I can’t believe I’m writing this email. The Trump administration is ending existing U.S. prohibitions against the use of landmines. This is a huge and dangerous step backwards.
For my ENTIRE LIFE, landmines have been internationally banned through the Mine Ban Treaty, signed by 164 countries in 1997. And rightly so. Landmines are extremely dangerous — they disproportionately kill civilians and remain a threat to life long after a conflict ends.
Today, Congress has the opportunity to not just block Trump from using landmines, but to push the U.S. to join the Mine Ban Treaty as well. And that will ONLY happen if we get loud enough and make our members of Congress act. NOW.
Tell Congress: Ban new uses of anti-personnel landmines!
Landmines don’t know when a war is over. They’re there until they are triggered, exploding everyone and everything within a 27 meter casualty radius.
Landmines are also indiscriminate. They don’t know whether a child, an animal, or a servicemember is stepping on them.
Today, hundreds of millions of landmines around the world still injure and kill tens of thousands of people every year — especially children — in Afghanistan, Burma, Cambodia, Egypt, Somalia, Iran, and Laos.
That’s why 23 years ago, the world gathered together and signed onto the Mine Ban Treaty in 1997, to condemn the use of anti-personnel landmines — including those marketed as “smart” (meaning they self-destruct or deactivate) which have failed to work as advertised.
And while the U.S. didn’t sign onto that treaty, it stopped manufacturing and exporting landmines. In 2011 the U.S. also agreed to start destroying stockpiles of MILLIONS of landmines. And then in 2014, President Obama restricted deploying landmines outside of the Korean Peninsula (an exception we found UNACCEPTABLE).
The world moved on from using this horrific weapon before I was even born. Under Obama, the U.S. did too.
And today, the Trump administration wants to backtrack all of that hard work, giving military commanders the option to deploy just as disastrous “smart” mines if they see fit.
But we can stop them. Congress can push through a ban on the deployment of any new type of anti-personnel landmines AND call for the U.S. to join the Mine Ban Treaty. But they will only do this if they know how much we care about helping end the U.S. role in perpetuating violence by banning landmines — by getting loud today.
Tell Congress: Ban new uses of anti-personnel landmines!
Arms control is under attack from the Trump administration, from nuclear disarmament to gun safety. And because Trump is attacking communities here and around the world, it feels hard to get riled up about laws around weapons. The thing is, arms control is not just an arbitrary wonky law, or a meaningless symbolic effort. Banning landmines is a literal LIFE AND DEATH fight. And it’s a winnable one too. How do I know this? Because three decades ago, activists around the world already fought for the Mine Ban Treaty.
And they won. Now it’s our turn to win too.
Thank you for working for peace,
Abbey, Erika, Tara, and the Win Without War team
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