Commitment to the Mine Ban Treaty

Policy

The Kingdom of Cambodia signed the Mine Ban Treaty on 3 December 1997 and ratified on 28 July 1999, becoming a State Party on 1 January 2000. Domestic implementation legislation—the Law to Prohibit the Use of Anti-personnel Mines—took effect on 28 May 1999.[1] In 2012, Cambodia submitted its 13^thMine Ban Treaty Article 7 report, covering calendar year 2011.[2]

Cambodia hosted the Eleventh Meeting of States Parties (11MSP) to the Mine Ban Treaty in Phnom Penh in November–December 2010 at Vimean Santepheap (the Peace Palace). Prak Sokhonn, Minister Attached to the Prime Minister and Vice-Chair of the Cambodian Mine Action and Victim Assistance Authority (CMAA), was elected president of the 11MSP.

Upon opening the meeting, Prime Minister Hun Sen stated, “For Cambodia, this presidency is a privilege to serve and a major responsibility to fulfill. And for the mine ban movement, it is a special and unique milestone. With the 11 [MSP] in Phnom Penh, the Convention is returning to a place where it all started 20 years ago from human tragedy and suffering of the victims in Cambodia as well as in similar regions of Mozambique, Angola, Afghanistan and Bosnia-Herzegovina, where the commitment to put an end to these inhumane and deadly weapons was born.”[3]

As president-designate, Prak Sokhonn undertook universalization missions in the region to encourage accessions to the Convention, including to Vietnam in August 2011 and Singapore in October 2011. In May 2011, the Cambodian Prime Minister called upon all Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) nations to join the convention, or at a minimum engage in the work of the 11MSP at a high level.[4]

A joint Cambodian-ICRC-UNDP workshop on universalization was held in Phnom Penh in September 2011. Representatives from states not party China, Lao PDR, Mongolia, Myanmar, and Vietnam participated in the meeting.  President-designate Prak Sokhonn stated, “This week’s Asian regional seminar seeks to enhance international dialogue in the region regardless of whether States are part of the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention.”[5]

As president of the meeting, Cambodia presided over the intersessional Standing Committee meetings in Geneva in May 2012. In July 2012, during the ASEAN Foreign Ministers Meeting in Phnom Penh, Myanmar’s Foreign Minister U Wunna Maung Lwin met with Prak Sokhonn, where the latter encouraged Myanmar to accede to the convention. Myanmar’s foreign minister replied that his government is seriously considering the Mine Ban Treaty, as part of its state reforms.[6]

Cambodia is party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) and its Amended Protocol II on landmines.

Production, transfer, stockpile destruction, retention, use

The government has reported that it does not have any antipersonnel mine production facilities, and that it has not exported antipersonnel mines.[7]

The Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF) destroyed its declared stockpile of 71,991 antipersonnel mines between 1994 and 1998, and in February 1999, the RCAF Deputy Commander in Chief formally stated that the RCAF no longer had stockpiles of antipersonnel mines.[8] In 2000, Cambodia reported an additional stockpile of 2,035 antipersonnel mines held by the national police, which were subsequently destroyed.[9] Cambodia also reported that while there have been no antipersonnel mine stockpiles in the country since 2001, “police and military units are still finding and collecting weapons, ammunitions and mines from various sources, locations and caches.”[10] Informal (“village”) demining and the scrap metal trade also accounted for some of the newly discovered stocks of mines. In its 2012 transparency report, Cambodia repeated a statement originally made in its report submitted in 2011 that no further stockpiles have been discovered in the past four years.[11] Discovered mines are supposed to be reported to the CMAA and handed over to the Cambodian Mine Action Center (CMAC) for destruction.[12] A Cambodian official has previously stated that newly discovered stocks are destroyed immediately.[13]

Previous Article 7 reports document a total of 133,478 stockpiled antipersonnel mines that were found and destroyed from 2000 to 2008, including 13,665 in 2008; this included 9,698 by CMAC, 2,713 by HALO Trust, and 1,254 by Mines Advisory Group (MAG). Cambodia stated that these mines were “reported by local communities.”[14] It is not clear why significant numbers of stockpiles mines were discovered each year through 2008, but none have been discovered since.

As in previous years, in its Article 7 report covering calendar year 2011, Cambodia marked as “not applicable” the obligatory declaration for mines retained for development and training purposes.[15] However, Cambodia has each year reported transfer of mines removed from mined areas to the CMAC training center and other operators for training purposes.[16] In June 2011, the deputy secretary general of the CMAA told the Monitor that all mines held by Cambodia are fuzeless, and that Cambodia retains no live mines for training.[17] In 2011, Cambodia reported the transfer for training purposes of 1,118 antipersonnel mines “found in the Mined Areas and retained for training and development purposes,” but did not state that the mines had been neutralized.[18]

Previous allegations of use of antipersonnel mines by Cambodian forces on the Cambodian-Thai border, made by Thailand in 2008 and 2009, were never resolved.[19] In May 2011, in response to a request by the Monitor for an update regarding the Fact Finding Mission Report into the allegations, a government official stated:

Cambodia has been waiting for the responses from Thailand to five core questions, without which the result of the investigation conducted by the Fact Finding Commission of Cambodia cannot be substantiated and evidently concluded. Thailand has not responded to…neither answered nor substantiated the allegation it first made. The allegation made by Thailand regarding Cambodia’s use of new landmines can be summarized as baseless at best.[20]