The Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction, known informally as the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention has been to date ratified or acceded by 162 countries around the world, and Croatia was one of the first countries to do it.
Addressing the Zagreb event, Canadian Ambassador Daniel Maksymiuk described the Ottawa Treaty as an important achievement and example of what could be attained when governments, citizens and communities joined their efforts to their common aim.
The convention is a model for how to address global challenges which we cannot solve on our own, the Canadian diplomat said.
German Ambassador to Croatia, Thomas E. Schultze, recalled that the joint aim envisaged making the globe free of AP-mines until 2025. He urged non-signatories to sign and ratify the Ottawa Treaty and called for redoubling the efforts to eliminate stockpiles of AP-mines.
In the last 20 years, 51 million of anti-personnel landmines have been destroyed, stockpiles have been depleted to a large extent and production has been practically halted, the German diplomat said.
Croatian Interior Ministry's state secretary Terezija Gras said that Croatia had destroyed all stockpiles of anti-personnel landmines and was very active in the implementation of the Ottawa convention.
Ambassador Haydar Berk, who is Permanent Representative of Turkey to the North Atlantic Council, said that "every 22 minutes one person dies or gets injured, in other words, every month around 2000 people lose their lives because of landmines."
Berk, who is the director of RACVIAC, the Centre for Security Cooperation, which is an international, independent, regionally owned organisation, said that "landmines affect not only the South East European countries but the whole world as well."
The two-day international conference on the 20th Anniversary of the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention is titled "From the Ottawa Process towards a Mine Free World".
The event was organised by RACVIAC in cooperation with Croatia's Office for Mine Action and the Embassy of Canada in Croatia with the financial support of Germany. A special guest speaker at the conference was Mr. Lloyd Axworthy, PhD, former Foreign Minister of Canada, who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 and is credited with enabling the Ottawa Convention to come into being.