    [Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 6 (Wednesday, January 10, 2018)]
    [Senate]
    [Pages S135-S136]
    From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

                                   LANDMINES

      Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, according to Landmine Monitor, which is the
    world's best source of data on the production, use, export,
    stockpiling, and clearance of landmines, cluster munitions, and other
    unexploded ordnance, 2016 was a terrible year for casualties caused by
    mines and other UXO.
      In 2016, the Monitor recorded 8,605 casualties, of which at least
    2,089 people were fatalities. That is the highest number since 1999,
    and it includes the most casualties of children ever recorded.
    Civilians represented 78 percent of recorded casualties in 2016. There
    are still 61 countries that are known to be contaminated with
    landmines.
      On the positive side, approximately 232,000 landmines were destroyed
    in 2016, and 66 square miles of land were cleared of mines and other
    UXO. International donors and UXO affected countries increased support
    in 2016 for UXO clearance programs by $40 million above the previous
    year to $564.5 million. The United States was, like previous years, by
    far the largest donor.
      It is also encouraging that, since March 1, 1999, when the
    international treaty banning antipersonnel landmines came into force,
    163 countries have joined. That is an extraordinary achievement for a
    treaty that owes its existence to the vision and perseverance of
    hundreds of advocacy, human rights, arms control, humanitarian
    organizations, and journalists, around the world, and the leadership of
    former Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy; yet despite this
    progress and substantial declining in the past few years, the number of
    innocent people maimed and killed by mines has steadily increased.
      There are several explanations for this. Rebel groups like ISIS
    routinely use landmines and other improvised explosive devices. The
    wars in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen have been largely
    responsible. It may never be possible to completely eradicate the use
    of landmines by rebel groups, for the weapon is so cheap to manufacture
    while causing such harm.
      But the major powers that have not joined the treaty--the United
    States, Russia, China, Pakistan, and India--also share the blame.
    Antipersonnel landmines, which are designed to be triggered
    indiscriminately by the victim, whether an unsuspecting farmer or an
    enemy or friendly combatant, have no place in the arsenals of modern
    militaries. It is hypocrisy to claim on the one hand, as our military
    does, that it uses every precaution to avoid harming civilians and
    prides itself on its precision weapons, and on the other hand to insist
    on the right to use a weapon that is the antithesis of precise and
    overwhelmingly harms civilians.
      I have spoken more times than I can count about the scourge of
    antipersonnel landmines and the need for the United States to join the
    Mine Ban Treaty so we are no longer an excuse for other countries not
    to join. Our military has not used landmines for more than two decades.
    In fact, U.S. policy now strictly limits the use of antipersonnel mines
    to the Korean Peninsula, but we do not need them. What we need is the
    best protection for our troops to maneuver safely through minefields.
    We should have banned these indiscriminate weapons a long time ago, and
    we would have if landmines were blowing off the arms and legs of
    children in this Nation the way they are in others, but we have learned
    that the Pentagon is not in the habit of giving up weapons, even if
    they are weapons that deserve to be relegated to the dustbin of
    history. That decision will only be made by a President who is willing
    to do what is morally right.
      Landmines have been aptly described as weapons of mass destruction in
    slow

    [[Page S136]]

    motion. President Trump reacted with anger and disgust, as he should
    have, when Syria's President Assad used chlorine gas against his own
    people. He should react the same way toward antipersonnel landmines and
    set an example for the rest of the world.
      I ask unanimous consent that a January 6, 2018, New York Times
    editorial on this subject be printed in the Record.
      There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
    the Record, as follows:

                    [From the New York Times, Jan. 6, 2018]

                     Why Do Land Mines Still Kill So Many?

                            (By the Editorial Board)

           The world is rolling backward, and at a disturbingly faster
         pace, in the struggle to limit carnage from land mines and
         other booby-trap explosives. The most recent numbers,
         covering 2016, are appalling.
           Known casualties that year came to 8,605, including 2,089
         deaths, according to a new report by Landmine Monitor, a
         research arm of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.
         The toll was nearly 25 percent higher than the 6,967 maimed
         and dead counted a year earlier, and more than double the
         3,993 in 2014. And these numbers are almost assuredly an
         undercount. ``In some states and areas, numerous casualties
         go unrecorded,'' Landmine Monitor said.
           Much of the 2016 mayhem stemmed from conflicts in
         Afghanistan, Libya, Ukraine and Yemen, but people in 56
         countries and other areas were killed or wounded by
         improvised explosive devices and other ordnance placed by
         governments or, more commonly, by insurgent groups. The sheer
         indecency of it is self-evident. Nearly 80 percent of the
         victims were civilians; children accounted for 42 percent of
         civilian casualties in situations where the ages were known.
           One subset of the menace, cluster munitions, is singularly
         vicious. A single cluster bomb can contain dozens, even
         hundreds, of baseball-size bomblets that spray in all
         directions, ripping apart anything in their path. All too
         often, they fail to detonate right away and thus become time
         bombs that imperil unwary civilians who pick them up,
         including curious children. Cluster munitions alone caused
         971 known casualties in 2016, more than twice the toll of the
         previous year, according to Cluster Munition Monitor. Most
         victims were Syrians, nearly all of them civilians, but Saudi
         Arabia has also used American-supplied cluster bombs in
         Yemen.
           Perhaps the saddest part of all this is that for well over
         a decade the world seemed to have gotten a grip on what are
         referred to generically as the ``explosive remnants of war.''
         Thanks to an international treaty that came into force in
         1999--now signed by 163 countries and banning the production,
         stockpiling and transfer of land mines--casualties declined
         steadily worldwide. They reached a low of 3,450 in 2013,
         compared with 9,228 in 1999. (A companion treaty outlawing
         cluster munitions, joined by 119 countries, went into effect
         in 2010.) As the death and injury toll for 2016 shows, nearly
         all that hard-won progress has been erased by the brutal
         conflicts of recent vintage.
           The picture is not irredeemably bleak. The Landmine Monitor
         said that 32 donors, led by the United States, contributed
         nearly $480 million in 2016 for mine clearance and victim
         aid. That was an increase of 22 percent from the year before.
         More than 232,000 antipersonnel mines were reportedly
         destroyed in 2016, and about 66 square miles--an area nearly
         the size of Brooklyn--were cleared of explosive hazards.
           The grim reality, though, is that the land mine and cluster
         munitions treaties are undercut by the refusal of some of
         modern warfare's most powerful players to sign them. Among
         those countries are China, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Russia
         and Saudi Arabia. And the United States. The Pentagon has
         long insisted that eliminating cluster bombs could put
         soldiers at risk. As for land mines, they are deemed by
         Washington to be a useful tool in the demilitarized zone
         separating North and South Korea--a first-line defense for
         the South against a possible invasion. But given the North's
         nuclear buildup, a mined DMZ seems to be a Cold War vestige
         of diminished value.
           Washington is not immune to international suasion. Land
         mines are so stigmatized that American forces have barely
         used them since the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The United States
         stockpile, estimated at three million mines, is significantly
         reduced from pre-treaty years; it's puny compared with the 26
         million mines that Russia has on hand, according to the
         International Campaign to Ban Landmines. Similarly, American
         reliance on cluster munitions, which peaked in the early
         stages of the 2003 Iraq war, has all but disappeared.
           In 2014 the Obama administration even signaled it might be
         willing to join the anti-mine treaty. Regrettably, that step
         never came. It might have been a moral statement encouraging
         others to follow suit. Now, with President Trump openly
         disdainful of international agreements, the likelihood of
         Washington's signing the treaty would seem to be about zero.
         The Pentagon, under his ultimate control, recently authorized
         the military to restock older cluster munitions, whose
         immediate failure rate can be high, leaving bomblets that can
         explode and kill civilians even years later.
           For countries like Afghanistan, Libya, Ukraine and Yemen,
         the risks may endure long after the guns go silent. Vietnam
         provides an example. Since the war there ended in 1975, at
         least 40,000 Vietnamese are believed to have been killed and
         another 60,000 wounded by American land mines, artillery
         shells, cluster bombs and other ordnance that failed to
         detonate back then. They later exploded when handled by
         scrap-metal scavengers and unsuspecting children.
           The lesson is stark for today's war-torn countries. They
         could reap the same whirlwind in coming decades.

      (At the request of Mr. Schumer, the following statement was ordered
    to be printed in the Record.)

                              ____________________