Anti-personnel landmines have been prohibited by the United Nations since 1997 – a treaty joined by over 150 countries. The United States is not one of these, although the Obama administration did issue a directive in 2014, halting the production and acquisition of anti-personnel landmines. This though was rolled back by the Trump administration in 2020 in a move described as “a step toward the past”. At the time of writing, the Biden administration has not reversed this.

The United States’ decision was based on a review into the matter by former defense secretary James Mattis, which found that the prohibition “increased risk to mission success” – a position staunchly rejected by Rob Berschinski who led U.S. landmine policy during the Obama presidency: “They’re not only massively harmful to civilians after wars end, but they’re also of very negligible military utility”.

Indeed, as figures from the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor show, landmines and ‘explosive remnants of war’ are a continued scourge, causing thousands of injuries and deaths around the world each year.

source statista

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