Landmine Awareness

Debate between Wendy Morton and Fabian Hamilton

Thursday 20th April 2023 Westminster Hall

[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.