Reporting on Conflict | Media Watch Blog

• News source:
• 1 March 2010
• Mines Action Canada
• Eleven years after the Ottawa Mine Ban Treaty became binding international law, activists worldwide are stepping up their call on the United States to join.
• By press release

The U.S. announced last November that it had initiated a review of its landmine policy. Members of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) are visiting dozens of U.S. embassies worldwide on the 1 March anniversary to urge the U.S. to decide to join the Ottawa Treaty without further delay.

“We are glad that the U.S. has decided to take a fresh look at its stance on banning antipersonnel mines,” said Sylvie Brigot, Executive Director of the ICBL. “During the policy review process, it is crucial that decision-makers listen to the voices of landmine survivors and mine-affected communities.”

• News source:
• 25 February 2010
• Global Post
• Danish Demining Group (DDG) face the arduous task of clearing land of explosives.
• By Pete Muller

MUNDRI, Southern Sudan — Sudan’s civil war ended five years ago, but its legacy remains in the cluster bombs that can still be found on the fertile banks of the Yai River…

The presence of sub-munitions poses significant risks to this largely agrarian community. Food, charcoal, building materials and other staples are extracted from the land using methods that could easily detonate a so-called “bomblet.” As more refugees and displaced persons return to Mundri in this period of calm, the demand for land is rising.

• News source:
• 16 February 2010
• press release
• By Cluster Munition Coalition

LONDON – Burkina Faso and Moldova ratified the international Convention banning cluster munitions today, bringing the total number of ratifications to 30 and triggering entry into force on 1 August 2010, when the Convention will become binding international law.

“The first 30 states to ratify the Convention on Cluster Munitions should be proud of their central role in helping to put an end for all time to the suffering caused by these cruel and unjust weapons,” said Thomas Nash, Coordinator of the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC). “For those not yet on board the Convention, 2010 is the year to get on the right side of history, to get in on the ground floor, and join the ban before the First Meeting of States Parties in November.” (read more…)

• News source:
• 12 February 2010
• Cluster Munitions Coalition

LONDON – Denmark ratified the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 12 February, taking its place among the visionary group of nations that will soon trigger entry into force of the most significant disarmament and humanitarian treaty in over a decade, the Cluster Munition Coalition said today.

• News source:
• 8 February 2010
• VOA
• By Steve Herman | New Delhi

Nepal has discharged all of the under-aged combatants from the army of the former Maoist rebels. That is being hailed as the closing of a critical chapter for the peace process in the poor, landlocked country between China and India.

More than 200 former child soldiers boarded buses in the rugged highlands of mid-western Nepal for a ride back into civilian life.

• News source:
• 3 February 2010
• Reuters

ISLAMABAD – At a conference in London last week, Afghanistan’s allies backed its efforts to start talks with the Taliban and donors promised hundreds of millions of dollars for a fund to pay fighters to lay down their arms.

• News source:
• 1 February 2010
• UN News Centre

Farmers and villagers are taking part in United Nations-backed efforts to rid Afghanistan of landmines, which is also providing a much-needed boost to their incomes.

An average of 40 people are injured or killed every month by mines in the Asian nation, down from 150 per month three years ago.

• News source:
• 11 January 2010
• Pressenza

All is set for the Philippine hosting in early February of an experts workshop of at least 50 participants from 37 States-parties, researchers and non-government organizations which is a preparatory to the 2010 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference (NPT RevCon) on May 3-28 in New York City, United States.

• News source:
• 7 January 2010
• BBC

Thousands of former Maoist child soldiers in Nepal have begun leaving camps for ex-rebels where they have been held since a 2006 peace accord.

Some 200 young men and women were freed at a ceremony in central Nepal.

The children have been in UN-monitored camps with other ex-rebels. The release is a key part of the peace process.

• News source:
• 6 January 2010
• BBC

The Ulster Defence Association (UDA) says it has put its weapons beyond use.

• News source:
• December 2009
• Arms Control Today
• By Andrew Fisher

Pursuing what some say is a logical step required for the implementation of the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM), several countries have taken action at the national level by barring investment in companies that produce cluster munitions.

That step is backed by the Cluster Munition Coalition, an international group of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that actively supports the CCM.

• News source:
• December 2009
• Arms Control Today
• By Daryl G. Kimball

After eight rounds of talks over nine months, U.S. and Russian negotiators are expected to complete work this month on a new strategic nuclear arms reduction deal that would replace the highly successful 1991 START, which expires Dec. 5.

• News source:
• 22 December 2009
• Arms Control Wonk
• By Jeffrey Lewis

As 2009 nears its end, it is time to recognize some of the most important arms control developments and achievements of the past 12 months. To help do that, the staff of the Arms Control Association have nominated several well-known and some lesser-known individuals and institutions for the title of “2009 Arms Control Person(s) of the Year.”

You decide the winner by casting your vote here by January 8.

And the nominees are…

• News source:
• 21 December 2009
• UN Dispatch
• By Alanna Shaikh

Scientific American has a cheery article on up their website right now, estimating the global impact of a nuclear war between India and Pakistan. The result: sunlight is reduced, the planet cools, and the growing season shortens. Drought ensues. The ozone layer erodes. Global agriculture is decimated.

Aside from the way it will haunt your nightmares, it’s a very interesting article. It brings up come points that we all tend to forget…

• News source:
• From Saturday's Globe and Mail Published on Saturday, Dec. 05, 2009 12:00AM EST Last updated on Sunday, Dec. 06, 2009
• Globe and Mail
• By Ingrid Peritz

Twenty years ago, the aftermath of the Montreal Massacre reshaped public opinion on gun control. Now, the House vote that ended the long-gun registry reopens old wounds – and has survivors fighting mad.

To the sisters and mothers and survivors marked by loss, it remains the single most tangible legacy of the bloodshed at the École Polytechnique. It’s also the most tenuous.

Twenty years after a gunman took the lives of 14 women – after the trauma, the mourning, the anger and the soul-searching – families seeking to create some good out of tragedy thought they had found it with gun control.

• News source:
• 3 December 2009
• Huffington Post
• Perhaps cruelest of all, these hidden killers never acknowledge peace. Landmines continue to inflict health, economic and environmental damage long after conflicts end, treaties are signed, and soldiers go home.
• By Queen Noor of Jordan

For twelve years, the United States has refused to ban a weapon that kills and mutilates innocent women, men and children even in peacetime. The time has come for the world’s most powerful high-tech military to give up its low-tech stockpile of ten million antipersonnel landmines.

• News source:
• 2 December 2009
• Cluster Munition Coalition | Press release
• Support three key treaties on International Day of Persons with Disabilities

Cartagena de Indias, Colombia – High-level representatives from 130 countries attending the Cartagena Summit on a Mine-Free World should redouble efforts to rid the world of antipersonnel landmines and cluster bombs, as well as pledge their support to assisting victims and upholding disability rights, a global group of disarmament, humanitarian and human rights organisations said today, marking the International Day of Persons with Disabilities on 3 December.

• News source:
• 30 November 2009
• Al Jazeera
• In October 2008, a group of 10 women from the province of Mafraq, where mines pose the biggest threat to some half a million Jordanians, became the first all-female de-mining team in the Middle East.
• By Nisreen El-Shamayleh

MAFRAQ, NORTHERN JORDAN – Jordan has stood at the front-line of the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1948, and in the six decades since has been de-mining battlefields where opposing armies once roamed.

Many of the country’s land mines date back to the 1948 partition of Palestine, the 1967 Six Day War, and hostilities with Syria in the 1970’s.

A peace treaty with Israel in 1994 allowed Jordan to speed up its de-mining efforts; 73,000 Israeli mines have been removed from the Wadi Araba border area.

In 1999, Jordan ratified the Mine Ban Treaty, which prohibits the use, stockpiling, production and transfer of anti-personnel mines.

The task for the Jordanians now is to remove some 136,000 mines from a 104-km belt along the northern border with Syria by 2012, a measure stipulated by the treaty, and they have pioneered a new approach that challenges social norms.

• News source:
• 25 November 2009
• UN News Centre

More than 300 former combatants in Darfur, including women and disabled persons, have participated in a three-day discharge programme organized by the Government of Sudan with support from the joint African Union-United Nations mission in Darfur.

• News source:
• 25 November 2009
• Kings County Register
• Roche’s recent autobiography, Creative Dissent: a Politician’s Struggle for Peace
• By WENDY ELLIOTT

Retired Canadian senator and long time peace activist Douglas Roche will speak Dec. 2 at Acadia University.

His talk, sponsored by the university and the N.S. Voice of Women for Peace, will take place in the Beveridge Arts Centre’s room 132 from 7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m.