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Posts Tagged ‘landmines’
Tell them to ban cluster bombs
Monday, June 1st, 2009All nations need to ban cluster bombs, but this Global Week of Action will target 5 key countries that have not yet signed the treaty: Brazil, Cambodia, Iraq, Nigeria and Serbia.
Follow this link, enter your name, email address and country in the form to send a letter to each of these countries urging them to sign the Cluster Bomb Ban Treaty.
Take Action: urge U.S. to take the next step
Wednesday, March 11th, 2009President Obama signed a law Wednesday that will make permanent a ban on nearly all cluster bomb exports from the United States. Congress included the export ban in an omnibus budget bill that passed the Senate Tuesday night. This provision will move the U.S. one step closer to the position of the nearly 100 nations–including our closest NATO allies–that signed a treaty banning cluster munitions in December.
The legislation states that cluster munitions can only be exported if they leave behind less than one percent of their submunitions as duds, and if the receiving country agrees that cluster munitions “will not be used where civilians are known to be present.”
Only a very tiny fraction of the cluster munitions in the U.S. arsenal meet the one percent standard. This export ban was first enacted in a similar budget bill in December 2007, but that law mandated it for only one year.
JRS/USA urges Congress to take the next step and ban U.S. use of these deadly weapons. Nearly one in four senators have already cosponsored the Cluster Munitions Civilian Protection Act (S. 416), introduced one month ago, which would stop the military from using virtually all of the cluster bombs in its vast arsenal by applying this same one percent standard to U.S. use.
Do your senators support this bill? If not, urge them to co-sponsor today. If it’s unacceptable to export high dud-rate cluster bombs, then it’s unacceptable to use them.
MISSION POSSIBLE: A MINE–FREE WORLD
Friday, February 27th, 2009Sunday, March 1, 2009, is the 10th anniversary of the historic treaty banning antipersonnel mines becoming binding international law. The Mine Ban Treaty obligates its participants to comprehensively discontinue the use, production, stockpile, and transfer of antipersonnel landmines; to destroy stockpiles within four years; to clear mines within their own territories within ten years, and to provide continuing assistance to mine survivors.
The United States is one of thirty-nine countries that have not yet formally joined the treaty and thus remains at odds with the widespread international rejection of the weapon.
Mission Possible: A Mine-Free World
“Jesuit Refugee Service/USA urges President Obama and the U.S. Congress to sign and ratify the Mine Ban Treaty,” said Fr. Kenneth J. Gavin, S.J., Director of Jesuit Refugee Service/USA.
Speaking at a conference on security policy in Germany on Feb. 9, 2009, National Security Adviser James L. Jones, a retired U.S. Marine four-star general, said, “The President has made clear that to succeed against 21st century challenges, the United States must use, balance, and integrate all elements of national influence: our military and our diplomacy, our economy and our intelligence, and law enforcement capacity, our cultural outreach, and … the power of our moral example, in short, our values.”
“Joining the treaty would be a clear reassertion of moral leadership, and a signal that the U.S. values those innocent people who continue to be killed and maimed by landmines,” said Fr. Gavin.
Obama asked to review policy on landmines, clusterbombs
Tuesday, February 10th, 2009Leaders from 67 national organizations representing a wide cross-section of American values and constituencies issued a strong call today for President Obama to reconsider U.S. opposition to global treaties prohibiting the use, transfer, and production of antipersonnel landmines and cluster munitions.
The signers include the Director of Jesuit Refugee Service/USA, the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the head of Evangelicals for Social Action, the President and CEO of CARE, the heads of communion of seven major U.S. churches, two former U.S. ambassadors, and one former senator.
According to the letter, “Reconsidering these two treaties – and eliminating the threat that U.S. forces might use weapons that most of the world has condemned – would greatly aid efforts to reassert our nation’s moral leadership.”
