UNIDIR Press conference on Landmines report launch 12 November 2020

Good morning, colleagues.

Good afternoon for anyone who's joining us in a different or time zone.

And welcome to the global launch of the Landmine Monitor 2020 that will be held virtually this particular time in obviously our unique and very different circumstances now that we find ourselves in this year.

My name is Renata Duan and I'm the Director of the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research UNITIR.

Now for many years we've collaborated with the international Campaign to ban Landmines and we've hosted this annual launch of the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor reports.

The Monitor, as we'll call it, is a really landmark report that provides comprehensive data and reporting on all aspects of anti personnel landmines.

It's the only initiative that provides this comprehensive overview of developments in the area and it's packed full, as you'll hear, with impartial evidence based research.

The Monitor also serves an important function of reporting on the implementation by states of their obligations under the Mainland Treaty and the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

Uh, it also surveys the progress by the international community in responding to humanitarian challenges caused by land mines, by cluster munitions and other explosive remnants of war.

So it's really a critical resource for the humanitarian as well As for the disarmament, uh, research, policy and advocacy communities.

And that's why we're so delighted to, to work with, uh, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, the ICBL, the Nobel Peace Prize winners, and the Cluster Munitions Coalition.

Uh, today we're introducing the, 22nd, uh, Monitor report and the ICBL, the International Campaign to Ban landmines.

And the Cluster Munition Coalition is a coalition of civil society groups that comes together to work to produce this documented and impartial system for verification.

And to that extent, it really represents a fabulous example of civil society supporting states in their implementation of commitments and civil society LED verification of of progress.

So this year's Landmine Monitor, to come on to where we are today, provides a great overview of the current situation regarding landmines, including landmine ban policy, use, production, trade, stockpiling, all of the developments and challenges in addressing the impact of mine contamination and casualties.

And it also looks at trends in support for mine action, including through clearance, risk education and victim assistance.

For the first time since 2008, this year's Monitor is reporting on risk education, and that's really part of the Coalition's effort to support renewed focus on this important pillar of mine action that has been underway since last year.

Now the timing, uh, of the monitor's launch is, uh, this week is that it's being launched in advance of the 18th meeting of state parties to the Mine Ban Treaty, which will take place next week from the 16th to the 20th of November in a virtual format.

So with this very brief introduction of the, the landmark report, uh, let me hand over to the experts who've been, uh, behind the, uh, research, the drafting and the preparation of this report.

They'll present key findings and of course, uh, we'll welcome your questions.

Umm, in terms of questions and monitoring, umm, I'm sure we'll be easily able if you, uh, signal your flag or your interest, your hand up or perhaps, uh, if I don't catch that wave to see, uh, introduce yourselves and be able to raise your questions.

Uh, first we have, uh, Mr Steve Goose of Human Rights Watch.

Uh, he's the arms division director there and served as the ban policy coordinator, uh, and contributor, uh, for this, uh, monitor, this year's monitor, we also have, uh, Lauren Percy of the ICBL and CMC and he is the monitor impact, uh, team leader.

We'll discuss in particular the casualty numbers in 2019 and the victim assistance related data and issues.

Ruth but only is the Monitor Impact team editor and she'll present findings related to contamination, to risk education and to the clearance of landmines.

And finally, Marion Lodo, who manages the Monitor initiative will discuss international and national financial support for mine action in 2019.

So without further ado, I'll hand over to our distinguished and always welcome presenters and say good to see you.

And we look forward to you sharing your findings about progress in 2019.

Steve, the floor is yours.

Thank you very much.

We really appreciate Renata, you and you Nadir hosting this meeting as it's become a tradition over these past couple of decades of the Landmine Monitor report.

And we, we really do appreciate it.

I'm going to talk about what we just generally call ban policy, which includes the policy of countries around the world, those who part of the of the convention and those who are not part of the convention, as well as issues related to use and production and stockpiling and trade.

Perhaps it's, it's appropriate to start by just simply saying that the convention continues to be a great success.

There's no doubt that the pandemic has had an effect on the convention is it has everything else.

But we see a great success story continuing to unfold with the convention making a real humanitarian difference each and every day, saving lives and limbs and livelihoods around the world.

There are now 164 states parties to the Mine Ban Treaty.

That's more than 80% of the world's nations.

And perhaps just as important, those most of those 33 countries who are still outside of the convention are acting in de facto compliance.

[Other language spoken]

They're not using the weapon, they're not trading the weapon, they're not producing the weapon.

And many of them are helping with mine clearance and victim assistance activities around the world.

The norm that has been established by this treaty is strong and growing stronger each and every day.

It even effects rebel groups.

Some 70 different rebel groups over the years have agreed to abide by the provisions of the treaty even though they can't sign it formally.

In a major set back over the course of the past year, the United States, the Trump administration reversed U.S.

policy in January of this year.

Under the Obama administration, the US declared that it would no longer produce or acquire anti personnel minds and they would not use them anywhere in the world outside of Korea.

A, a partial and very important ban on this weapon from the United States.

And they set the goal of joining the mine Ban Treaty.

The Trump administration has done away with that policy.

And the US as it stands now is declaring itself eligible to produce the weapon as it pleases, to trade the weapon as it pleases, to use it anywhere in the world.

We're pleased to report that the Biden administration back in February, the, the president-elect Biden back in February declared that if elected, he would reverse the reversal, if you will.

And so we're looking forward now to the US once again joining those who are in favour of banning this weapon and not those who are in favour of using the weapon.

It's also worth noting that while we have more than 80% of the world's nations, that there have been no new States parties since 2017.

Sri Lanka and the State of Palestine joined back in December of 2017, but we've had none since then.

That's not surprising in a several decade old convention, but we need to continue to work until we get each and every one of the world's nations on board for the convention.

We turn now to looking at at use of the weapon and this is where we see the great success story in the reporting period for this landmine monitor.

From the middle of last year up until October of this year, the only confirmed new use of government forces was by Myanmar.

They have been using every single year in the 22 years that the Monitor has been reporting, and so it's not surprising they continue to, but they're now alone in their desire to continue to use this weapon on a regular basis.

Since we went to print, there have been new allegations of use by North Korea.

We're still investigating those allegations.

Rebels do continue to use this group.

Non state armed groups continue to use the weapon in at least six countries during this reporting period, including two countries that are party to the convention, Afghanistan and Colombia.

And disturbingly there are also allegations of use by non state armed groups in about a dozen other countries.

We have been able to confirm in any of those countries, but the fact that there are that many allegations out there continue to be a a a disturbing factor.

Most particularly we've seen in recent years the use of improvised mines, sometimes called improvised explosive devices, IE D's victim activated weapons that are in fact banned by the Mine Ban Treaty.

The treaty doesn't care whether you produce it in a factory or you make it in your garage.

It is still banned if it is something that is exploded by the presence or contact of a person.

Moving on from use to looking at stockpiles in production and trade, we see that states parties have destroyed some 55,000,000 stockpiled anti personnel mines.

Those are 55,000,000 stockpiled mines, 65,000,000 mines that will never go into the ground, that will never take a life or a limb.

This is one of the great accomplishments of this convention, that it not only has the prohibition on use, but it requires the destruction of stockpiles.

In the past year some 269,000 anti personnel mines that were stockpiled were destroyed, mostly by Greece and Turkey and some by Sri Lanka.

Very few states parties continue to have stockpiles.

Indeed, those three countries are the only ones left who have stockpiles to destroy, unfortunately.

Greece and Turkey were supposed to, by the terms of the convention, were supposed to have completed their destruction long ago.

There's a four year deadline for destroying these stockpiles and Greece and Turkey missed those deadlines long ago and are in technical non compliance with the convention.

If you look at the big picture, when this treaty came into being, countries around the world stockpiled about 160 million anti personnel mines and today that total is more likely to be something around 45,000,000 with the majority of those being held by by the Russian Federation.

Looking at production, we list 12 countries as producers of anti personnel mines, but in fact it's likely that only a small number of those 12 are actually producing actively.

We keep them on our list of producers if they reserve the right to produce in the future.

Active producers are likely to include only less than a handful.

India, Iran, Myanmar and Pakistan are those who we have some evidence of active production.

We have added the United States back onto this list because of the change in policy that I referred to earlier and hopefully they'll be coming off the list before too long.

And then finally, just a word on trade transfer of the weapon.

There has been a de facto ban on global trade in anti personnel mines since the mid 1990s.

This was one of the early successes of the mine ban movement and it has held firm over all of these years.

We don't have a single example of a confirmed state to state transfer of anti personnel minds in all of these years, these two decades.

And there are some nine countries who are not part of the treaty who have none, nonetheless instituted national bans or national moratoria on trade in the weapon.

So that reduces the availability around the world for those who might still want to use the weapon.

I'll bring it to a close there.

You have a lot of other information that's going to come at you from a lot of different angles, but happy to take your questions a little bit later in the programme.

Thanks, Steve.

And I'm going to pass over directly to Lauren to take the floor and brief.

And just to note, if people have a question already, please feel free at any time to raise your hand under the participants function and then we'll extend it to you during the Q&A.

[Other language spoken]

Thank you very much for another.

Thanks to everyone for joining us.

I'd like to speak about the situation with casualties of landmines and other explosive remnants of war, particularly our finding that the number of casualties recorded globally annually has remained very **** for the past five years.

Now this is set into a much broader trend.

And as Steve was saying about the success of the convention, it's very true that the connection has been successful in many ways in reducing the number of casualties overall in the last 20 years since it entered into force.

And we find that the the numbers of casualties recorded and estimated at the beginning of the convention in 1999 were around 10,000 estimated to be at least double that.

And the number of casualties recorded in 2019, that is for the previous calendar year was just over 5500.

But what's very concerning is that the rate of casualties previously to a number of armed conflicts around five years ago, 5-6 years ago was going down much faster, much sharper than that.

And in 2013, we saw the lowest number of casualties ever.

And even the the number that we're recording for 2019 in context is still higher than a decade ago.

And the reason for this is primarily casualties from landmines, particularly improvised types of landmines that Steve mentioned in countries which have ongoing conflict.

And that includes many countries which are states parties to the Mine Ban Treaty.

So of the 55 countries and areas including states parties, non signatories and areas not internationally recognised that had casualties recorded in 2000 and 1936 of those were states parties to the Mine Bank Treaty.

In context, that's also because of the success of the treaty 2/3 of the world members of the Mine Bank Treaty, 164 countries.

So it's in a way logical that there will be casualties recorded still in those countries.

And yet several of those countries having conflict and and recent or new use of mines, including improvised mine types including Afghanistan, Colombia, Iraq, Mali, Niger, Ukraine and Yemen with many casualties, at least over 100 each, have contributed to this ongoing **** numbers of casualties.

As in past years, modernist casualties are civilian, the vast majority over 80% which are recorded, and children make up over 40%.

Forty, 3% of civilian casualties, particularly casualties of explosive remnants of war and objects that could be found, objects that are of interest to children as they play, go around their daily activities.

Men and boys make up also the majority of casualties, 85%.

The impact on women and girls is nonetheless very significant.

Although only making up 15% of casualties, women and girls are impacted in many ways, not only through the effects on the family of men being killed and injured, but also it is a current finding that in most improvised mine casualty incidents, that's the the type of mine weapon devices that are causing most casualties, women actually suffer more fatalities.

Women are more likely to die in an incident and not to survive.

So although the finding is still very concerning, there is some good news.

In many of the countries that don't have conflicts, that are states parties to the Mine Ban Treaty, we've found that the number of casualties has actually gone down significantly in this time.

And that's something that we asked to keep in mind.

In countries like Cambodia, where there were casualties in the thousands, the casualty numbers have now gone down under 100 casualties.

And that shows the success and the commitment of these countries.

I'll leave it there and and be open to questions.

Also we have the statistical information available for anyone who would like to use it in in any way.

[Other language spoken]

And moving Swifling along, I'll pass to Ruth who brief us on contamination risk education and clearance data.

Ruth, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Renata.

So I'll start with contamination.

As we've said, the the treaty has been very successful, but Despite that we still have 60 States and other areas that are contaminated by mines, 33 of these states, the state parties, 22 not state parties and five other areas.

However, we did hear this week that the UK has announced completion of clearance in the Falkland Islands.

So this will actually reduce the overall total to 58 because the Argentina was also mine affected by virtue of its assertion to sovereignty of the Falkland Islands.

So we will have 31 state parties remaining contaminated.

10 of these state parties are thought to have contamination of more than 100 kilometres square, which we would term as massive contamination.

So that's Afghanistan, Bosnia, Cambodia, Croatia, Ethiopia, Iraq, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine and Yemen.

However, as a proviso to that, not all of these states have an accurate baseline of contamination.

So for example, Ethiopia claims at the moment around 10,000 kilometres square, Ukraine's 7000 kilometres square.

But we expect those estimates of contamination to be reduced once those countries have done more survey.

Unfortunately, some countries that have declared completion of their Article 5 obligations to clear all the the mines on their land have since discovered contamination.

So Mauritania completed currents in 2018, but in 2019 announced it found further contamination, both mines and cluster munitions, and they've estimated around 36 kilometres square.

But that needs to be verified and also to make sure that it is actually in Mauritania's territory.

There are some state parties that have declared clearance but may have some residual contamination that perhaps needs to be better reported and clarified.

So I'll give the example of Algeria.

Algeria declared fulfilment of Article 5 commitments in 2017, but in 2019 they found 404,400 isolated mines and they've been finding mines every year since then they declared completion.

So it does need some further clarification on whether that amount of contamination actually constitutes a contaminated area rather than just isolated mines that they're they're clearing.

As both Steve and Lauren, Stephen, Lauren have said, there's increasing contamination being recorded by improvised mines, which are also, of course, covered by the treaty.

So while it's not a new issue, the scale is increasing and therefore the scale of contamination and the number of casualties are increasing dramatically in state parties.

This includes Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen, but there's also a number of state parties that have not declared obligations to the treaty.

So again, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Mali, Tunisia and also Nigeria who have declared that they have contamination but have yet to submit any formal reports on that.

I think also just to say, which ties in a little bit with what Lauren was saying, that some of the countries that do have massive contamination like Cambodia don't always have **** casualty figures.

And this often is because the contamination is longer term legacy contamination.

There's been long term risk education and clearance programmes and communities have a much better understanding of the contamination and how to avoid it.

But obviously in the countries where there's ongoing conflict and where there are new devices being laid, there are much higher numbers of casualties.

In terms of risk education, as Renata said, this is the first year since 2008 that Landmine Monitor has reported fully on risk education.

So it's an exciting year for us, but it's also been a good year for risk education generally in that there has been a renewed emphasis placed on it.

This is partly, of course, because of the rising casualty figures and the realisation that risk education has perhaps been a little bit like neglected in the past, not the same funds directed towards it, and so it perhaps has not been as effective and innovative as it could have been.

But this year or 2019, we saw very importantly that the Oslo Action plan that was adopted by the state parties in November 2019 included for the first time some specific action points on risk education.

And a new advisory group was formed at international level to steer efforts around risk education, So looking at standards, guidelines, methods and approaches.

And they've also been working on the development of a new international mine action standard for risk education that will update the previous one.

So there's been a lot of good positive movement in terms of risk education, but even though there perhaps hasn't been so much attention and funding paid to it, we still see that quite a number of state parties have continued to have risk education programmes.

So in 2019, we recorded 28 state parties providing some kind of risk education to effective populations.

The reporting provided by the state parties varies in terms of their transparency reporting.

So we're hoping that in the coming years we will get more detailed reporting on the risk education activities and also better planning within any Article 5 deadline extension requests that we received because obviously better planning allows for more effective programmes and better funding programmes.

[Other language spoken]

You know, one of the things in the Oslo Action Plan is that risk education should be very context specific and tailored to the needs of men, women, girls and boys.

And this is happening to a certain extent.

And most of the state parties that are conducting risk education, as Lauren noted, around 85% of casualties are men.

And men have always been one of the hardest groups for risk education operators to reach, partly because they're often away from home and out of the community and conducting livelihood, but also because those livelihood activities often take them into into mined areas.

So for example, through agriculture, forestry, hunting, those sorts of things.

And they're also more likely to take intentional risks, meaning that they know there is a risk, but because they feel they have to, you know, earn money or a living, they, they take those risks.

So they're difficult to reach through the, you know, the normal risk education approaches and pedagogical methods.

However, there's been some interesting examples of states reaching out to men through their risk education programmes.

[Other language spoken]

Afghanistan drivers are often very highly at risk because of the use of roads which are mined and verges and the sides of roads, and so they're sensitised to the dangers of overtaking and using shortcuts on roads.

Migrating workers coming into Bosnia, there's been a campaign to actually target them at the borders as they come in from other countries.

And in Chad, again with nomadic populations, they're often very difficult to reach, so that some of the organisations have been training guides and trackers to pass on risk education messages so they can pass those on as they guide people through the desert areas.

A note on improvised mines and risk education for improvised mines.

This has also been a new challenge for Risk Education in that improvised mines can be very varied.

They often don't look like weapons and they're often found in places not normally associated with mines.

So this could be in homes and also in urban areas.

So there's been quite a lot of work to help risk education better address the ****** of improvised mines.

And there's also been a technical note to the International Mine Action Standard to help guide that in terms of clearance.

So I'll move on to that.

The progress in 2019 has been steady and not a huge difference from what we saw in 2018, a slight increase.

State parties have reported their clearance figures and at least 156 kilometres square was cleared and over 123,000 land mines have been cleared and destroyed.

Afghanistan, Cambodia, Korea, Croatia and Iraq have cleared the most land, more than 86% of the total.

So far, 30 state parties have declared themselves mind free, including Chile, which announced completion this year.

And now of course also we also have Argentina and the UK.

So that will bring us up to 32 state parties, which is great.

Unfortunately, we did have a state party that reported no clearance in 2018, which was Senegal and they haven't reported any clearance since 2017 and have now put in an extension request this year asking for an additional five years.

So we hope very much that if they are granted this extension that we see more progress in terms of of clearance there.

As Lauren mentioned, conflict is ongoing in several state parties.

So Afghanistan, Yemen, Ukraine, and this is also hampering clearance efforts.

There's new contamination which is adding to the problem and also making it more difficult to estimate that amount of contamination.

So in Yemen, they have not been able to do that for the last two years.

And they're they're hoping to be able to better survey some of these areas, but there's still lack of access to many.

And there's also the problem of insecurity for many of the clearance teams.

So they can't access areas, but also when they are sometimes in areas, they're open to intimidation and also the stealing of some of their equipments.

And so that's a problem that's been reported in Afghanistan.

And and of course, unfortunately, there's also in some of these areas where there is conflict, recontamination of land that's already been cleared and what has been the case in Yemen.

We've also talked a little bit about the pandemic.

And obviously, clearance progress has been impacted in several countries this year.

So we may well see that clearance outputs decrease next year.

But let's, let's see what happens.

At the moment we have 25 state parties who have their deadlines to meet their Article 5 clearance obligations before or no later than 2025.

So there was a commitment made at the Maputo meeting of state parties that state parties would try to complete clearance before 2025.

[Other language spoken]

State parties have deadlines to meet that obligation.

[Other language spoken]

And we also expect that there will be some others, including Afghanistan, Colombia, Iraq, Ukraine and Yemen, that will also require new deadlines after 2025.

So that's it from me.

[Other language spoken]

Thank you very much, Ruth.

[Other language spoken]

Last but not least because we already have a series of questions I, I note.

So Marian, I will just ask you if you can to briefly cover the issue of financial support at national, international levels for mine action in 2019 and then we'll go straight to the questions.

[Other language spoken]

Thank you, Renata.

So yeah, thanks for bearing with me for a couple of minutes as I go through the last chapter and the last findings of the of the report.

So if we look at in terms of global support, which means that we include both international support, support provided by international donors and national support which includes investment by affected states to their own mine action programme.

So if we look at global support over the past five years between 2015 and 2019, it has fluctuated quite a bit.

We've seen a low of 500 million provided in 2015 and a **** of nearly 8800 million in 2017.

This year, 2017, was particularly different from the others because there was there was some exceptional contributions from two major donors that year, the United States and Germany, to support activities in Syria and Iraq.

So I just want to flag that because when you see the report and when you see that that graph of global support over five years, you can see this peak in 2017 and you have to read that graph knowing that in the back of your mind.

So we knew that after 2017 we would see a decrease in international support because that was announced by those two donors that they would go back to normal level of funding.

And indeed this is what has happened.

In 2018, we've seen a decrease of 8% in international support and in 2019 we've seen a decrease of 13% in international support.

Just to give you the number, we have identified 35 international donors contributing some 560 million U.S.

dollar for my inaction to 38 States and three other areas.

So that was 80 million less than in 2018.

Then again, we had a look at what this decline was.

It was a slightly different to 2018 when that was just because of two donors going back to normal level of funding.

But in 2019, it was more a general trend in a way because we've seen that 15 donors reduce their funding.

So maybe calling it a trend might not be the best word to qualify that because we have to see what will happen next year.

But that was a little bit concerning to see that it was not just two donors going back to normal level of funding, but most of the donors reducing their contribution to mine action.

Then when we look at who provided the money, so we have the five major donors that are more or less the same from one year to another.

In 2019, we had the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Germany and Norway that provided most of all funding more than 70%.

And this is very similar to what we've seen in previous years.

Then looking at where the money went, the five major Don recipients of Mine Action funding were Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Laopedia and Colombia.

And they receive half of all support in terms of sector clearance and risk education receive half of all international support in 2019.

Then we have to be careful as well when we look at this number because as Woods just mentioned, risk education is often neglected and hasn't received that much support over the year.

And when we talk about clearance and risk education receiving half of all support, this is a combined figure.

Actually we could identify only 13 million going to risk education specific activities in 2019.

The rest was global, was only for clearance activities or for combined clearance and risk education.

Then victim assistance represented 8% of all international support.

This is similar to 2018.

Again, most of that money went to activities in conflict and emergency situations or global activities.

And that means that many states parties with a large number of victims did not receive support for this type of activity.

And I'm sure Lauren could elaborate a little bit more on that maybe later during the question.

But this can explain as well the gap that we've seen in accessibility to those very important services for survivors in the past year.

I wanted to quickly talk about as one national support in 2019, we've seen an increase there compared to 2018 with about 19,000,000 provided by 10 affected states.

So that's very encouraging to see that we we had this increase compared to the previous year.

Although again, we have to be very careful when looking at those figures because affected states don't really report that well on national support that they provide to their own mine action activities.

So we have always to be very careful when looking at those numbers.

And I yeah, I think that's what I wanted to say in brief.

So I'll stop there.

And just before giving you the the screen again, Renata, I just wanted to say that all the information are available on our website, the report country profiles for specific information.

And yeah, and I have here the report you cannot see, but here is the report.

Just wanted as well to quickly talk about that cover because I think that's quite relevant with what Ruth just talked about about risk education because this was taken in Northern Iraq during a risk education session.

And we really wanted to picture that on this year cover because of the positive turning point that we've seen regarding that mine action pillar and to highlight the the importance of this life saving activity.

And I'll stop there and happy to take any question over to you.

[Other language spoken]

Uh, Marion, thank you to all four of you.

And given that we have 5 questions already, I'm going to move straight to the questions.

And, uh, I'll ask you if you can, umm, direct your question.

[Other language spoken]

So the first person to get the floor is Laurent Sierra from the Swiss News Agency.

Laurent, the floor is yours.

[Other language spoken]

Can you hear me very good?

First, I'd like to know whether you you you saw some effects on Donald Trump's reversal on the narratives of certain countries or, or armed groups, because it it seems that the figures are pretty on the same line as as the years before, but did it have any impact on the narratives of certain stakeholders?

And then people here in Switzerland will vote in less than three weeks on the popular initiative to strengthen the bands of fundings of, of war material.

Could you give us another view of the impacts of defunding and bands on fundings on the producers?

[Other language spoken]

Is anyone of *4 panellists like to take that question or two questions?

You want to answer the question, just raise your hand, Ruth.

I'm going to pass the floor to Ruth the 1st Thanks.

I guess I can just maybe mention about the narrative and in terms of whether the narrative has changed.

I mean state parties are reporting most of them on an annual basis in terms of their clearance progress.

I think one of the things to say is that sometimes there is there is a survey happening.

So in some of the states they're still undertaking quite a lot of survey to better understand the extent of contamination.

And so that can mean that the, you know, there's not so much clearance reported in a particular year.

So we see some states still working on that, but I think also it, it basically shows that there's, you know, there is quite a, a steady progress, you know, it hasn't decreased dramatically.

I think we're beginning to see from this year with the COVID pandemic that many states are beginning to talk about that and how that may affect progress.

So we've seen in some of the extension requests that we've received this year that that the states have mentioned that it depends on what happens with the COVID pandemic because many of them had to stand down clearance teams for some months, if not, you know, for quite a number of months.

So there may well be a bigger impact in 2020 than perhaps we saw in 2019 when progress continued fairly steadily.

I'm not sure if that answers what you want to, but thank you.

[Other language spoken]

Thanks, Ruth and Steve.

Maybe just I'll pass the floor to you if you want to come to either of the the two questions before moving on, on, on the on the second question, I'm not familiar with the initiative in Switzerland, but it would already be illegal to have any investment in landmine producers anywhere in the world from from Swiss nationals.

The, the convention includes A provision that you can't assist in any way with a prohibited activity.

So that, that includes investment in companies that might, might support the production of anti personnel minds.

So I, I'm not sure that the, that the Swiss initiative would, would have a direct application to anti personnel minds.

OK, thanks for that, Steve.

I'm going to move along now to Lisa Schlein from Voice of America.

Lisa, the floor is yours.

Thank you and good morning to everybody.

I, I have a few questions because of the Zoom problems.

I'll ask them in a bunch instead of one at a time.

[Other language spoken]

The first one has to do with the rise in civilian casualties.

I'd like to have some clarifications.

First of all, how many deaths and cases, deaths and injuries globally last year in regard to land mines?

And are they mainly from the improvised land mines that you were talking about or also a significant number from accidents?

And on this, this issue, is this the first time that you've seen a significant rise in the number of civilian casualties in one year since the ban treaty was enacted?

And are you, if this is the case, are you alarmed by this?

And are most of these mines being laid by rebel forces or by state parties that, believe it or not, was only one question?

Sorry, the others will be a little shorter.

[Other language spoken]

You say that Myanmar is the only state party.

Is this is Myanmar a state party actually to the treaty?

[Other language spoken]

And also, what more do you know about North Korea, just kind of gossip about them or do you have any hard facts about the, you know, the possibility of their having land laid any of these mines?

And then lastly, this is for you, Steve, because you were trumpeting Trump, not really anyway.

What is the reason Trump's reason for reversing this policy on, you know, being able, you know, kind of using landmines anywhere?

And I, I suppose that they haven't used them yet but have threatened to do so.

Right.

And then I'm wondering, have you received any assurances by anyone in the Biden administration, at least I hope it's one soon, that that they would reverse the policies or is this just supposition on your part?

Kind of nice whispering going on.

[Other language spoken]

I'm going to let Lauren speak first if I suggest your first question on civilian casualties and then Steve on on the Myanmar DPRK and Trump Biden issues.

[Other language spoken]

The floor is yours.

[Other language spoken]

Thank you very much.

They're really good questions for clarification.

And I'll, I'll do my best to address all of those and put that into context.

And, and, and maybe Steve will add something about the use by non state armed groups at the end, But I can include that.

I mean, in the situation of casualties overall and, and deaths and injuries.

In fact, this is a, a, a very good question because we recorded about 2200 people killed of those 5545 casualties overall.

So that was 2/1/2000.

170 people killed and 3357 people injured.

Actually, this ratio of people killed to injured indicates very clearly to us that there were many, many more casualties and that people who were injured by landmines and explosive remnants of war are not being recorded adequately in many countries where there are conflict, which in itself is is a is a reversal of a trend.

In past years, people would make it to hospitals and rehabilitation centres where they would be registered and that ratio was maybe the other way around in, in that's that's for casualties overall, in in general, there tends to be a slight difference between the survival of civilians and and military casualties where civilians are more likely to to die.

And and that's clearly because military often have resources at hand to help people in a in a quicker way.

Most of the casualties by any device were by improvised minds.

The the next category of of device that caused casualties was explosive remnants of war.

In this sense, it's worth just pointing out that the reason why the landmine monitor has always collected this information together.

That's that means the information on the casualties of all kinds of landmines, anti personnel landmines and anti vehicle mines and improvised types and explosive remnants of war is because in the field it is much harder to distinguish what is what.

And, and quite likely when someone picks something up, it's written down as an explosive remnant of war, even if it's a landmine.

In the terms of improvised mines, because they're made of so many different, as Ruth mentioned, so many different materials sometimes include or often including explosive ordinance, it's not possible for victims or people investigating to really distinguish.

So the the, the what what is clear is most casualties are caused by recent conflict contamination, including improvised mines.

It's not the first year of a a increase in casualties.

The rate of casualties has gone up since the Syria, Ukraine and Yemen conflicts.

What is concerning is that it's stayed quite ****.

It really peaked in 2016 when we recorded the same, almost the same number of casualties as were recorded in 1999.

But to put the the the concern in context, the number of casualties recorded in 2019 just in states parties was the about the same as the number recorded in 2013 in the whole world when the the number of casualties was at its lowest.

So it's it's remained **** for these years, basically, despite the good efforts of of clearance and risk education because of this continued use.

And, and it's quite certain, like the sense they could elaborate that this use is by non staying armed groups in these conflicts, though it's often difficult to work out exactly when the use occurs because of the nature of the, of conflicts obscuring all sorts of information, including the casualty data.

It's it's actually in many cases getting harder to to get direct information from the field.

Thanks, Lauren, Steve, the floor is yours.

Thank you and and, and thank you, Lisa.

Nice to hear from you.

[Other language spoken]

No state party has ever used anti personnel mines since joining the treaty.

The the record there is unblemished.

What's what's what's quite striking is that there is only one country that is not part of the treaty that has continued to use the weapon.

That's an amazing achievement on North Korea.

It does appear that that mines have been used.

This is a very recent reporting and the South Korean intelligence agency gave a briefing on it to their national legislature.

So it's coming from the the South Korean government sources that the North Korean forces have been laying mines along the border.

We haven't been able to confirm it in part because it's such recent reporting.

But it's also just questions about whether or not these are anti personnel mines or possibly anti vehicle mines, whether they are command detonated mines or whether they're victim activated mines.

We need to get some more of the specifics before we are ready to say that we need to add North Korea to the list, along with Myanmar.

And then on the US.

the US military was never happy with the Obama administration's decision to move toward the ban and to limit use to just the Korean Peninsula.

And I think they took advantage of the willingness of of the Trump administration to reverse as many of the Obama policies as humanly possible.

They still insist that there is some military utility to the weapon, but the Biden campaign was very explicit about about the intention to reverse it.

[Other language spoken]

When we contacted them after the new policy change came out, they called it another reckless act that will put more civilians at risk, called it unnecessary from a military perspective, and committed to quote, promptly rollback this deeply misguided decision.

So there's no there's no room for misinterpretation of what Biden, as the campaigner said.

Now we have to make sure that carries forth the Biden as the president-elect.

Thanks, Steve.

Appreciate that.

[Other language spoken]

So I'll go straight on to questions if I can.

We have Jeremy launch from Radio France.

Jeremy, do you want to take the floor?

[Other language spoken]

A quick one on the on clearance.

You mentioned that the pandemic affected the clearance efforts in 2020.

I was wondering if you have any examples of some operations that has to stop because of the pandemic?

Ruth, I think that question is goes to you.

[Other language spoken]

We've certainly got some examples in the monitor.

We have a whole section on the pandemic and how that has affected certain state parties.

I'm just trying to think of, I think in, I think in Afghanistan, some of the operations were delayed.

And so it was, it was from clearance and it was also from some of the risk education operations as well in, in certain states in Cambodia for a certain.

And in some cases it was just for a month or two, I think in sort of the sort of initial period of lockdown and then they found they were able to redeploy the teams, particularly if they were working in more remote areas.

Sorry, I have there is a list somewhere.

I don't have it to hand just at this moment.

Lauren, I don't know if you remember any of the countries specifically Ruth Maria, because I have I have just just here.

So I'm going to read the the country where current operations were suspended.

So in state parties, Bosnia and as the Govina, Chad, Colombia, Peru, Senegal and Zimbabwe in states not party Armenia, Lebanon and Vietnam and other areas, Kosovo and Western Sahara.

And it has also impacted the clearance operation in the Falkland Islands.

But in the end, it was a good hand of the story because it was announced earlier this week that clearance was completed.

So, but if you check the report, we have a full, as Ruth mentioned, a full section on COVID-19 and the impact on mine action activities.

Thanks very much to you both.

John Zaracostas from The Lancet John, the floor is yours.

[Other language spoken]

Just firstly the IEDs, does that include suicide belts or not?

And if that is the case, do we have casualty figures, especially for sub Sahara Africa and in particular children?

Do you want to take a go with that?

[Other language spoken]

Our casualty data does not include command detonated devices.

So it it does not, it doesn't include suicide bombers, suicide belts detonated by the bomber or many vehicle borne improvised explosive devices, booby trapped motorcycles, a lot of weapons which are causing casualties.

And there are there are others who record that, who also share their data with us because they record casualties of victim activated devices that that we do report on actual armed violence in the UK is 1.

And the, the, the ACLED data system is another what we what we do record.

But it it doesn't show up so much since the conflict with ISIS in Iraq is when those devices are accidentally detonated.

For example, unfortunately, the corpses of fighters who have belts on them when that area is being cleared and those accidentally detonate that we that we do record as as well as any other explosive remnants.

But in the case of actual attacks, that is not included in our data.

[Other language spoken]

We have a final question from Lionel Fatten from Kyodo.

Lionel, the floor is yours.

[Other language spoken]

I had a follow up on on North Korea because I read all these reports about the South Korean new intelligence services.

It seems the the minds or the devices have been laid, laid down at the border between DPRK and China and this seems to be related to COVID.

Anyway, I will not ask about that.

But I was wondering, you said you are looking For more information whether to put DPRK on the list along Myanmar.

[Other language spoken]

I guess it's difficult to enter DPRK for you.

So whether you have contacted China to have access to the zone along the border or will it be purely remote monitoring based on on media report?

[Other language spoken]

Steve, do you want to take that?

[Other language spoken]

We have campaigners and researchers in South Korea who are continuing to look into this.

We don't have a mission plan to go to China for this purpose, but I I think that we'll be able to make a determination based on the continuing reporting that we get.

[Other language spoken]

Steve, does anyone else want to take the floor from the panel for that or any of the other questions?

[Other language spoken]

Yes, I'd like to come back to the victim assistance.

I think one of the panellists mentioned at the it's 8%, there's been no increase even though you've had such a dramatic increase in casualty numbers.

So what's behind the the lack of increase in victim assistance?

[Other language spoken]

The actual resources for victim assistance overall have been decreasing really unfortunately for several years now, actually many years.

One of the reasons is practically because in some cases it's not being reported as victim assistance funding anymore.

It's being reported as other humanitarian disaster or conflict, conflict relief funding sources.

But actually quite clearly from the evidence from the field, the the resources for victim assistance have actually been falling.

And that's had a really huge impact, particularly in the countries that have had the greatest success at dealing with the landmine problem, countries like Cambodia where there is is been a great fall in resources, Mozambique, Democratic Republic of Congo.

There are many countries where victim assistance funding has gone down.

And the reason why it stayed steady or maybe has a slight increase is because of the focus on conflict affected countries.

[Other language spoken]