5 Pillars of Mine Action: Advocacy

The United Nations advocates for universal participation in existing international agreements or "instruments" that ban or limit the use of landmines. To monitor the status of treaty implementation, the United Nations participates in and supports regular meetings of treaty member countries or “State Parties” to the treaty.

The most important of these agreements is the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention or “Ottawa Treaty”, which opened for signature in 1997. Equally important are: the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW, signed in 1981) which focuses on the use of booby-traps and anti-tank and anti-vehicle mines; the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM, adopted in 2008) which prohibits all use, production, transfer and stockpiling of cluster munitions; and the Political Declaration on Strengthening the Protection of Civilians from the Humanitarian Consequences Arising from the Use of Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas (adopted in 2022). The United Nations provides technical and expert advice to meetings of the state parties and helps build national capacities to implement these instruments.