Mauritania signed the Mine Ban Treaty on 4 December
1997. Ratification is expected soon, as the country’s Senate has already
approved the treaty. The process now merely awaits the signature of the
country’s president.[1]
Mauritania endorsed the pro-treaty Brussels Declaration in June 1997 and
attended the Oslo negotiations as a full participant. It voted in favor of the
pro-treaty UN General Assembly resolutions in 1997 and 1998. Mauritania has
signed the 1980 Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW), but it has not
ratified the amended Protocol II on landmines (1996).
Mauritania has never produced or exported antipersonnel mines. But Mauritania
has imported landmines from Italy, France, the former Yugoslavia, Great Britain,
Argentina, Greece, Singapore and
Egypt.[2] Mauritania still holds
an unknown quantity of landmines in its stocks.
Mauritania has some landmines on its territory dating from World War II and
from its war in Western Sahara. The US State Department has estimated there are
10,000 mines planted in Mauritania, of Spanish, French, Soviet and German
origin.[3] The area around the
military outpost of Bir Mogrein is mined, as is the region between the port city
of Noudhinhou and Zouerate and between Zouerate and Bir
Mogrein.[4]
The Mauritanian army has removed some landmines, though its efforts have only
occurred in a haphazard fashion. The U.S. State Department indicates a total of
7,000 mines and 5,000 UXOs have been
destroyed.[5] The country has
never implemented a mine awareness program. No reliable assessment of the number
of landmine casualties in Mauritania
exists.[6] No medical programs
geared toward landmine victims are available.
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