NATO HQ 17 Nov. 2004

Video Interview with Jody Williams, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize International Campaign to Ban Landmines Multimedia Audio file .MP3/4200Kb Video interview INTERVIEWER: Welcome, Miss Williams. You were recognized, along with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, with the Nobel Peace Prize for your role as the founding co-ordinator of the ICBL, which was formally launched with six non-governmental organizations in October 1992. What inspired you to start your campaign, and what has been your greatest reward? JODY WILLIAMS (International Campaign to Ban Landmines): I was actually invited by two organizations to see if it was possible to bring together non-governmental organizations to try to address the global problem of landmines. This was in November of '91. It was Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, in the United States, and Medico International, a humanitarian relief organization out of Germany. And so that was part of the very small beginning of what became the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which, in the space of five or six years, was able to capture the public conscience and get governments to respond to what we believed was an immediate need to resolve the problem of landmines through the Mine Ban Treaty. I would say, from the perspective of most of us in the landmine campaign, obviously the treaty is the biggest success that we've achieved in our ban movement because it provides the framework for the possibility of a world free of landmines. Personally, the other element of our ban movement that I think has been a real gift to the world is the model that we created through the ban movement of civil society, international institutions, UN agencies, the ICRC and governments like the government of Canada… which actually, though its Foreign Minister, Lloyd Axworthy, challenged the world to negotiate the treaty in one year. That model of a different way of approaching global problems I view personally as also one of the other huge successes of the effort to eliminate landmines. INTERVIEWER: Today you launched the annual update of the Landmine Monitor Report. Can you explain the major findings of this thousand-page, groundbreaking system that monitors the implementation and the compliance of the Mine Ban Treaty, and why you chose to launch your report here at NATO headquarters? WILLIAMS: Well, Landmine Monitor is another innovation of the ban movement. It's one of the first times that civil society is actually involved in the daily monitoring of the implementation and compliance of the treaty, and it was started in 1999, right after the Mine Ban Treaty took force, and it was the idea of another Canadian who was involved in the genesis of the idea, Bob Lawson, who was then in the Mines Action Unit of the Foreign Ministry, along with Steve Goose, who was the executive director of the arms division of Human Rights Watch. And these two guys, who were, you know, very, very pivotal in the political movement to ban landmines, conceived of this idea for the mine ban campaign, the ICBL, to be involved in actually monitoring, country by country, the progress over the life of the treaty so we would have a baseline to actually see what the treaty had achieved. In our campaign, we were very clear that the treaty was only the first step to real success; it would give us the framework, but, if we didn't have a way to make sure governments were implementing and complying with the treaty, we would be falling short of completing our goals of a world free of mines where there would be no new victims. Pretty much in every marker… And this is a huge year. The Nairobi Treaty Review Conference is coming up at the end of November. We're looking at the first five years of the life of the treaty. In every measure we have seen dramatic success. The number of countries that used to produce landmines was about 54 or 55. It's dropped to a mere dozen or so. That's a huge success right there. There's been virtually no trade in landmines in the last six or seven years; another huge success. The number of new victims falls each year. There should never be any new victims, but the fact that we're seeing a dramatic decrease (in some countries, very dramatic) every year is also a testament to the ban movement. New humanitarian mine clearance programs in many of the mine-affected countries, as well as what we call preventative mine action, which is the destruction of stockpiles before they ever get put in the ground to take new victims. So, in every measure, across the board, we have just seen dramatic success; much less use of mines. Before, they used to be used without thought. Now even the countries that stay outside the treaty recognize the humanitarian imperative to stop contributing to the use of an indiscriminate weapon that claims lives for decades after the end of war. So, in every measure we've been really happy to see the continued progress of the ban movement, and I think it is because, as I mentioned before, the model of governments and civil society working together has continued. I think we're successful because we continue to work in partnership for co-operative compliance of the various obligations of the Mine Ban Treaty, and we're very happy to be launching this year's Landmine Monitor 2004 Report here in NATO because NATO has been very important. The majority of NATO nations are part of the Mine Ban Treaty, with the unfortunate exception of the United States which has, however, provided significant resources for mine clearance and victim assistance, which is not an unimportant element, obviously, of our movement. But we would like every nation in the world to be part of the Mine Ban Treaty, including the United States, of course. NATO invited us here a couple of years ago, so we're happy to be here again. NATO has participated, through its Partnership for Peace Program, in trying to implement elements of the landmine treaty. Particularly, they've been very involved in the stockpile destruction, which is an important obligation under the Mine Ban Treaty. INTERVIEWER: As you mentioned, heads of state and government and NGOs will meet next month in Nairobi, at the UN summit on the implementation of the Ottawa Treaty. What do you see as the main challenges? WILLIAMS: The world will be coming together from the 29th of November to the 3rd of December of this year, 2004, in order to take part in the Mine Ban Treaty Review Conference. The mine treaty obliges governments to get together after the first five years of the life of the treaty in order to assess our progress, but also to review the challenges still facing us to really achieve a world free of landmines and to determine how we as an international community will proceed over the next five years. I think that, for the most part, we will be celebrating unprecedented success. I mean, this treaty is the first time that a conventional weapon, in widespread use for about a hundred years by virtually every fighting force in the world, has been removed from most arsenals. It's a huge and dramatic success. And, as I mentioned, the Landmine Monitor 2004 continues to measure progress in every measure that we look at under the Mine Ban Treaty, so we'll be able to celebrate that. There are still issues that are of concern to us in the ICBL; in particular, some of the definitions of what exactly is an anti-personnel landmine. If an anti-vehicle mine, for example, has a device on it that makes it explode if a person goes near it, is it not then an anti-personnel mine? What does it mean to assist in joint operations, for example? If a government that is not part of the treaty is in a joint military operation with governments that are part of the treaty, and the non-party wants to use mines, you know, what is the legal clarity there? How many mines can be kept in a stockpile? We have a few questions like that that are open, but, you know, they're just part of the ongoing dialogue to be very clear about what we set out to achieve through the Mine Ban Treaty. I think in the next five-year period the real challenges are going to be, how do the states that are seriously contaminated address the problem of mine clearance? The five year marker to 2009 is extremely important because many nations will be coming up to the 10-year deadline at that point for mine clearance, and of course they're obliged to clear all the mines off their national territory. So, really focusing on that aspect in the next five-year period is very important, as well as, I think, really understanding better the needs of landmine survivors and how to deal with them. I think too often all of us recognize the immediate needs of a landmine survivor; they need new prosthetic limbs, they need surgery, they need rehabilitation, physical therapy to be able to use the new limb. But that's only one element. You know, how are they reintegrated into society as a fully-participating member of their society? I think that we've fallen a little bit short on the landmine survivor side of the equation, and I'm hoping that out of Nairobi we will have a firmer commitment to really integrating that part of the problem so that we really address all the aspects of the landmine crisis. INTERVIEWER: As you are one of the 10 Nobel Peace Prize laureates that work with PeaceJam, an international education program that inspires youth, what do you think that NATO can do to help raise awareness of these issues, especially with youth, with young people? WILLIAMS: I joined the organization called PeaceJam (which is, you know, jammin' for peace, like jammin' for music) because they have a concept that, if you really want to change the world, you have to educate young people to understand what peace is. Peace is not merely the absence of armed conflict. Peace, from my conception, is meeting the basic needs of the majority of the people on the planet; human security. If the basic needs of most of us are met, we probably will have a more stable world. Well, PeaceJam seeks, through the work of the various Nobel peace laureates, to educate young people to the various paths to contributing to peace. I think that NATO can also contribute to educating young people, not just about war but about peacekeeping and about how, if you prevent conflict from ever happening, you have a much more stable base for progress, rather than having to reconstruct a country, bring people together after the gross divisions of armed conflict and trying to move forward. If you learn how to stop the conflict before it happens, you're a longer way… you know, much further ahead to trying to make a world a better place for everybody. I think we have to demystify what peace is. It's not a utopian vision of a rainbow and a dove floating somewhere out there in the future. It's hard work every day, but it's accepting that responsibility of rethinking how we address the world's problems. If we teach our children that the glory of war may be one answer but it may be the least effective answer to resolving our problems, maybe we have the hope for a better future. But, if we pretend that there aren't different alternatives, I think that we have a much rockier road. INTERVIEWER: Thank you for…