It was Sept. 29, 2022, and 57-year-old Daw Khin had just recently returned to her village in eastern Karenni State after being forced to flee due to attacks by Myanmar’s military junta, the Tatmadaw. Cleaning her now disheveled house, one of those still standing in her neighborhood, she stepped on a landmine which was placed right outside of her outdoor toilet.
I will not get into the more gruesome aftermath recounted by Khin and several other landmine survivors in Myanmar who were interviewed by the Human Rights Watch, but I don’t think you need to let your mind wander to understand how horrific their stories are. Sadly, in 2024, hundreds of civilians in Myanmar continue to fall victim to the terrifying and indiscriminate nature of landmines; especially dangerous are those anti-personnel mines primed to target people as opposed to vehicles, which are thus far more volatile and require far less pressure to activate. Furthermore, there has been evidence of the military using civilians as sacrificial “guides” through minefields.
The Ottawa Convention is the most widely recognized piece of international legislation that prohibits the usage of anti-personnel mines, with 133 signatory nations and 164 states bound to its ruling. The Tatmadaw in Myanmar are neither of these and thus have no recognized restrictions on their production and usage of such weaponry. Due to this abstinence from international humanitarian treaties, people in almost 170 out of 330 townships in Myanmar are now at risk of being seriously injured or dying from these crude implements of war.
States that have signed the treaty should consider taking more action against not just the Tatmadaw, but other countries that have also ignored this treaty, namely the United States, China and Russia. I followed the Mine Ban Treaty’s Fifth Review Conference in Cambodia which took place this past week, though I have not seen any direct references to the situation in Myanmar, which is slightly alarming. Yet, to reiterate the words said by Gilles Carbonnier, vice president of The International Committee of the Red Cross, who spoke recently at the conference to the various member states of the treaty, “We urge you to set ambitious goals for the next five years … to turn our shared vision of a mine-free world into a reality.”
So, it’s time to be ambitious — to set those goals of a mine-free world and to actually ensure a future free from such weaponry. Whether that means the member states of the Mine Ban Treaty start behaving seriously and figuring out ways they can influence non-state parties to adopt their rulings, or neighboring countries such as China, who is already playing an increasingly active role in the conflict, rein in the junta’s haphazard usage of landmines, something must be done by those who hold power — even if said countries ignore the established ban on such weapons.
The Tatmadaw has done much to draw the ire of the world, but their usage of anti-personnel landmines, which disproportionately affects unarmed civilians, is quite possibly one of their most impactful offenses; even when the war ends and “all goes back to normal,” do you think the landmines will just disappear?
