European diplomats campaign for Mine Ban Treaty
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In 1991, Kien Le was working in his garden when a cluster bomb exploded. His lost his left leg, and his 4-year-old daughter, who was playing nearby, was killed. The accident sent the family into an abyss of grief.
Their lives lost their color that day, said Huong Thi Nguyen, Le's wife.
Now the couple tours the world, campaigning for the Mine Ban Treaty and sharing their story. Recently they were in Beijing to speak at a photo exhibition, Fatal Footprint, at the French Cultural Center. Organized by Handicap International, a group that advocates for the physically disabled, the exhibition is a call on governments to live up to their Mine Ban Treaty promises and eliminate the destruction from landmines and cluster munitions.
Le and his family is but one of thousands of people who are hurt by leftover landmines. In the last 10 years, 73,000 people were killed or injured by landmines in 119 countries, and 32 percent of them were children, said Jean Van Wetter, director of Handicap International in China.
"The weapons used in conflicts will affect locals decades after the war," said Herve Ladsous, ambassador of France to China.
More than 30 photos, taken by Tim Dirven, Gael Turine and John Vinck, feature people from war-torn countries, including Afghanistan, Cambodia and Ethiopia, living with artificial limbs after their accidental touches with landmines. The pictures illustrate the suffering of the victims and demonstrate the strength of the survivors.
According to Voices from the Ground, a report released at the exhibition, victims need four kinds of assistance to help them recover and resume normal lives: emergency and continuing medical care, physical rehabilitation, psychological support and social and economic reintegration.
The Mine Ban Treaty was initiated more than a decade ago to encourage countries to prohibit the use, stockpiling, production and transfer of landmines. So far, 156 countries have joined the treaty, promising to be landmine-free in 10 years or longer. China has not signed it, but it stopped producing and exporting landmines in 1996. It is also gradually destructing stockpiles each year.
Patrick Nijs, Belgium ambassador to China, said the countries and organization are calling on more nations to join the treaty.
"We need to eliminate the most terrified enemy from our ground," Nijs said. "We have known what war is like and don't want other countries to experience what we had gone through."
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