LM Report 2005

Guyana

Key developments since May 2004: Guyana has not yet submitted its initial Article 7 transparency report, due 29 July 2004.

The Republic of Guyana signed the Mine Ban Treaty on 4 December 1997, ratified on 5 August 2003, and became a State Party on 1 February 2004. It has not reported taking any national measures to implement the treaty. In October 2003, Guyana’s President said the government would work to “ensure that the necessary legal and administrative frameworks are instituted” to facilitate “early implementation of the treaty.”^[1]

As of 30 September 2005, Guyana had not yet submitted its initial Article 7 transparency report, due by 29 July 2004. The ICBL, Canada and others have urged Guyana to submit this report promptly.^[2]

Guyana did not attend the First Review Conference of the Mine Ban Treaty, held in Nairobi in November-December 2004, nor the intersessional meetings in Geneva in June 2005. Guyana attended its first Meeting of States Parties in September 2003 and its first intersessional meetings in June 2004. It also participated in a regional seminar on landmines, held in Ecuador in August 2004.

Guyana is not known to have produced or exported antipersonnel mines. Guyana has not revealed details about its stockpile of antipersonnel mines or plans for their destruction. Landmine Monitor has previously reported an estimated stockpile of 20,000 antipersonnel mines. In June 2002, a Guyana Defence Force official reported that some, if not all, of the stockpiled antipersonnel mines were PMB-2 mines manufactured by North Korea.^[3] The Mine Ban Treaty requires that Guyana destroy its stockpiled antipersonnel mines as soon as possible, but no later than 1 February 2008.

Guyana is not mine-affected. In December 2000, a series of explosions leveled the Camp Groomes army base, littering unexploded ordnance around the facility. A team of Brazilian experts gave a four-week training course in explosive ordnance disposal to members of the Guyana Defence Force in September 2002.^[4]

Guyana is not party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons and its Amended Protocol II on landmines.

^[1] Letter from Bharrat Jagdeo, President of the Republic of Guyana, to Elizabeth Bernstein, ICBL Coordinator, 3 October 2003.

^[2] On 15 August 2005, the Canadian High Commission in Georgetown wrote to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs requesting information on implementation of the Mine Ban Treaty and submission of the Article 7 report. Email from Carol Anne Persaud, Political/Economic Analyst, Canadian High Commission, to Lesley Dowridge-Collins, Acting Director, Multilateral and Global Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 15 August 2005, copied to Landmine Monitor (MAC).

^[3] Interview with Guyana Defence Force official who requested anonymity, Georgetown, June 2002.

^[4] See Landmine Monitor Report 2004, p. 486.