3 February 2020 – The leaders of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly’s human rights and humanitarian affairs committee today expressed serious concern at the United States Government’s decision to authorize the use of landmines.

Chair Kyriakos Hadjiyianni (MP, Cyrpus), Vice-Chair Michael Georg Link (MP, Germany) and Rapporteur Kari Henriksen (MP, Norway) called for the United States to join the overwhelming majority of the world’s countries in implementing a total ban on landmine use, stockpile, production or transfer.

“Landmines are poorly targeted weapons of mass destruction that overwhelmingly impact civilian populations. Thousands are killed each year by these devices that almost all countries around the globe have agreed are unacceptable,” said the leaders of the General Committee on Democracy, Human Rights and Humanitarian Questions.

In 2018 at least 6,897 people were reported as killed or injured by mines and other explosive remnants of war, of whom 71 per cent were civilians.

On 31 January the US Government announced a new policy authorizing commanders “to employ advanced, non-persistent landmines.”

“The reauthorization of landmine usage by the United States Government makes the world – and therefore the United States – less safe. We call for the reversal of this policy which will damage not only limbs and lives, but also the United States’ image as a country dedicated to humanitarian action,” continued Hadjiyianni, Link and Henriksen.

The OSCE Parliamentary Assembly has previously (2002, 2004) called on OSCE countries to adhere to the 1997 Ottawa Convention (Mine Ban Treaty) and to stop the use, stockpiling, production and transfer of anti-personnel mines and to start the destruction of remaining mines.