The Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction of 1997, known informally as the Ottawa Treaty, the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention, or often simply the Mine Ban Treaty, aims at eliminating anti-personnel landmines (APLs) around the world.
By August 2025, 162 states had ratified or acceded to the treaty. Major powers, which are also past and current manufacturers of landmines, are not parties to the treaty. These include the United States, China, and Russia. Other non-signatories include India and Pakistan.
In 2025, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland formally began the procedure to withdraw from the Ottawa Treaty. The three Baltic States, Finland and Poland completed the withdrawal in December 2025, January 2026 and February 2026 respectively. Amidst use of mines by non-signatory belligerent Russia during the Russo-Ukrainian War, Ukraine has not followed the treaty and in 2025 also announced the intent to withdraw, though the treaty stipulates that it should remain in effect until the end of the conflict.
Chronology
Recognizing that States can move effectively towards the ultimate goal of the eventual elimination of anti-personnel land-mines as viable and humane alternatives are developed.
Emphasizes the importance of the Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May Be Deemed to Be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects and its Protocols as the authoritative international instrument governing the responsible use of anti-personnel land-mines and related devices. [operative paragraph 4]
Encourages further international efforts to seek solutions to the problems caused by anti-personnel-mines, with a view to their eventual elimination [operative paragraph 6].
Early action and draft Conventions
Also encourages further immediate international efforts to seek solutions to the problems caused by anti-personnel land-mines, with a view to the eventual elimination of anti-personnel land-mines [operative paragraph 6].
Threats to the comprehensive nature of the Convention
A major threat to the project of a Total ban Convention as endorsed by the 1996 Ottawa Conference was the danger of being watered down.
One example was the well-intended attempt made by Canada to win the support of Countries opposed to a total ban – in particular the US – by proposing a new approach: To replace the Draft Convention by a new text, composed of a "Chapeau-Convention", containing generalities only, and four annexed protocols, each one dealing with one of the main prohibitions: production, stockpiling, transfer and use of anti-personnel mines. This approach would allow some additional countries to join the process but at the price of allowing them to pick and choose only those prohibitions compatible with their military needs. This concept, which would keep only the appearance of a total ban treaty, would risk creating a confusing situation of varying legal situations, and would, in the first place, postpone a real comprehensive total ban, potentially indefinitely. This proposal did however not materialise as the US rebuffed the idea, believing that they could steer the negotiations into the Conference on Disarmament where it would be subject to the consensus rule.
Attempts to block the project of a Total Ban Convention
Countries opposing a total ban of APMs because of their military necessities had an interest to prevent any negotiations on a total ban and in particular in free standing negotiations as proposed by Austria.
The smart way to achieve this aim was to insist on holding the relevant negotiations in the framework of the competent forum of the UN for disarmament negotiations, the Conference on Disarmament (CD). The catch is that the CD had many years previously become a dead end, because of fundamental disagreements among Member States on its agenda and because of the rule of consensus giving each member de facto the right of veto.
Further developments
- a geographical exception for the use of mines in South Korea;
- a change of the definition of APMs to allow the use of mixed anti-tank and anti-personnel "munitions" systems;
- a transition period with either entry into force requiring 60 countries, including all five permanent members of the Security Council and at least 75 per cent of historic producers and users of APMs, or an optional nine-year deferral period for compliance with certain provisions;
- a strengthening of the verification regime; and
- a clause permitting a party to withdraw when its superior national interests are threatened.
Implementation
Treaty terms
Besides ceasing the production and development of anti-personnel mines, a party to the treaty must destroy its stockpile of anti-personnel mines within four years, although it may retain a small number for training purposes (mine-clearance, detection, etc.). Within ten years after ratifying the treaty, the country should have cleared all of its mined areas. This is a difficult task for many countries, but at the annual meetings of the States Parties they may request an extension and assistance. The treaty also calls on States Parties to provide assistance to mine-affected persons in their own country and to provide assistance to other countries in meeting their treaty obligations.
The treaty covers only anti-personnel mines; it does not address mixed mines, anti-tank mines, remote-controlled claymore mines, anti-handling devices (booby traps), and other "static" explosive devices.
Destruction of stockpiles
Signatory nations have destroyed more than 48 million stockpiled mines since the treaty's entry into force on 1 March 1999. As of June 2017, 159 countries had completed the destruction of their stockpiles or declared that they did not possess stockpiles to destroy. Sri Lanka reported in September 2021 that they had finished destroying their stockpile.
Retention of landmines
Article 3 of the treaty permits countries to retain landmines for use in training in mine detection, mine clearance, or mine destruction techniques. 72 countries have taken this option. Of this group, 26 States Parties retain fewer than 1,000 mines. Only two have retained more than 10,000 mines: Turkey (15,100) and Bangladesh (12,500). A total of 83 States Parties have declared that they do not retain any antipersonnel mines, including 27 states that stockpiled antipersonnel mines in the past.
Canada retains mines for training, and also continues to make and use the "C19 Detonated Weapon" in combat. The latter does not qualify as a landmine under the treaty because it is fired by a person and not by a pressure plate.
Landmine-free countries
Through 2015, 29 countries had cleared all known mined areas from their territory: Albania, Bhutan, Bulgaria, Burundi, Republic of the Congo, Costa Rica, Denmark, Djibouti, France, Gambia, Germany, Guinea-Bissau, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, Hungary, Jordan, Malawi, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Nigeria, North Macedonia, Rwanda, Suriname, Swaziland, Tunisia, Uganda, and Venezuela. El Salvador finished clearing its landmines before joining the Treaty.
At the November–December 2009 Cartagena Summit for a Mine-Free World, Albania, Greece, Rwanda, and Zambia were also declared mine-free. On 2 December 2009, Rwanda was declared free of landmines. It followed a three-year campaign by 180 Rwandan soldiers, supervised by the Mine Awareness Trust and trained in Kenya, to remove over 9,000 mines laid in the country between 1990 and 1994. The soldiers checked and cleared 1.3 square km of land in twenty minefields. The official Cartagena Summit announcement came after the Rwandan Ministry of Defence's own announcement of the completion of the demining process on 29 November 2009. Under Article 5 of the Ottawa Treaty, Rwanda was requested to become mine-free by 1 December 2010.
On 18 June 2010, Nicaragua was declared free of landmines.
Two more countries became free of landmines in 2011. On 14 June 2011, Nepal was declared a landmine-free zone, making it the second country to be landmine-free in Asia. In December 2011, Burundi was declared landmine free.
On 5 December 2012 at the 12th Meeting of the States Parties, six states declared themselves landmine-free. These were the Republic of the Congo, Denmark, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Jordan, and Uganda.
On 17 September 2015, Mozambique was declared free of land mines after the last of some nearly 171,000 had been cleared over 20 years.
The last land mines in the Falkland Islands were removed by 2020.
Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor
The Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor ("the Monitor") is an initiative providing research for the ICBL and the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC), and acting as their de facto monitoring regime.
As an initiative of ICBL which was founded in 1998 through Human Rights Watch, the Monitor gives monitoring on the humanitarian development and uses of landmines, cluster munitions, and explosive remnants of war (ERW). It provides reports on all aspects of the landmine, cluster munitions, and ERW issues. It issues annual report updates on all countries in the world, keeps an international network with experts, provides research findings for all mediums, and remains flexible to adapt its reports to any changes. The Monitor has earned respect with its transparency whose states must be provided under the relevant treaties for independent reporting. Its main audiences are not only governments, NGOs, and other international organizations, but also media, academics and the public.
States parties
The Convention gained 122 country signatures when it opened for signing on 3 December 1997 in Ottawa, Canada. Currently, there are 165 States Parties to the Treaty. Thirty-two countries have not signed the treaty. The states that have not signed the treaty includes a majority of the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council: China, the United States, and Russia. In 2014, the United States declared that it will abide by the terms of the Treaty, except for landmines used on the Korean Peninsula. South Korea, like North Korea, has not signed the treaty, believing the use of landmines to be crucial to the defense of their territory against the other.
Responses
Supportive
Pope Francis has described the Ottawa Process as an example of where the organisations of "civil society" are "capable of creating effective dynamics that the United Nations cannot".
Critical
Criticism from academics, security officials, and diplomats is based on both the political process and the substance. The campaign for what became the Ottawa Treaty was led by a group of powerful non-governmental organizations, and instead of working within existing multilateral frameworks, including the Conference on Disarmament, based at the UN compound in Geneva (the Palais des Nations), an ad hoc framework was created that detoured around existing intergovernmental processes. Critics alleged that this represented a challenge to the sovereignty and responsibility of nation states for the defense of their citizens.
Substantively, critics view the treaty as naive and idealistic, in attempting to erase the reality of security threats that lead armies and defense forces to rely on landmines for protection against invasion and terror attacks. As a result, ratification has been far from universal, and many of the states that do not currently intend to ratify the treaty possess large stockpiles of anti-personnel mines. So far 35 countries have not signed the treaty; nonsignatories include the United States, Russia, China, Myanmar, United Arab Emirates, Cuba, Egypt, India, Israel, and Iran.
Opponents of banning anti-personnel mines give several reasons, among them that mines are a cheap and therefore cost-effective area denial weapon. Opponents say that when used correctly, anti-personnel mines are defensive weapons that harm only attackers, unlike ranged weapons such as ballistic missiles that are most effective if used for preemptive attacks. Furthermore, opponents say that 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 was adopted and entered into force in 2010. As of February 2022, there are 110 state parties of the CCM. In theory, mines could be replaced by manually triggered Claymore mines, but this requires the posting of a sentry.