Criticism
Ratification has not been universal, and most landmine production occurs in countries that do not currently intend to ratify the treaty. So far 34 countries have not signed the treaty; nonsignatories include Russia, United States, China, Somalia, Myanmar, United Arab Emirates, Cuba, Egypt, India, Israel and Iraq. Furthermore, organized state actors are capable of mapping and marking of minefields and demining after the conflict has ended, which reduces the hazards to civilians. In contrast, indiscriminate dispersal is typically done by parties that already flout the laws of war, as in using mines as a weapon for state terrorism in a protracted civil war, where international treaties have little effect.
Opponents of banning landmines make several points, among them that mines are a cheap and therefore cost-effective area denial weapon. When used correctly, it is a defensive weapon that harms only an attacker, unlike ranged weapons such as ballistic missiles that are most effective if used for preemptive attacks. In addition, the psychological effect of mines increases the threshold to attack and thus reduces the risk of war.
The Ottawa treaty does not cover all types of unexploded ordnance. Cluster bombs, for example, introduce the same problem as mines: unexploded bomblets can remain a hazard for civilians long after a conflict has ended. A separate Convention on Cluster Munitions was drafted in 2008 and came into effect in 2010. However, its adoption has not been as widespread as the Ottawa Treaty. Paradoxically, the Ottawa Treaty then leads to increased adoption of cluster munitions, which can be more dangerous to civilians. In theory, mines could be replaced by manually triggered Claymore mines, but this requires the posting of a sentry and makes this much more expensive than using other indiscriminate weapons such as cluster bombs or artillery bombardment.
Little progress in actual reduction of mine usage has been achieved. In 2011, the number of landmines dispersed is higher than ever since 2004, landmines being dispersed in Libya, Syria, Israel and Burma.
Read more about this topic: Ottawa Treaty
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“...I wasn’t at all prepared for the avalanche of criticism that overwhelmed me. You would have thought I had murdered someone, and perhaps I had, but only to give her successor a chance to live. It was a very sad business indeed to be made to feel that my success depended solely, or at least in large part, on a head of hair.”
—Mary Pickford (1893–1979)
“Cubism had been an analysis of the object and an attempt to put it before us in its totality; both as analysis and as synthesis, it was a criticism of appearance. Surrealism transmuted the object, and suddenly a canvas became an apparition: a new figuration, a real transfiguration.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)
“I am opposed to writing about the private lives of living authors and psychoanalyzing them while they are alive. Criticism is getting all mixed up with a combination of the Junior F.B.I.- men, discards from Freud and Jung and a sort of Columnist peep- hole and missing laundry list school.... Every young English professor sees gold in them dirty sheets now. Imagine what they can do with the soiled sheets of four legal beds by the same writer and you can see why their tongues are slavering.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)