Slovenia signed the
Mine Ban Treaty on 3 December 1997 and ratified it on 27 October 1998.
Slovenia took part in all of the Ottawa Process treaty preparatory meetings,
endorsed the pro-treaty Brussels Declaration in June 1997, and was a full
participant in the treaty negotiations in Oslo in September. It also voted in
favor of United Nations General Assembly resolutions supporting a ban on
landmines in 1996, 1997, and 1998. State Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs Mr. Ivo Vaigl attended the Regional Conference on Landmines in Budapest,
Hungary on 26-28 March 1998. Slovenia is a state party to the Convention on
Conventional Weapons, but has not ratified the 1996 amended Protocol II on
mines.
Production, Transfer, and Stockpiling
Slovenia is not known to have produced or exported
antipersonnel mines in the past. Speaking at the Budapest Regional Conference,
Mr. Vaigl stated that as of 5 November 1996, Slovenia committed never to
produce, transfer, stockpile, or use antipersonnel
mines.[1] According to
Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Slovenia
has a stockpile of approximately 145,000 antipersonnel mines. Slovenia is
expected to approve a stockpile destruction plan in 1999, with all APMS, except
for some 7,000 retained for training, destroyed by April
2003.[2]
Mine Action
The government of Slovenia has reported a problem
with landmines remaining from both World Wars and the brief war of independence
in 1991, during which the Yugoslav army laid mines near military targets and in
other areas of Slovenia. Many of these mines and other unexploded ordnance were
removed in 1992, but the number remaining is
unclear.[3]
Slovenia’s delegate at the Mine Ban Treaty signing ceremony said that
“Slovenia considers the regional approach as the most effective way of its
engagement” with humanitarian mine
action.[4] As such, Slovenia
has concentrated its landmine-related humanitarian efforts on neighboring
Bosnia-Herzegovina, to which it donated 200 million Tolars for mine victim
assistance in 1995.[5] Slovenia
has been seeking international funding for an international trust fund for
demining and mine victim assistance in
Bosnia.[6] In January 1999, the
governments of Slovenia and the Czech Republic signed a declaration of
cooperation in support of this
fund,[7] which has been named
the International Trust Fund of the Republic of Slovenia for Demining, Mine
Clearance and Assistance to Mine Victims in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and is
headquartered in Ljubljana.[8]
Slovenia also has offered demining training through its Centre for Search and
Rescue and assistance for mine victims through its Institute for
Rehabilitation.[9]