Political Quotes

“this week representatives of over 50 governments began meeting in Vienna, Austria to discuss proposals to amend the Conventional Weapons Convention, which contains the first laws of war limitations on the use of landmines. Fifteen years ago, the United States played a leading role in negotiations on the Convention. However, despite lofty rhetoric at the time, the Convention is so riddled with loopholes and exceptions, as well as lacking any verification procedures, that the numbers of civilian casualties from landmines has soared. This is because the focus of the negotiations then was on reducing the dangers to military personnel, rather than on the problems landmines cause for civilians. Today, there are 80 to 110 million landmines in over 60 countries, each one waiting to explode from the pressure of a footstep. These hidden killers have turned vast areas of land, in countries struggling to rebuild after years of war, into death traps. According to the State Department every 22 minutes someone is maimed or killed by a landmine. That is 26,000 people each year, most of whom are innocent civilians. It would cost tens of billions of dollars to locate and remove the mines. It is an incredibly arduous, dangerous, and prohibitively expensive task. There is no way they will be cleared. The world's arsenals are overflowing with new mines that are only compounding the problem in every armed conflict today.”