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Antipersonnel landmines continued to be deployed in significant numbers in Burma during 2007, despite a growing international consensus that the use of landmines is unacceptable and that their use should be unconditionally ceased. As of mid-August 2007, 155 countries, or 80 percent of the world’s nations were State Parties to the 1997 Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction (also known as and henceforth referred to as the Mine Ban Treaty’), leaving only 40 countries outside the treaty. [1] Such widespread support of the Mine Ban Treaty recognises that landmines often kill indiscriminately, and in doing so, pose an unacceptable level of risk to civilian and non-combatant populations. According to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), the “Mine Ban Treaty has made the new use of antipersonnel mines, especially by governments, a rare phenomenon”. However, the ICBL concedes that Burma is one of only two countries (along with Russia) which represents the exception to the “near-universal stigmatization of the use of antipersonnel mines”, and that the most extensive deployment of antipersonnel landmines by “government forces” during 2007 occurred in Burma. [2] A report released in September 2007 speculated that as many as two million landmines were buried in Burma, with the vast majority of these deployed in the ethnic minority territories bordering neighbouring countries...
