'It Can Be Done'

The death of Princess Diana meant that anti-land-mine activists lost their most visible advocate. Yet while the issue may seem to be on the global backburner, the problem of unexploded ordnance remains as acute as ever. Millions of mines from wars both past and present remain scattered across 83 countries, with 15,000 to 20,000 killed or maimed by them every year.

One example: strife-torn Sudan. Aside from the individuals affected, the mines that have been planted during the country's 21-year civil war have hurt entire communities, as well. Two million Sudanese are expected to need food next year, but aid agencies say the cost of delivering it to them is five times higher than in other countries because mined roads mean the supplies can only be flown in. According to the United Nations Mine Action Service program in southern Sudan, $50 million is needed to fund demining projects in the country next year alone.

"It only takes a dollar to plant a mine, but can cost $1,000 to remove it," says Wolfgang Petritsch, who presided over an international land-mine conference in Nairobi this week. Also at the meeting was Jody Williams, founder of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL). Williams and her organization were joint winners of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for their work in the field. She spoke to NEWSWEEK's Alexandra Polier about the challenges of ridding the world of landmines. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: How did you get involved with the land-mine movement?

Jody Williams: I've been an activist since February 1981 ... In November 1991 the heads of two organizations, Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation in Washington and MEDICO in Germany, asked me to create a political movement to deal with the land-mine problem. I had never thought about land mines, like most everybody. I saw their impact in Central America but I didn't think of them as too much different from other conventional weapons.

What makes land mines so much worse than other conventional weapons?

They are more horrific because they are designed specifically to maim. You can ruin human beings for the rest of their lives. And they can last for hundreds of years, so a guy can plant a land mine that can kill his own great grandchildren. And at the end of the war the gun goes home with the soldier, but the land mines stay behind.

Is realistic to think you will be able to clear the world's minefields?

Ninety million land mines were cleared out of Europe in five years after World War II. Of course it can be done. It's a matter of political will. It's a matter of continued commitment. We took an idea that everyone thought was utopian, and from the time the campaign [ICBL] was launched in 1992 to the time the [Ottawa Mine Ban] treaty was negotiated in 1997 we captured the public conscience to such a degree that governments negotiated to rid the world of a conventional weapon. Since then, 50 million land mines have been destroyed.

How did winning the Nobel Prize change your life and help your cause?

Made Mom and Dad proud. They finally understood what I did! All those years they wanted me to be a lawyer. Personally, I had a lot of trauma adjusting to what it meant. I'm an introvert. And suddenly I went from being one of the leaders to the leader and the face for land mines. It [also] had a very positive impact on the campaign. It opens doors that you just don't have before. When we first started the campaign and we tried to get meetings with governments, we'd be lucky to meet the lowest-level functionary, and they'd barely tolerate our presence. With a Nobel Prize I can meet anybody. The impact of the prize was quite immediate on the treaty. Ninety countries negotiated it in Oslo in 1997, but we were wondering how many of those would show up in Ottawa later that year. The prize was announced and immediately it changed the position of governments. [A total of] 122 countries showed up and signed that treaty. Now we have 144.

This week is the five-year review of that Mine Ban Treaty. Looking back, what have been the greatest achievements since its signing?

There has been no major trade in land mines in six or seven years. The number of producers has dropped from 54 to 15. There are mine-clearance programs in 65 of the 83 countries that have mines in them. Only four countries last year used land mines according to our Landmine Monitor report: Russia, Burma, Nepal and Georgia. But before people used to use land mines without thought, so only four is tremendous advancement.

And the greatest challenges for the future?

The biggest problem I think is the survivor issue. The percentage of mine-action money for survivors has diminished rather than increased. A survivor is a survivor his or her whole life. Their needs are continuous. You give them a limb, that's good, but they wear out like shoes. They need to be replaced. And they need socioeconomic reintegration. Many of the communities they come from see disability as meaning you are no longer a viable human.

Some have argued that the treaty is a gesture at best because it has no real authority to make countries make good on their promises about the ban.

Of course we have concerns. In the beginning when the treaty was signed, the countries that didn't come on board, for example, the United States, called it a "feel-good exercise." The U.S. in particular makes a big issue of trying to mask its not joining the treaty with how much it contributes to mine action [almost $1 billion over the last 10 years] and how committed it is to the elimination of the suffering to civilians. But since 1997 we've been successful on every measure, and they don't make the argument anymore that it is a feel-good treaty.

The United States has refused to sign the treaty because they say they need land mines for security, specifically nonpersistent mines, or smart mines, which are supposed to self-destruct or deactivate after a certain amount of time.

The U.S. is very good at spin. In my view, all the Bush administration has done is restated the Clinton administration's early policy and given the mines a new name: nonpersistent mines. The ban movement rejected that, but more importantly the [signatory] governments rejected it ... The way others in the world saw it was: here comes the U.S. again with its high-tech expensive equipment telling us we have to give up ours, [but] they'll keep theirs and then they'll sell them to us. That's not a solution. But it's not about land mines, its about the slippery slope. If the U.S. bans anti-personnel mines then people might go after other weapons systems, and that is not acceptable to the U.S. military.

How important is it that the big countries like the United States, Russia and China sign the treaty?

From the point of view of the campaign, the countries that are most important to have on board are those that are contaminated by land mines. And they all are. All of sub-Saharan Africa, the most mined continent on the planet, is part of this treaty. They are required to destroy their stockpiles in four years, [which] means those mines will never get in the ground.

You have traveled constantly for 20 years. What's been your most poignant experience?

I was in Croatia a year or two ago, and the head of the Croatian Mine Action Center, said that they had gone to a village where there had been intense fighting. It was heavily forested, which makes it even more difficult to demine. They made an appeal to everyone saying, you guys were fighters, tell us where the mines are. Nobody came forward. A few weeks later a man went into the forest to collect firewood, stepped on a mine and lost both legs. Shortly after that, his father came to the mine action center and said that the man who lost both his legs was his son. And when he was thinking about where this happened, he realized that those were the mines that he and his soldiers had planted. "If I had come to you when you asked for help maybe my son wouldn't have lost his legs," he said. "Now I will tell you where the mines are so no one else's son has to suffer."