Yasushi Akashi
Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs
April 1996

"Anti-personnel land mines pose an enduring threat to post-war reconstruction around the world. These weapons continue to take thousands of innocent civilian lives every year, even in those countries where conflicts have ceased. The United States urges countries that manufacture anti-personnel mines to adopt export moratoria and encourages all countries to become parties to the international convention governing land mine use."

Warren Christopher
Secretary of State of the United States
"Hidden Killer", US Department of State, Bureau of Political-Military Affairs
December 1994

"Over the past ten years ICRC medical staff have treated more than twenty-eight thousand mine victims and fitted some eighty thousand artificial limbs on those who have survived. They have too often held in their arms children... whose limbs and lives have been shattered by mines."

Cornelio Sommaruga
President of the International Committee of the Red Cross
Statement at the Review Conference to the States Parties to the 1980 Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons
Vienna, Austria - September 1995

"Land mines are blind weapons that cannot distinguish between the footfall of a soldier and that of an old woman gathering firewood. They recognize no cease-fire and, long after the fighting has stopped, they can maim or kill the children and grandchildren of the soldiers who laid them."

"Anti-personnel land mines are killing the children whose lives we are helping to save. Anti-personnel land mines are dismembering the children we are helping to make whole. Anti-personnel land mines are traumatizing the children we are helping to return to normalcy amidst war and in its aftermath. Anti-personnel land mines are indiscriminate child-killers, child-cripplers."

Carol Bellamy
Executive Director of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)
New York, USA - April 1996

"Clearly, better ways than the 'crawl and prod' method using local soldiers at local salaries in great numbers is needed. While other countries like Mozambique and Angola are also deploying small numbers of sniffing dogs, metal detectors and reinforced vehicles, a breakthrough has to be made in current demining techniques."

Operation USA
Statement to InterAction (US) on Land mines

"Twenty percent of all American casualties in the Persian gulf War and 26 percent of our casualties in Somalia were from mines. In Bosnia, 25 UN peacekeepers were killed and 204 maimed by land mines. Since December, 42 NATO casualties including seven deaths, have been caused by mines. The first two U.S. casualties in Bosnia were from land mines. There will be more."

Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation
New York Times - 28 March 1996

"There have been attempts to differentiate between 'smart mines' or 'good mines' and bad ones. Yet no mechanism, no contraption, can legitimize a weapon that inflicts such appalling, yet random, suffering on so many societies."

Boutros Boutros-Ghali
Secretary-General of the United Nations
Statement at the Review Conference to the States Parties to the 1980 Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons
Geneva, Switzerland - May 1996

"Land mines will continue to be used by the million, produced by the million and transferred by the million. Thousands of children will continue to suffer horrific mutilation. Thousands of farmers working in the fields will be blinded or crippled. Thousands of de-miners will continue to have to risk their lives every day to try to clear the world of the 110 million land mines that already lie uncleared."

"Sometimes I dream that I have two legs again. Hello! I am Song Kosal. I am a little girl from Bavel village, Sangkum District, Battambang Province, Cambodia and I am twelve years old. Years ago, when I was very small, I went to play with my friends close to my house. All of a sudden "BOOM", cries, terror. The whole of my right leg was blown off. My other friends were injured too. We were taken by ox-cart and then by motorcycle cart to a hospital. There they did surgery. Until two years ago, I walked on one leg with crutches. One day a car visited my village and they told me they could give me an artificial leg. They took me with many, many other amputees to a prosthetic centre and there we received our new legs. I feel more comfortable with my friend the crutch, so sometimes I leave my leg at home."

"A plan under consideration by my own country, the united States, would "phase out" the use of land mines by the year 2010. Between now and that date, 390,000 more people will fall victim to land mines. How many more will it take?"

Jody Williams
Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation
Statement at the Review Conference to the States Parties to the 1980 Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons
Geneva, Switzerland - 22 April 1996

"Land mines make whole regions uninhabitable. They displace populations and create demographic pressures that destabilize neighbouring regions. Societies that are often desperately poor and have weak public heath systems must care for the victims of land mines. These weapons of destruction drain the resources societies already debilitated by war; they impede efforts to rebuild societies, and in the worst case, they can lead to further political upheaval."

Yasuhi Akashi
Under-Secretary-General for the UN's Department of Humanitarian Affairs
International Herald Tribune - 23 April 1996

"These horrific conditions will only increase exponentially so long as land mines continue to be produced and used. For years, the humanitarian organizations that have witnessed and documented the devastating effects of land mines have argued that there can be no solution to this deadly menace outside of a complete and total ban."

Yasuhi Akashi
Under-Secretary-General for the UN's Department of Humanitarian Affairs
International Herald Tribune - 23 April 1996

"I feel the need to direct a heart-felt appeal to all of those responsible: renounce these weapons of death, and decide on a definitive ban on their production, trade and use."

Pope John Paul II
Angelus Address
St. Peter's Square, Vatican - 21 April 1996