Summary: Landmines are indiscriminate weapons that kill and maim thousands of people each year and injure the environment by leaving large tracts of land unusable. Adopted on September 18, 1997 and entered into force on March 1, 1999, the Ottawa Treaty provides for the ban on the use, production, transfer, and storage of anti-personnel landmines without exception.

Key Terms: The treaty calls for an unconditional cessation of the use, production, transfer, and storage of anti-personnel mines. It requires state parties to make implementation reports to the UN, to destroy stockpiled mines within four years, and to destroy mines in the ground under state parties control within 10 years.

Status: As of September 4, 2003, 150 signatories/accessions and 136 ratifications, accessions or approvals. Current international regulations state that weapons are illegal if they do not distinguish combatants from non-combatants or if they cause unnecessary suffering. Under Article 15, the treaty was open for signature from 3 December 1997 until its entry into force, which was 1 March 1999.  Now that the treaty has entered into force, states may no longer sign it; rather they may become bound without signature through a one step procedure known as accession. According to Article 16 (2), the treaty is open for accession by any State that has not signed.

U.S. Status: To date, the United States has not joined the Mine Ban Treaty despite being a leader in demining and victim assistance efforts. Former President Bill Clinton indicated that the United States will join the Mine Ban Treaty in 2006 as long as U.S. efforts to find "alternatives" to antipersonnel landmines are successful. On February 27, 2003, President Bush announced a new policy that rejects any notion that the US will join the treaty, puts off the destruction of "persistent" landmines until 2010, and asserts that our military may use self-deactivating "smart" mines indefinitely. These so-called "smart" mines cannot discriminate between the foot of a soldier and that of a child, tend to be scattered by air and are thus difficult to mark and map, pose tremendous challenges and costs for demining teams, and threaten the lives and limbs of innocent civilians and US troops who step on the weapons soon after they've been planted. Meanwhile, reportedly, the US military hasn't used antipersonnel landmines since 1991.

Official website - Contains treaty text and official documents.

 United States Campaign to Ban Landmines - This website contains many resources on the treaty, a listing of countries who have not signed it, and the U.S. policy on the treaty.

Human Rights Watch on Bush Administration Policy - Strong critique of the Bush Administration policy decision to reject the landmine treaty; contains links to other resources.