Talk:Ottawa Treaty

Always been landmine free
This may sound really stupid, but should the article say something to the effect of "Rwanda was the first country to be certified landmine free [that previously had landmines]"? The first time I read it, I thought the implication was that the only country certified without landmines was Rwanda -- but, correct me if I'm wrong -- that certification is only given to countries with previous landmine history? Rishi.bedi (talk) 20:20, 7 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Probably. I came to the talk page to ask what the status of e.g. Canada was. As far as I know, Canada has never had a (non training) landmine deployment, so I assumed that because only Rwanda was specifically mentioned, Canada must be in non-compliance somehow (still possessing landmines or some such). Probably the best way to treat it is to have a section with a table listing dates of compliance for the two phases (destroying possessed landmines and clearing mined areas) - in the table notations of "still possesses landmines"/"still has mined areas"/"never possessed landmines"/"never had mined areas" can be made. -- 128.104.112.95 (talk) 23:19, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Comments
shouldn't it be either "1.3 million square meteres (1.3 square km)" or "1.3 billion square meters (1,300 square kilometers)"? Or am I missing something? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.148.40.30 (talk) 14:27, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I've been redirect from the "Ottawa Convention" which in the article National Liberal Party (UK) has the sentence "In 1932 the "Samuelite" Liberals resigned from the government over the Ottawa Convention and the introduction of a series of tariff agreements, though they continued to support the National Government from the backbenches"

this has nothing to do with anti personnel landmine or land mines at all, i guess its imperial preference or trade of some sort, but i haven't a clue ? 160.5.247.213 01:56, 21 February 2006 (UTC) (Pickle_UK not logged in!) How about a list of all the countries yet to ratify/accept the treaty? --Kookoo275 06:03, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
 * See British Empire Economic Conference Nfitz 15:34, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Cheers for fixing that! Pickle 18:46, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree, that should be part of the article. --mglg(talk) 18:55, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

The "Signatories" section needs work; the article states that "in 1999 the U.S. modified the Ottawa Treaty by introducing the M86 Pursuit Deterrent Munition". How can the U.S., China, Russia or any other nation "modify" a teaty to which it is not a party? The article also states that M86 mine "exploits technical loopholes in the Ottawa Treaty". Leaving aside the specific treaty provisions, use of the term "loophole" is confusing as applied to a non-party nation. The idea of "loopholes", if any exist, would only apply to signatory nations like Mexico or France, not non-party states. There may be some confusion here about how international treaties work. Arcas2000 22:14, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I've removed the section: "Despite conducting research on technologies that could replace the mines in Korea by 2006, in 1999 the U.S. modified the Ottawa Treaty by introducing the M86 Pursuit Deterrent Munition which was meant to slow enemy pursuit on retreating armed forces. While still a landmine, the M86 exploits technical loopholes in the Ottawa Treaty; therefore, the future of anti-personnel mines in the U.S. is unclear."--Sloane 06:44, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Editor must have confused the Ottawa Treaty with the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, which does have relevant provisions. AlexeiSeptimus 00:38, 28 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Technically I guess the US could be said to exploiting loopholes in the treaty if they are designing mines which exploit loopholes which they then sell to party states. I don't know if this is happening. Also the mines could obviously be said to be designed to exploit loopholes (if they are) even if they aren't going to be used by any party state at the current time. They may allow the US to sign the treaty while still using these mines for example. This is of course complete WP:OR and the wording was poor but just pointing out the issue of loopholes may arise even though the US is not a party state Nil Einne (talk) 15:19, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Re: Lloyd Axworthy and the Canadian contribution to the Ottawa Treaty
I cannot beleive that there is no reference to Lloyd Axworthy, Canada's Foreign Minister at the time of the signing of the Ottawa Treaty. It could be argued that he was the lynchpin of the ICBL and the Ottawa Treaty because of his embrace of the NGO community. I think one could argue that without Mr. Axworthy we would not have an Ottawa Treaty. The impetus for the treaty came when Axworthy issued a challenge to the international community. He challenged states to come up with a treaty banning the use of landmines within a year, an extremely short period of time for treaty making. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Brodier182 (talk • contribs) 14:58, 4 April 2008 (UTC)


 * So true, it should be mentioned. That is the main reason it was done in & called the Ottawa Treaty. I'll add him in to reflect his contribution. That-Vela-Fella (talk) 11:26, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize?
Is it notable that Lloyd Axworthy has been nominated for a Nobel prize? Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini have all been nominated. See this story for example: Gabbe (talk) 22:47, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Of course, it is very notable. We are talking about a Nobel Prize. They have achieved a significant reward for their hard work and efforts for humanitarian works. Jewnited (talk) 08:53, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

POV in non signatories
Mentioning permanent members of the UN who haven't signed is NPOV - great. The other countries mentioned are definitely POV. Mentioning India, without mentioning Pakistan is very POV. Mentioning Israel, without mentioning the plethora of Arab states who've not signed is very POV. Frankly, mentioning any one of the dozens who haven't, without mentioning them all, begs the question why they've been singled out... aka POV. Unless anyone objects with good reasoning, I'll remove the problem in a day or two. --Dweller (talk) 11:11, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Agreed that this is (or could be constued as) nonNPOV. The problem is that naming the 30 countries that are not party is a bit too much as well. I suggest to list only countries of a certain size (let's say: above 5 mln), which will result in about 10 (I guess), which is handlable and neutral (... but a bit arbitrary, I know). Shall I give that a try? L.tak (talk) 11:33, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
 * That's falling into OR territory. Let's just leave it at perm members of the UN. --Dweller (talk) 11:59, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I was hoping to be still away from that, but indeed let's do all 30 or so permanent UN members for neutrality... L.tak (talk) 12:33, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
 * There are only five permanent members. Our article points out that three of them aren't signed up. That seems NPOV. We can and do signpost to the full list of countries who've not signed. --Dweller (talk) 12:57, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Use vs Production?
I noticed that the stress under criticism is biased strongly towards the viewpoint of usage of land mines versus the goal of eliminating, ultimately, all production.

This is very similar in approach to the defense of current United States gun control laws (you need a gun to defend against the bad guys with guns) without addressing the root problem (where do the bad guys get all the guns in the first place?).

If there are no land mines being produced there is no valid argument that the Ottawa treaty is useless against "non-state actors". Viewing the debate purely from the point of view of non-state actors is just a race to the bottom argument. 204.182.225.10 (talk) 19:23, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

role of Korea
Apparently the U.S. would have been willing to sign (or close to doing so) if a "grandfather" clause for the Korean DMZ and adjacent areas had been allowed... AnonMoos (talk) 15:21, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Criticism
The only sources for any "criticism" are two Finnish sites, one with a post by "admin", the other a short report about the plenary session in finnish parliament discussing the treaty. Which Finland later signed... So are there real sources of criticism? And about the argument:
 * organized state actors are capable of mapping and marking of minefields and demining after the conflict has ended, which reduces the hazards to civilians.

Do we have any examples of this actually happening? Vietnam war? Ssscienccce (talk) 18:55, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

United States acceptance
The fact that the United States has recently accepted the terms of the treaty is absent from any reading. The U.S. agreed to join, but also declared that its mines in Korea will stay. (America789 (talk) 15:23, 26 September 2014 (UTC))
 * This indeed should be mentioned. Feel free to add it. I do think it should however be made very clear that the US has no intention to join, but intends to abide by its rules, except when it concerns the Korean peninsula.... L.tak (talk) 17:51, 26 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Done:, together with the recent reversal of that. --Traumflug (talk) 20:59, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

ICBL
Lots of info on this page comes from ICBL and it is mentioned very prominently in lists etcetc. Do we have independent sources that connect the treaty so strongly to ICBL that it warrants such an extensive statement? Or have we been to much been influenced by the way developments n ICBL and Ottawa treaty have been combined on their own webpages? If it is the latter, some maintenance would be in place. L.tak (talk) 15:12, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

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basics missing
the article does not say which countries accepted the treaty - while simply stating those which did not, while making sure to mention "marshall island accepted it but did not ratify it" — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ge-eN-De (talk • contribs) 16:25, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Ending too subjective
The first three-quarters of the article seems well documented, properly footnoted and about as objective as possible with such an emotional topic. The end part has much less of this and seems to be largely a haigiography of Werner Erhardt. I realize it is hard to find balance on this issue and find it unlikely that there will ever be a "Worldwide Friends of Landmines" group nor a "International Supporters of Cluster Bomblets". But this part needs less support for the efforts and agreement with them and more objective facts on developments subsequent to the ratification of the original treaty. 2600:1004:B128:4BA4:0:4B:111A:D601 (talk) 04:20, 20 February 2022 (UTC)