Human Rights Watch calls on UAE to join Landmine Ban Treaty

Human Rights Watch have called on Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to join the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, which prohibits the use, stockpiling, production and transfer of antipersonnel mines.

The statement came ahead of a seminar on the humanitarian impact of landmines in Yemen.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates must go beyond supporting mine clearance efforts in Yemen and renounce all use of these indiscriminate weapons by joining the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, Human Rights Watch said.

“Saudi Arabia and the UAE hope to burnish their tarnished humanitarian credentials by funding mine clearance in Yemen, but that effort is undermined by their failure to ban all use of antipersonnel mines,” said Steve Goose, Arms Division director at Human Rights Watch and chair of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. “It makes little sense to spend millions clearing landmines if you insist on the right to use these weapons.”

Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have led a coalition of states that has conducted thousands of airstrikes in Yemen.

Human Rights Watch has documented around 90 apparently unlawful airstrikes by the Saudi-UAE coalition, which have left explosive remnants. The coalition has also used banned cluster munitions and incendiary weapons, the US-based rights group said.

The UAE is not among the 164 nations that have joined the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, which came into force in 1999.