November 13, 1996 ,

Over The Edge

3

CANAD

A LEADS WORLD WITH

“t News

CALL FOR LANDMINE BAN

OTTAWA (CUP) - Canada
has finally taken a strong
stand on landmines by
unilaterally declaring a
December 1997 deadline to
conclude a pact for banning
mines by 2000.

Landmines kill or main 500
people every week according
to Mines Action Canada.
Produced for as little as three
dollars each, landmines are

_ostensibly used to slow the
advance. of opposing armies.
However, most of the
casualties end up being
civilians.

Long after the armies have
moved on, people move back
to their homes only to learn
their major roads or water
sources have been covered in
mines.

While cheap to deploy,
most mines are plastic and
very expensive to remove.
Today, an estimated 110
million mines are scattered
across 64 countries. Since it
costs up to $1,000 to extract

each one, the United Nations
is only able to remove 85,000
per year. For those involved
in de-mining, the costs can be
their lives.

Mines have killed or
maimed 34 Canadian peace-
keepers since 1991, some of
whom were blown up while
de-mining.

In October, Ottawa hosted
a conference to promote a
global ban on the use,
production and sale of
landmines. Canada along
with other countries such as
Belgium, Germany and
Switzerland have already

unilaterally banned
landmines.
Despite a _ stong

international lobby, the
global ban has not enjoyed
much support from the
United Nations. Celina
Tuttle, co-ordinator of Mines
Action Canada, says the UN
Certain Conventional
Weapons Review
Conference (CCW) has

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professors means many
students can’t find women to
supervise work that. is
considered marginal.
Ribeiro says it’s depressing
that women students, who
may aspire to have careers in
academia, don’t have the
same number of role models
that male students have.
“When we consider the
even smaller number of
women of color faculty it is
even more depressing,” she
added.

Riberio says she’s
concerned that the Tory
government’s cuts will
decrease the number of
women who are able to
pursue undergraduate

degrees, much less attend
graduate school or become
professors.

Even though the
government is not pressuring
university to hire women,
Downing says students can.
She is still passionate in her
belief that students can be
instrumental in the fight for
gender equity among
professors.

“Tf students are interested in
improving the situation, they
can do it with powerful
lobbying strategies. Students
are not aware of the pressure
power they can have on
institutions.”

deliberately excluded non-
governmental organisations
(NGOs) from their
deliberations over the past
two years.

Tuttle says this was part of
the reason why Canada took
the unprecedented action to
call the Ottawa conference
outside the umbrella of the
UN. NGOs were invited on
an equal basis to the Ottawa
conference.

While 50 countries attended
the conference, Tuttle says
many did so reluctantly. Ken
Epps, a researcher from
Project Ploughshares who
also attended the conference,
said many countries were
taken aback when Foreign
Affairs- Minister Lloyd
Axworthy set a timetable for

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banning landmines by 2000.
The declaration was a
surprise - the Globe and Mail
speculated that if the other
countries knew there was
going to be a timetable they
would not have attended.

“France in particular was
very upset the whole thing,”
said Tuttle.

Axworthy’s statement
came on the last day; no
official protests were made
regarding the minister’s bold
action. The big reason
countries were upset, Tuttle
said, was that such pacts are
traditionally negotiated in
the UN Conference for
Disarmament.

“The reason for Canada
doing that is you have to start
somewhere,” said Tuttle.

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Epps said this will now give
NGOs a stick to prod their
own countries ahead in
declaring a ban on landmines.

Meanwhile, Canada has
refused to destroy its
stockpile of 50,000
landmines, saying they are
required for training
purposes. And despite the UN
spending around $70 million
annually to remove mines, at
the current rate of de-mining
it will take over 1000 years
to remove all mines currently
deployed world-wide.

LET THEM DO THE HUNTING

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