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The deployment of anti-personnel landmines increased by the SPDC and its forces Burma during 2005. This increase has transpired despite widespread international condemnation over the use of landmines due to the extensive indiscriminate humanitarian consequences of the devices. As a result of growing international consensus against the manufacture, deployment and trade of landmines, government and non-governmental bodies drafted the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction (a.k.a., the Mine Ban Treaty) in 1997. This treaty to date has been signed by 122 countries. Burma, however, has refused to sign the treaty. More recently, the United Nations General Assembly voted in favor of Resolution 59/84, which called for universally accepting the Mine Ban Treaty, in December 2004. Burma was one of 22 countries that abstained from the voting process. In addition, Burma failed to send an observer to the First Review Conference of the Mine Ban Treaty that took place in Nairobi, Kenya in November-December 2004 (source: Landmine Monitor Report 2005: Toward a Mine-Free World, ICBL, 23 November 2005). The SPDC claims that ongoing insurgency and armed conflict within the country prevent them from acceding to the Mine Ban Treaty...
