5.

CSO/Government Partnerships

This remarkable campaign began in the field where international CSOs work daily with the reality of landmines. Past conflicts have left 100 million mines in the ground in 60 countries, most of them the poorest in the world. Every year, the lives and livelihoods of 26,000 people are shattered by these silent killers, one person every 20 minutes. Eighty percent are civilians, and many of them are children. The CSOs are the relief and reconstruction organizations in countries like Angola, Cambodia, and Afghanistan which are working to mend shattered bodies, provide prosthetics and rehabilitation, and clear minefields to return them to productive use. It did not take much for these groups to realize that their efforts would never solve the problem, that the only effective solution was to ban landmines outright. They began to campaign in Europe and North America. In 1992, six CSOs - Handicap International, Human Rights Watch, Medico International, Mines Advisory Group, Physicians for Human Rights, and the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation - came together to form the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. They were quickly joined by CSOs in dozens of countries.

Up to this time, work at the diplomatic level had focused on methods of controlling the use of landmines. Any official agreement required unanimity and years of tedious negotiations. In 1994, after one more fruitless meeting in Geneva, a small number of governments - including Canada, Austria, Belgium, and Switzerland - entered into discussion with the ICBL about the more radical idea of banning landmines completely. This was the origin of an unprecedented collaboration between governments and CSOs that would lead to a new treaty and a Nobel Prize three years later. Each side had resources that the other side lacked. Governments could provide funding for meetings, communications, and educational materials, as well as access to official levels in other governments, while CSOs had knowledge and expertise on the effects of landmines, credibility with the media, and the ability to influence public opinion. In October 1996, at a conference of CSOs and governments in Ottawa, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy invited the countries of the world to meet in Ottawa in December 1997 to sign a treaty to ban landmines. The intervening months saw a well-coordinated campaign of CSOs and governments in both public and official arenas, and in December 1997, 125 countries came to Ottawa to sign the treaty. The campaign now continues to ensure that the treaty is ratified and implemented in each of the countries that signed on, and to bring in those who have yet to join, including the United States, Russia, India, and China.

Many factors have contributed to the success of this campaign - the straightforward objective, the quality of leadership, both in governments and CSOs, the post-Cold War environment, the decision to work outside normal diplomatic channels on a treaty that did not require consensus, even the new technology permitting rapid communication by Internet and e-mail. But the most striking and significant feature of this story is the collaboration between governments and organizations in civil society. As Jody Williams observed, the two do not have to be adversaries, and when they work together they can change the world.
[CSO/government collaboration results in treaty]

Development and AP Mines