterans of World War II. Jack Wack, from Bethesda,
Maryland, was a deminer. He lost a leg in the
Italian Campaign. Duane Robey, a former teacher from North
Dakota, was injured on an intelligence and reconnaissance mission on
New Year’s Eve, 1944.
These
two American heroes are with us today because they will not turn away,
but, instead, are determined they will see the United States join the
Landmine Ban in their lifetimes. I cannot imagine a more noble
commitment and dream.
The
Treaty, and 1997 Nobel Prize for Peace, awarded to the International
Campaign to Ban Landmines, did not signal the end of the landmine
epidemic. The mass human suffering inflicted by landmines is
still with us. The landmine story, like the landmines
themselves, is not dead. Let’s not bury it again.
The
media still have a key role to play in these crucial efforts.
The campaign never could have come so far without the press
highlighting the issue, and for that you deserve heartfelt thanks.
But the battle has not yet been won. You, more than anyone, have
the power to educate the public about the landmine problem, to bring
it into our homes where it cannot be ignored, and to catalyze the will
to resolve it. You can expose landmine abusers, and commend
governments and NGOs and manufacturers who are promoting positive
change. You can put human faces on the harrowing statistics of
landmine victims and survivors. And you
can remind us every day that this weapon of war still kills, even when
the wars are over. I challenge all
of you here today to take editorial positions that will make it
impossible for politicians to look away from the suffering inflicted
by mines, to make it impossible for them to ignore the ban.
I
encourage concerned individuals, organizations, and courageous
political leaders like Senators Patrick Leahy, Chuck Hagel, Arlen
Specter and Representatives Jack Quinn, Jim McGovern, and Lane Evans
to continue to voice their concerns and build the political alliances
needed to persuade the United States to ban landmines.
Someday,
I hope we will understand the contradictions in US landmine policy.
The United States leads the world in support for demining efforts and
provides significant humanitarian relief to survivors worldwide.
In fact yesterday I testified before the Congressional Human Rights
Caucus. Congressmen Tom Lantos and Henry Hyde are introducing
meaningful and far-reaching legislation to provide care and
rehabilitation and social and economic reintegration for hundreds of
thousands of landmine survivors worldwide. But this generous and
peace-loving nation cannot bring itself to destroy its own stockpile
of over 10 million mines? The world’s remaining superpower,
with the most advanced arsenal on the planet, finds it difficult to
give up this marginally useful and obsolete weapon.
The
Clinton Administration deferred the question until 2006. The
stated concern was that US troops might be at risk at the border
between North and South Korea. Some maintain landmines might,
perhaps, buy a few minutes of time in the event of an infantry war on
the Korean Peninsula – but is that worth the cost of deploying
something that continues killing long after armies surrender, treaties
are signed and peace is declared? The relationship between North
and South Korea is changing dramatically, god willing.
Meanwhile, if landmine casualties continue at current rates, 150,000
more victims will be claimed while we wait around for 2006.
The
new administration has recently announced a comprehensive review of
U.S. defense policy. It is my hope that in this process,
analysts will determine that landmines and security are not
inextricably linked….quite the contrary.
The
United States is one of the “holdout” nations with respect to the
landmine ban, keeping company with China, Pakistan, India, Syria,
Iran, Iraq and many others. The United States and Cuba are now
the only countries in this hemisphere that have not joined the Ban.
The United States and Turkey are the only members of the NATO alliance
that have not joined the Ban. How can the United States
participate with allied nations like England, France, Germany, and
even Jordan, in security agreements when these nations are legally
bound by the landmine ban? In the near future, the United States
may find itself isolated when attempting to pursue multilateral
military operations with NATO allies who refuse to take part in the
transfer or use of antipersonnel mines.
There
is a saying in the Koran: “the removal of harmful objects from the
path is a good deed.”
I
pray, God willing, that President Bush will lead the United States to
remove harmful objects, landmines from the path walked by so many in
the global community. By every measure, moral, practical, and
even (except when viewed in most narrow terms) political, it is a very
good deed – indeed it is the right thing to do. The fight
against landmines is an integral part of the fight for peace
worldwide.
I
can think of no greater gift to the future than to make a giant step
towards peace by rendering safe the steps of everyone on our planet.
Now is the time to end the curse of landmines, forever.
Thank you.
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