Mine ban policy overview

Policy

The Republic of Tunisia signed the Mine Ban Treaty on 4 December 1997 and ratified on 9 July 1999, becoming a State Party on 1 January 2000.

Tunisia has listed 10 laws that it considers implementation measures for the Mine Ban Treaty.[1]

Tunisia submitted its fourteenth Article 7 transparency report in April 2014, covering the period from April 2013 to April 2014.[2]

Tunisia attended the Mine Ban Treaty’s Thirteenth Meeting of States Parties in Geneva in December 2013 and intersessional meetings in April 2014, but did not participate in the Third Review Conference in Maputo, Mozambique in June 2014.

Production, transfer, stockpile destruction, and retention

Tunisia has never produced or exported antipersonnel mines, but imported them in the past.[3] Tunisia completed the destruction of 18,259 stockpiled antipersonnel mines in September 2003.[4]

In its initial declaration in July 2000, Tunisia reported retaining 5,000 antipersonnel mines (4,000 PMA-3 and 1,000 PROM-1) for purposes permitted under Article 3 of the Mine Ban Treaty.[5] In its Article 7 report submitted in 2014, Tunisia reported that it retains 4,770 mines for training and that 70 mines were used for training purposes during the April 2013 to April 2014 reporting period.[6] Tunisia has not specified the type of retained mines that it has destroyed, nor has it reported in detail on the intended purposes and actual uses of retained mines, as agreed by States Parties in 2004.

Use

Since April 2013, new use of improvised explosive devices has been reported during the Tunisian Armed Forces’ ongoing operations against Islamist rebel forces in the region of Jebel Al-Cha’anby in Qsrein Wilaya/Kasserine governorate near the Algerian border.[7]

During the first nine months of 2014, the following incidents were recorded in Jebel Al-Cha’anby:

·         On 18 April, a government soldier was killed when his vehicle hit a mine;[8]

·         On 23 May, a government soldier was killed and five injured by a landmine;[9]

·         On 1 July, four government soldiers and two national guardsmen were injured by a mine, while four more soldiers were killed the next day by a landmine in the same area.[10]

In the second half of 2013, several mine incidents were reported in Jebel Al-Cha’anby:

·         On 17 November, a woman gathering wood was injured by a landmine;[11]

·         In November, there were also reports of sheep detonating mines while grazing in the area;[12]

·         On 2 December, a government soldier was killed and another injured by a landmine.[13]

In May 2013, the Ministry of Defense stated that the mines laid at Jebel Al-Cha’anby were homemade mines constructed from plastic with a chemical initiator, making detection difficult.[14] A spokesperson said, “the mines that exploded were made of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and flammable materials that can easily explode when exposed to heat.”[15] All incidents reviewed by the Monitor in 2014 involved attacks on military vehicles, but it is unclear how the explosive devices were initiated.[16]

In May 2013, a police officer told Human Rights Watch (HRW) that the late April casualties were caused by “artisanal” (or homemade) antipersonnel mines that exploded horizontally, and from this description, the mines would appear to be homemade tripwire-initiated explosive devices similar to Claymore mines.[17]