Kuwait has not signed the Mine Ban Treaty. It has
sent mixed signals on its mine ban policy. It voted for the 1996 UN General
Assembly resolution urging states to pursue vigorously an international
agreement banning antipersonnel mines. It attended the treaty preparatory
meetings in early 1997, but did not endorse the pro-treaty Brussels Declaration
in June 1997. Still, Kuwait came to the Oslo negotiations in September as a full
participant, not an observer, and voted for the 1997 UNGA resolution supporting
the December treaty signing. Yet, it came to the Ottawa signing conference only
as an observer, and did not sign the treaty. Subsequently, it voted for the
1998 UNGA resolution welcoming new signatories and urging full implementation of
the treaty. Kuwait is not a party to the 1980 Convention on Conventional
Weapons (CCW).
Kuwait is not believed to have ever produced or exported antipersonnel mines.
According to the UN mines database, Kuwait has said that it does not have a
stockpile of AP mines, and in 1996 stated that it would not use antipersonnel
mines, with certain unidentified
exceptions.[1]
According to a 1993 U.S. State Department report, during the Persian Gulf
War, Iraqi forces laid millions of mines to prevent Allied Forces from
recapturing Kuwaiti
territory.[2] Allied forces
also dropped Gator scatterable antipersonnel mines from the air. Many failed to
detonate on impact, and thus became de facto antipersonnel
mines.[3] In the aftermath of
the conflict, Kuwait had an estimated 728 square kilometers of land seeded with
an estimated five to seven million Russian PMN, Italian VS-50 and VS-69, and
U.S. Gator mines.[4] Mines were
laid along the Kuwaiti border with Saudi Arabia, along the Kuwaiti coastline,
along power lines, highways, and around oil
fields.[5]
The government of Kuwait spent US $800 million hiring over 4,000 private
contractors from a number of different countries who cleared over 1.6 million
mines and unexploded
ordnance.[6] Eighty-four people
lost their lives and 200 were injured in this massive clearance effort. Even
with the demining, 1,700 Kuwaiti civilians were killed by landmines between 1991
and 1995.[7]
In 1995, Kuwait announced that it was officially cleared of the 5-7 million
landmines leftover from the Gulf War. However, it noted that there were still
some areas of Kuwait that had not been demined, particularly around Bedouin
watering holes.[8] Although all
of the 728 sq km of minefields have undergone initial mine clearance, because
wind storms bury mines deep in the sand, many of the minefields did not pass
quality assurance inspections and had to be
re-cleared.[9]
Kuwait has not contributed any money to the UN Voluntary Trust Fund for Mine
Clearance. It has made no known donations to other mine action programs.
[1]Country Report:
Kuwait, United Nations. At:
http://www.un.org/Depts/Landmine/country/kuwait.htm.
[2] U.S. Department of State,
Hidden Killers: The Global Problem with Uncleared Landmines, July 1993,
p. 114.
[3] Sean Roberts and Jody
Williams, After the Guns Fall Silent: The Enduring Legacy of Landmines
(Washington: Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, 1995), p. 261.
[4] U.S. Department of State,
Hidden Killers, 1993, p. 114.
[5] Roberts and Williams,
After the Guns Fall Silent, p. 261.
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