Landmine Awareness

Fabian Hamilton Excerpts

Thursday 20th April 2023 Westminster Hall

[Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Mundell. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton)—I hope she will permit me to call her my right hon. Friend—on securing such an important debate as near as we could get to 4 April. I was pleased to work with her when she was Minister of State at the FCDO, and I am very happy that she has continued to raise issues such as those we are debating today. Indeed, let me quote from one of the speeches that she made when she was a Minister, because it is very pertinent to what we are discussing this afternoon. She said:

“Our commitment to ridding the world of fatal landmines does not end with our territories being mine-free”,

and she committed £36 million to promote de-mining in countries such as Afghanistan, Lebanon, Vietnam and Yemen. Even though she is no longer a Foreign Office Minister, she is still pursuing the strong commitment that she has always had to ridding the world of these appalling weapons.

As we know, landmines have plagued communities across the world for decades. As we have heard, they are often left in areas that were once populated, thereby forcing those populations to move out, ruining livelihoods and destroying the infrastructure that is so vital to communities. However, as has already been pointed out by the right hon. Lady, it was not until 1997 that the landmine issue shot to international prominence, spearheaded by Diana, Princess of Wales, who walked through a minefield in Angola that had been cleared by the HALO Trust. Shortly after her visit, and following a commitment from the then Labour Government, the Ottawa mine ban treaty was signed, calling for all countries to unite and rid the world of these vile and inhumane weapons, which target innocent civilians. I was in the Chamber on the Friday in 1997—I think it was in November —when the treaty was debated and ratified, and I am very proud that I was there and voted for it.

I am pleased that the United Kingdom has played such a historic role in tackling landmines since the Ottawa treaty was signed. We have rightly supported some of the world’s most vulnerable countries to clear landmines after conflict, building up considerable knowledge and experience in the mine action sector. It is a source of great pride for this country that the two largest landmine NGOs in the world are British: the HALO Trust, of which I am proud to be an ambassador, and the Mines Advisory Group, with which I work regularly on these issues.

The fact is, though, that the potential of many countries is still being held back by the terror of landmines from long-ended conflicts, as every contributor to the debate has underlined. As we know, they restrict the movement of people and humanitarian aid. They deny people access to water and often delay peace processes. The proliferation of landmines means that land for productive use is often lost, and it hinders further development initiatives for the people who need it most. Indeed, over $590 million was made available for de-mining activities globally in 2021, but that was, unfortunately, a 7% decrease from the previous year.

As we know, the vast majority of the funding comes from just a handful of rich countries, including the United Kingdom. The UK supports de-mining through its global mine action programme—MAP—via the FCDO. Sadly, as the hon. Member for Midlothian (Owen Thompson) pointed out, there has been a steady decrease in how much the UK funds that programme by. Indeed, as he pointed out, it was reduced by £53 million last year, to £89 million. I join him in urging the Minister and the Government to restore that funding. It is absolutely critical.

As of October 2022, 56 countries were contaminated with anti-personnel landmines. The most affected regions are Asia and the middle east, with 23 mine-contaminated states. There are still significant clusters in Africa, and in 2021 there were over 100 casualties in Colombia, a country I visited last year.

[Wendy Morton]

The hon. Gentleman speaks about landmine contamination and how long it can take to de-mine an area of land, and gives further examples of countries with landmines. It is estimated that explosives can take between 10 and 90 years to leach because of the casings and corrosion. Therefore, land is at risk for a long period of time. Now we have much better ways of decontaminating land, but does he agree that the urgency to go and tackle landmines becomes even more important? The longer they are in the land, the more contamination can occur. That must surely impact the ability to restore the land for agricultural use, for instance.

[Fabian Hamilton]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her extremely important points. Indeed, when I was in Colombia last year I went to see the HALO Trust headquarters in Bogota. I was told that vast areas of land were contaminated with perhaps half a dozen mines, but of course nobody knew where they were. That meant that the whole area was out of bounds and could not be put into productive use.

As many right hon. and hon. Members will know, Colombia, like much of Latin America, is incredibly fertile. Drop a seed and it will grow into a plant or food or whatever is needed. The release of that land through decontamination is vital. I was impressed at the way that HALO had gone about decontaminating that land. There were very few landmines, but a huge amount of land was released for agricultural and development purposes. As we have heard, over 5,500 people were casualties of landmines in 2021, with just under half of them dying from their injuries. As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said, about half of the victims were children. That should bring great shame to every human being on the planet.

I would like to turn now to the war in Ukraine, as many colleagues already have. It is shocking to realise that it will take a minimum of 365 months, at this point in time, to de-mine Ukraine as a result of Russia’s illegal and unprovoked invasion. That is about 30 years. If that does not summarise the true cost of these appalling weapons, nothing ever will. Based on a calculation that the war ends today, the cost of the reconstruction of Ukraine would be more than $500 billion. Each day of fighting results in at least a month’s worth of landmine clearance. It has to stop and I hope the world will work harder to make sure that it does.

Even more shockingly, the Ukraine Government estimate that around 40% of Ukraine—about 250,000 sq km—may now need to be searched and cleared of mines and unexploded ordnance. That equates to an area larger than the United Kingdom. More than 120 minefields have so far been identified in northern Ukraine alone. In addition to the anti-personnel and anti-tank mines, tens of thousands of artillery rounds are being fired every single day, with thousands failing to explode. I would like to ask the Minister what message it sends to the world that the UK still has not ratified protocol V of the convention on certain conventional weapons, which requires the clearance of unexploded ordnance from conflict zones.

In 2021, the then FCDO Minister of State, now the Foreign Secretary, told me that the Government were

“undertaking a comprehensive cross-Government review of Protocol V ratification”.

I would be grateful if the Minister could update the House on the Government’s progress on protocol V of that treaty, if she is able to. If not, could she kindly write to me about it?

I pay tribute to the work that the HALO Trust is continuing to do in Ukraine and across the world. It has vital projects in Afghanistan, where this Government’s botched evacuation certainly did not help the situation, and in Somaliland, Somalia and Ethiopia, where landmines are still a leading cause of civilian casualties. Indeed, we heard recently from General James Cowan, the chief executive of the HALO Trust, that he has been in talks with the Taliban authorities in Afghanistan to try to continue to employ women to clear those mines. It is vital to HALO that men and women from the local communities are part of the landmine clearance teams. They need to own it, as he always says, and be part of it, because it will benefit them. I praise HALO for that.

As I said, the HALO Trust employs local people and empowers populations with its work to keep their communities safe. The work does not stop at de-mining. In Somaliland, for example, HALO’s environmental projects include the employment of local people to dig soil bunds to capture rainwater and prevent topsoil erosion, reseed grazing land, establish tree nurseries and plant saplings. I hope later this year to see some of those programmes for myself in El Salvador and Guatemala —part of the region I cover in my FCDO brief. That vital work is so important to the prosperity of our international partners and allies, as well as to ending conflict, so how are the Government working with NGOs such as the HALO Trust to further projects of that type?

Innocent civilians should never have to live in fear alongside landmines that could still detonate and kill or maim them in an instant. On the Opposition side of the House, as I am sure throughout the whole House, we are committed to empowering everyone who wants to help to rid the world of landmines. We look forward to working with them in Government to make the world a safer, more secure place. I am absolutely sure that the current Government share that full commitment.