BYM laments US landmines in Ukraine
Over a third of 2023 landmine victims who were children
News that the US is supplying Ukraine with landmines has been described as a ‘bitter blow’ by Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM).
Oliver Robertson, BYM’s head of Witness and Worship, said: ‘Anti-personnel mines are horrific weapons of war. Placed on or just under the ground, they explode when pressure is put on them (like someone stepping on them). Either the explosion itself, or the fragments of the exploding mine, can kill or injure people.’
Landmines leave a devastating legacy long after war is over, he writes. ‘The mines the USA is sending are “non-persistent”, requiring a battery to work and designed to become defunct once the in-built battery runs down (in fourteen days or less). That sounds less awful than mines that stay primed forever, but then I think: no technology is one hundred per cent reliable.’
The article on the Quakers in Britain website highlights the ‘eye-watering’ US$34.6 billion which clearing the existing mines placed by Russia in Ukraine is estimated to cost.
Meanwhile ‘countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, Serbia to Colombia, have a legacy of landmines from war. Over a third of landmine victims in 2023 were children’, writes Oliver.
Other human rights organisations have criticised the US decision to provide the landmines. Mary Wareham, Human Rights Watch director, told the BBC that it marked a ‘shocking and devastating development’. The International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) also condemned the US decision ‘in the strongest possible terms’ and highlighted the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty signed by 160 nations, including Ukraine. While landmines are not illegal under international law, the treaty commits to banning the production, use and stockpiling of anti-personnel mines. The ICBL said that, under the treaty, ‘there are no circumstances under which Ukraine as a state party may acquire, stockpile or use them’.
The approval of the mines is one of the last policies of outgoing US president Joe Biden, before Donald Trump is inaugurated in January.
A US official said the move could help slow Russian advances in the east of the country.
The Halo Trust, the world’s largest landmine clearing charity, said: ‘The potential for further contagion of the use of anti-personnel (AP) landmines in eastern Europe is a clear and present danger.’
