Norway
Mine Ban Policy
The Kingdom of Norway hosted the negotiations for the Mine Ban Treaty in September 1997. It signed the Mine Ban Treaty on 3 December 1997 and ratified it on 9 July 1998, becoming a State Party on 1 March 1999. Legislation to enforce the antipersonnel mine prohibition domestically was passed on 16 June 1998. In 2012, Norway submitted its 14th Mine Ban Treaty Article 7 report.
No significant production of antipersonnel mines is known to have taken place in Norway; some mine components were manufactured in the early 1990s. Mines were previously imported. Norway completed the destruction of its stockpile of 160,000 antipersonnel mines in October 1996; no mines were retained for training and development purposes.
Norway has played a crucial role in developing Mine Ban Treaty structures and processes. It served as co-rapporteur and later co-chair of the Standing Committees on the General Status and Operation of the Convention (2000–2002, 2010–2012), Victim Assistance (2003–2005), and Mine Clearance (2005–2007). Norway was president of the Second Meeting of States Parties in 2000. Norway also served as president of the Second Review Conference, also known as the Cartagena Summit on a Mine-Free World, held in Cartagena, Colombia in November–December 2009.
Norway established and coordinated the Contact Group on Resource Mobilization. At the Tenth Meeting of States Parties to the Mine Ban Treaty in November–December 2010, Norway agreed that the Contact Group be subsumed into the new Standing Committee on Resources, Cooperation and Assistance.
Norway attended the Eleventh Meeting of States Parties in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in November-December 2011, where it made statements on mine clearance, stockpile destruction, the Implementation Support Unit, and international cooperation and assistance, in particular on its assistance to Ukraine to destroy its stockpiles of PFM-1 mines.[1] At the intersessional meeting of the treaty in Geneva in May 2012, Norway called for condemnation and investigation of allegations of use of antipersonnel mines in 2012.[2]
Norway is party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons and its Amended Protocol II on landmines and Protocol V on explosive remnants of war.