When Treaties Work: The Mine Ban Treaty
The Mine Ban Treaty is one of the most successful humanitarian disarmament agreements in modern history. Also known as the Ottawa Treaty, it emerged in the 1990s in response to the devastating impact of landmines on civilians worldwide. At the time, millions of these hidden explosives were scattered across conflict zones, continuing to kill and maim long after wars had ended. A coalition of activists, survivors, and diplomats led a groundbreaking campaign to ban these weapons, culminating in a treaty that transformed global approaches to disarmament and humanitarian action.
But how did this treaty come to life? What made it so effective? And what challenges does it face today?
I speak with Tamar Gabelnick, Director of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines – Cluster Munition Coalition, who tells the story of the treaty’s journey from grassroots activism to high-level diplomacy, explaining how the ban became a reality. We also examine the treaty’s lasting impact—how it has reduced the use of landmines, driven demining efforts, and supported victims—while also considering ongoing challenges, including some recent setbacks.
This episode is produced in partnership with Lex International Fund, a philanthropic fund dedicated to strengthening international law to solve global challenges. It is part of a series that demonstrates the impact of Treaties on state behavior that we are calling "When Treaties Work"
The full episode is freely available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.
Transcript edited for clarity
Mark Leon Goldberg: Tamar, thank you so much for speaking with me today. Just to kick off, a fairly basic question, and I think most listeners are likely already familiar with, but can you just explain why landmines in particular are a weapon of war worthy of prohibition?
Tamar Gabelnick: Landmines were banned in 1997 because they are inherently indiscriminate weapons. So. they violate one of the core principles of international humanitarian law, which is the duty to be able to distinguish between a civilian and a military target. Basically, they either lie underground or on ground, these small explosive devices, waiting for any victim, whether they’re a soldier or a child to come upon them. And because they can’t make that distinction, they do take civilian victims. It’s the vast majority of victims today, and even children are almost half of the victims today.
Mark Leon Goldberg: And they’re also, my understanding, deadly far long after a conflict ends, potentially accounting for the disproportionate impact that they have on civilian populations.
Tamar Gabelnick: Absolutely. So, once a landmine is laid, it will stay there until it is cleared. And clearing, as many listeners may know, is a very time-consuming, expensive, and dangerous task. That is one issue is that they pose a risk, not just during the conflict itself, to anyone who might happen upon them, but for decades afterwards. For decades, communities are living with a threat of a fear of walking on a land that might be contaminated, and that disrupts everything. It disrupts, immediately after a conflict, bringing humanitarian aid. It disrupts the return of displaced persons or refugees. It disrupts use of farming land or access to hospitals or health clinics or schools, or what-have-you, until that day in the future when the time-consuming and expensive clearance has taken place. One more reason is that they are an inhumane weapon. I mean, imagine what this weapon is designed to do.
It’s designed to take a soldier out of combat by not necessarily killing but maiming to such an extent that they’ll need to draw away other soldiers. Later, it was also used to intimidate civilians. So, the civilians were also the target. But the goal is basically to rip off a leg, and I’m sorry to be blunt there, but that’s what it is. It’s a traumatic amputation of a leg, and perhaps two. And not just ripping off the leg, but then to, the design means that pieces of bone, pieces of plastic, pieces of the landmine dirt come back up into the wound, which can cause infection, which could require several amputations.
Now, it’s bad enough if this is an adult or a soldier, but imagine a child losing their leg. If they don’t die right away, they will need multiple operations and multiple prosthetics for the course of their life. Anyone that has fallen victim to a landmine will be disabled for life and will need a lot of care over that time, physical care, psychological care, the care of their family. They might lose their past profession and need to find something else. Of course, many, many, many landmine survivors are very productive members of society and have overcome, in a lot of ways, the wound and the disability, but still it is meant to cause lifelong disability. And that’s just one of the many, many reasons they were banned.
Mark Leon Goldberg: And for all those reasons, a number of groups, primarily around civil society, is my understanding, came together to seek the abolition, the prohibition of landmines, leading to the 1997 Ottawa Treaty. Can you just tell the story of how the idea of banning landmines became an actual treaty to ban landmines and prohibit their production and their use and compel their destruction?
Tamar Gabelnick: The awareness about the impact of landmines started, pretty much after the Cold War, when people were starting to learn about the impact of, primarily, these internal conflicts in the ’80s. and groups like the ICRC and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, if I could say ICBL in the future to save a little time, the groups that founded the ICBL in 1992 were in the field working with landmine victims and seeing the horrific wounds that they were suffering and wanting to do something about this. So, these six non-governmental organizations, NGOs, came together in 1992 and formed the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, it was led by Jody Williams, and the first goal was to raise awareness about these weapons and then define what they wanted to do about it, like any advocacy campaign.
So, pretty much from the beginning, we, as the ICBL, and I should say that I was not involved at that time — I was just in graduate school doing research on the subject — were calling for a complete ban. But the most appropriate venue to discuss the issue was a UN convention that has a very long name called the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons that are Deemed to be Excessively Injurious, etc., that, if you don’t mind, I will abbreviate to CCW. So, it’s a UN treaty that was meeting annually, a consensus-based fora. The governments that were discussing it were informed by civil society, by the ICRC about a need to do something quite urgently.
And so there was discussions and they started talking about, in the context of one of the protocols to this convention, which covers anti-personnel mines. But what they were talking about was really minor fixes, like how you mark them, how you fence them. Eventually, it became, well, we could consider perhaps a ban, but only on mines that don’t have metal. Imagine it’s hard enough to find the mine, but if it has no metal in it, how is a metal detector going to pick it up? So, around the margins kind of improvements. We tried to be very persuasive. In the end, because it was consensus-based, it failed within that framework of the CCW.
And so, in 1996, Canada launched a new model, which is now called the Ottawa Process, and what they did was they basically challenged states, like-minded states to come together and say, “Okay, we don’t need to work in a consensus-based system. Why don’t we just find those governments that want to do something, and if it doesn’t include all countries, so be it.” So, they gathered in Ottawa in 1996 and they agreed that it would be useful to ban anti-personnel landmines. And at the end of the meeting, the foreign minister launched an unexpected call to come back within a year to sign a convention.
Mark Leon Goldberg: I mean, it’s interesting, I ask you about this all because, having covered the United Nations for so many years, one of the truisms I have come to understand and embrace at the UN process dictates outcomes. So, you first tried this already existing mechanism that was consensus-based and couldn’t get the results that you needed, and then Canada came up with this alternate process that, eventually, I presume, led to the Ottawa Treaty.
Tamar Gabelnick: Exactly. And there’s many essential elements to this process. I would say partnership was absolutely essential. So, that’s partnership between non-governmental organizations led by the ICBL, the ICRC, the United Nations, who stayed part of the process through the end, and this group of core governments. And these were an unusual set of governments, probably appreciating the fact that they could have some sort of power, let’s call them middle power governments, if you will, smaller countries — Austria, Belgium, Canada, Norway. And they were really able to take this and run with it. But I really regret that I wasn’t involved at the time because it must have been such an amazing time.
The brainstorming, the innovation, the commitment, often over beers in a pub in Geneva, to think through what a band could look like and how to get it done within such a short period of time really worked.
Mark Leon Goldberg: Well, that’s also what’s so striking to me. I mean, this coalition, formed in 1992, and you have the Ottawa Treaty in 1997. That is like an accelerated timeline for something like this. The previous episode in this series dealt with a chemical weapons convention, which had a much longer incubation period. But here, I mean, five years is like lightning speed for a treaty like this. What accounted for that? And to what extent, for example, did Princess Diana, being like a world popular figurehead for this treaty, help accelerate that timeline?
Tamar Gabelnick: Well, I think that’s exactly it. It was a public awareness campaign that really worked and put pressure on governments. I should say, for those who don’t know the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, we are a coalition of non-governmental groups around the world. So, we have member organizations, a maximum of over a hundred countries at the time when the negotiations were going on. And so, in each and every one of those countries, our members were able to make people care about the issue. And by making the population care or raising awareness so they did care, then they got the governments to have to pay attention to it. I feel like it was a no-brainer. Now, it feels like in hindsight. But at the time, these weapons were a part of every military’s arsenal around the world. So they were in active use. That’s also what makes it so remarkable.
They weren’t giving up a weapon that they hadn’t used or wouldn’t use. They had been, they had thought that they were useful. And then another element was that you had a lot of former military. I think there was 20 former generals in the United States who put in an op-ed around this time saying, “Look, we don’t need these weapons anymore.” Their military utility is marginal at best, and whatever utility they have is far outweighed by the humanitarian impact that they have. They’re dangerous not just for civilians, but these are military folks writing that they all suppose a danger to their own soldiers because, in any conflict, the battle lines move around, and someone that’s laid a mine, even if they think it’s careful, they might not have marked it carefully, with rain or whatever, the minds can move around. And so it ends up being dangerous all around.
So, in the end, it was, again, easy to say with hindsight that it was simple that the humanitarian argument went out. But I think this is the core of it. It’s humanitarian disarmament. It’s saying, “All right, let’s almost put the military question aside and focus on what it does to people. Let’s put people at the center, human security at the center of what we’re discussing.”
Mark Leon Goldberg: So, the Ottawa Treaty comes together in 1997. What does the treaty compel of its state’s parties?
Tamar Gabelnick: The most important part is that a state may never use, under any circumstances, or acquire, produce, transfer, or stockpile anti-personnel landmines. That’s the most fundamental provision — Article one. And then they are required to destroy all of their stockpiles. They had four years to do so with no possibility of an extension. Then they had to identify and clear all mined areas in their territory under their jurisdiction or control. And for that, they had 10 years, but they could ask for more time. Every country in a position to do so should provide assistance to landmine victims and international cooperation and assistance to other countries who might be demining or needing to do stock file destruction or victim assistance. Then there’s elements on transparency and national implementation measures.
Mark Leon Goldberg: It’s one thing for governments to ratify a treaty. These treaties don’t enforce themselves, right? Governments have to actually comply with the provisions of the treaty that they’ve ratified, which presumably they would because they ratified it in the first place, but that’s not always the case. How did the ratification of this treaty impact state behavior? What early accomplishments, for example, did this treaty start to garner in the years following its adoption?
Tamar Gabelnick: I mean, I have to say that it’s really one of the most successful international instruments of disarmament. It basically halted production transfers, use, down to a handful of countries. So, we went from widespread use, and a normal part of any military’s arsenal, to right now, well, in 2023, there were four countries that used them, and there’s non-state armed groups in about nine or 10 countries.
Mark Leon Goldberg: What are those countries
Tamar Gabelnick: Where they’re being used? So, we have Iran, that was new last year, North Korea seems to be relaying mines along its border with South Korea. Russia is using them massively in Ukraine. And Myanmar has been using them off and on for a long time.
Mark Leon Goldberg: Still, I mean, these are by and large countries that exist outside most international norms and international frameworks. So, you can maybe make the argument, the fact that most rules-following countries don’t and haven’t laid landmines, at least until recently, we’ll get back to that, which, to me at least, is an interesting data point.
Tamar Gabelnick: The norm was established and it was established soundly, and not just to the states that are part of the treaty. And that’s what’s really interesting. Even the U.S., and we’ll come back to a little blip in the past two months, but normally had stopped any kind of use or production or transfer of anti-personnel landmines. They couldn’t join or they said they can’t join because of the Korean Peninsula and their interpretation of what that would mean for them. But in all intents and purposes, they’ve acted like a state party, as have many others. A lot of the countries that are still out, they don’t really have any strong reason to stay out. Maybe they’re small islands that just don’t have the energy to adopt another convention.
There’s 164 states that are part of it. So, that’s over 80% of the world’s population. I should also say, in terms of successes, thousands of square kilometers cleared of landmines, amazing for the communities living in or near those areas. 55 million mines destroyed. That’s an enormous undertaking from 94 countries that are part of the convention that had to destroy their mines. And they did. And no questions asked and no controversy and no issues. Now, there are a few little blips along the way. Ukraine still has mines, not because they had wanted to use them, but because they have a very complicated mine to destroy and very costly and it was taking a long time, and then, well, it’s overcome by events. And Greece, for other complicated reasons, hasn’t finished either, but they’re in the process, and they will do so soon.
Mark Leon Goldberg: But like big picture, this treaty really sort of stigmatized the use and production of landmine in such a way that even non-state parties, more or less, including the United States, more or less, followed its strictures, and countries that were a part of the treaty that are a part of the treaty, more or less, followed it. And it seemed to have racked up win after win after win over most of its history. But then, and this brings us to Ukraine today, it seems that a lot of the progress that has been made over the last decades towards a global ban on landmine use and towards a wider adoption of the Ottawa Treaty has really faced some significant challenges. Can you just explain why Ukraine today and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine today has created such profound challenges for the Ottawa Treaty?
Tamar Gabelnick: The first challenge is Russian use. Russian use on the territory of a state party. So, adding massively to contamination in Ukraine, that’s going to take them decades to clear.
Mark Leon Goldberg: Yeah, just to be clear, Ukraine is a member state, a state party to the Ottawa Treaty. Russia obviously is not, and Russia has been laying mines throughout Ukraine, both since 2014, it’s partial invasion, and since 2022, it’s full-scale invasion.
Tamar Gabelnick: Russia is the main bad guy, if you will, in this story. There were reports in 2022 of Ukraine, use of landmines as well, which would be a grave violation of the convention. There was a lot of back and forth with the researchers that found the information, and Ukraine denying it and saying they remain highly committed to the convention, and they’ve committed to investigate these allegations. And so we don’t have any more information on that. That was in 2022, and we don’t have more information since then. Now, fast forward to November 2024.
Mark Leon Goldberg: Just a few months ago. We’re recording this in January of 2025.
Tamar Gabelnick: Yes. So, we were all happily getting ready for the fifth review conference, a meeting that happens among states parties every five years in Siem Reap, Cambodia to celebrate the successes, to talk about some of the challenges mainly relating to delays in providing victim assistance or clearance that’s taking too long — along those lines — when we learn that the United States has decided to send anti-personnel mines to Ukraine. Now, again, Ukraine may not acquire them and they may not use them. This happened days before the meeting was to open. Both parties, the United States and Ukraine attended the meeting. Nobody was denying that this is going to happen. When the U.S. says that it’s going to send a weapon, it says this, it’s fairly transparent.
They were claiming that these weapons were non-persistent and so less dangerous, but any mine poses a danger for the time it’s active. And then there are technical reasons why we can’t even go with the argument that they’re non-persistent.
Mark Leon Goldberg: So, the Biden administration, as part of its ongoing provision of weapons to Ukraine, decides to include landmines. Now, you said earlier that, for all intents and purposes, the United States, though not a member state to the Landmine Convention, complied with its provisions. But here you have the most stark violation of this treaty in many years. I guess, what do you know about decision making in the United States, and presumably Ukraine as well, like they’re not going to send Ukraine weapons, weapons that Ukraine doesn’t ask for, about why this decision was made?
Tamar Gabelnick: When I said the U.S. abides by most of its provisions, the one they didn’t really do was destruction of stockpiles. So they still had, I think it’s about 3 million mines in their stocks. Now, these are old mines because they have not produced since 1997. So, any mines in their stocks are over 27 years old. So, it looked like, this is November, we know that Trump is going to become president soon, and what he said about ending the war. It felt like this was a desperate attempt to send whatever, anything and everything, that the U.S. could send to Ukraine in what might be the final months of the war. But what we understand is that this was an isolated decision within the White House. The Department of State on Defense were not consulted with. And had they been, I don’t believe that they would have suggested that that was a good idea because the State Department knows that these weapons are now considered taboo.
They’re such a stigma against their use that it’s quite embarrassing for the United States to be in this position. Also, the United States is very good about stating that it respects specific rules under international law. And so is reluctant, like I said in the outset, they won’t sign onto this convention because they’re worried about their own interpretation that others don’t even share about whether past use in the Korean peninsula might implicate them somehow. So, their lawyers are saying, “We can’t be part of this because of this kind of technicality,” and yet here they’re encouraging Ukraine to make the most significant violation of the convention. So, it was shocking. There’s no other word. It was shocking, upsetting, and we’re still reeling from it. There was another announcement in early December of a second shipment.
Mark Leon Goldberg: So, the U.S. is now providing Ukraine with landmines. Another challenge to the Landmine Treaty in recent weeks, frankly, has been a movement or debate within Finland, now a member of NATO, to remove itself from the Ottawa Treaty in order for them to use landmines to protect their border against Russia. And I see, frankly, these two issues as linked — Finland’s decision and the United States’ decision to send landmines to Ukraine. But before we get into that linkage, could you just explain, what do we know about the debate discussion within Finland?
Tamar Gabelnick: Right. So, the Ministry of Defense of Finland is undertaking a study of their military preparedness right now vis-à-vis a potential threat from Russia or others. And within that, they were asked to look specifically at whether they should leave the Mine Ban Treaty. It’s just part of it, but I think it was explicitly mentioned in this request. This study is set to be presented to Parliament at the end of this month, January, or early February. We know the Minister of Defense is advocating for Finland to leave, but we understand that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs understands more the humanitarian imperative of staying and also what it would do to the reputation of Finland diplomatically.
I think there is some pushback. It hasn’t been decided yet. And we, as civil society, are trying to make a lot of noise and ask states to work with Finland, do some demarches, and make sure this doesn’t happen because it would be a terrible, terrible precedent.
Mark Leon Goldberg: Well, so I wanted to ask you, what does it tell you about the viability or strength of this treaty? That, seemingly, when the going gets tough, states are less willing to embrace the treaty and embrace the ban on landmines. I mean, Russia, obviously is the bad actor here, right? It mined Ukraine like crazy since its full-scale invasion. But yet you have, in response to that, a state party, Ukraine, willing to accept landmines from the United States, meanwhile, Finland is considering potentially withdrawing from the treaty, it seems to suggest a potential gap in this treaty and suggest that maybe its foundations are not necessarily as strong as they were just a few years ago when, as you described, you had all these kind of swimming successes.
Tamar Gabelnick: Well, if the Mine Ban Treaty isn’t as strong as we thought, then I think that that sets a danger for many other conventions. Because until a year or two ago, I would’ve said this could never happen. That it was a rock-solid convention based on an enormous amount of political will and commitment. This is a little bit of an aside, I’ll get back to your question, but two times a year, states come from around the world to talk about their progress. They come to Geneva or wherever our meeting of states’ parties might be, and they feel compelled to speak to other states’ parties about everything that they’re doing to implement the convention well. There’ve been a few isolated cases of perhaps mistaken use of landmines by one commander, and that person generally has been investigated and sometimes prosecuted. So, this just hasn’t happened before.
I think if there’s a disease that’s widespread across international humanitarian law, and that’s why it’s so scary that this really goes beyond this treaty. It’s a danger to international humanitarian law because it’s basically saying, “We’ll accept restrictions on warfare when we’re at a time of peace.” So, what does that say about any Geneva Convention or any convention that restricts the use of certain weapons or bans them? It’s saying that we only need to respect them when we’re not feeling any kind of security risk. And let’s be clear — no one is marching across Finnish border, hopefully, anytime soon. This is not an ongoing conflict. This is a we’re worried situation.
So, we’re hoping that reason will prevail and that these arguments will prevail, and that it’s just fundamentally unacceptable to set aside international humanitarian law, of which this convention is part, when it’s actually needed. These laws were designed to govern actions during conflict. So, it’s completely illogical to set them aside if you’re afraid that conflict might arrive.
Mark Leon Goldberg: And I guess also maybe it’s just worth noting, and my question prior was more of a devil’s advocate kind of question, just like how profound an aberration the provision of landmines to Ukraine by the United States is. Like you said, it’s the first time, since 1997, the United States has done something like this. And there have been many conflicts between 1997 and today. And landmines did not feature prominently in many of these new conflicts. But here, it just seems to be like a unique, sui generis situation here.
Tamar Gabelnick: Yeah, just to be clear, the U.S. did not transfer mines since 1992, and they stopped producing in 1997. So, it’s even further. And U.S. policy explicitly prohibits the transfer of mines, and even the use of mines outside the Korean peninsula. So, it is an aberration and it’s a violation of their own policy. Everyone’s saying it’s the exceptional situation of Ukraine, but there are conflicts going on around the world, and what does that say for any other country? What if, in Ethiopia, saying, well, their existence is under existential threat as well? So, why can’t they use mines, Ethiopia as a state party, as is Eritrea? Any country could come up with the same justification. So, it’s also pointing to this double standard — well, Ukraine, that’s a different situation.
And part of the challenge that we’re facing as well is that our typical allies, the strongest backers of this convention in the past, are being disturbingly silent about the mine transfer. And we’ll see how they react if Finland, and Lithuania is another one who’s also actively considering leaving the convention, if they step up there because it’s a slightly different situation. But it seems like with Ukraine, anything goes, and we’re just going to turn a blind eye.
Mark Leon Goldberg: Well, so how do you suppose you can get that kind of pre, frankly, like pre-November 2024 momentum back to the landmine convention? I mean, it had, as you said, racked up just all of these accomplishments in terms of countries demining, destroying their stockpiles, helping other countries clear mines, and yet you have this kind of one blip, as you referred to it earlier. How do you get back to leveraging the landmine convention in ways in which it was intended?
Tamar Gabelnick: Well, in part that’s our role as civil society. We almost have to go back to the ’90s and raise awareness again. What was really disturbing was that in Finland, there was a petition signed by a large number of Finnish civilians that were advocating for Finland to leave the convention. So, obviously, there’s a lot of ignorance about what these weapons do to communities, to the human body, the risk they would pose to Finnish people themselves. So, these countries are talking about using the weapon in a defensive manner, so on their own territory. So, the risk is to their own populations. Yeah, we need to, I won’t say start all over again, we have the ban and it’s still strong in most countries of the world, but there is a lot of education that needs to be done, not just for governments, but for the people. Because, ultimately, it’s a political game that these countries are playing, these ministers of defense,
I would argue that nobody really thinks that landmines are going to solve anything. They’re not going to stop a Russian invasion if a Russian invasion were to occur. You’d need so many people there monitoring any minefield on the border. The Russians would probably happily march right through a minefield and take whatever casualties they incurred if their intention was to invade Finland or another country. Ukraine still has 3 million mines in its stocks, and it didn’t stop Russia from marching across their border. I don’t know how much they actually believe that these would be useful, but it’s a good game to say, “Look what we’re doing to protect our civilians.”
The population needs to understand that they’re being played and that they wouldn’t want to be associated with using these weapons. They wouldn’t want their own country to be laying them. And that the only countries actively using these weapons, Russia, Myanmar, North Korea, Iran, would their own country want to be associated with those? Do they want to be included in that list? I wouldn’t think so. So, the burden is somewhat on us. And hopefully, the states are also advocating for the convention to spread the word. And, hopefully, fingers crossed, these countries will come to their senses. And if Finland decides, actually, they don’t need landmines, that could really boost the convention ultimately, to say, “Hmm, we’re feeling the threat, we’ve considered it, and we’ve decided no, we’re going to stick to the principles here and protect our population this way.”
Mark Leon Goldberg: Well, thank you, Tamar, so much for your time. This was very helpful.
Tamar Gabelnick: You’re welcome.
Welcome. Really, thank you for covering this issue.
Mark Leon Goldberg: Thanks for listening to Global Dispatches. The show is produced by me, Mark Leon Goldberg. It is edited and mixed by Levi Sharpe. If you are listening on Apple Podcasts, make sure to follow the show and enable automatic downloads to get new episodes as soon as they’re released. On Spotify, tap the bell icon to get a notification when we publish new episodes. And, of course, please visit globaldispatches.org to get on our free mailing list, get in touch with me, and access our full archive. Thank you!