South Africa, currently serving as Vice-President, is participating in the Fifth Review Conference of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production, and Transfer of Antipersonnel Mines, also known as the Mine Ban Treaty, in Siem Reap, Cambodia.
According to the Department of International Relations and Cooperation, the Mine Ban Treaty is a multilateral agreement aimed at eliminating anti-personnel landmines due to their indiscriminate nature and the humanitarian consequences they cause.
Adopted in 1997 following the Oslo Diplomatic Conference chaired by South Africa, the treaty prohibits the use, production, transfer, and stockpiling of anti-personnel mines.
Anti-personnel mine means a mine designed to be exploded by the presence, proximity, or contact of a person and that will incapacitate, injure, or kill one or more people.
“In line with its core goals, the convention mandates the clearance of contaminated land, the destruction of stockpiles, assistance to victims, and promoting universal adherence to the treaty and its effective implementation,” the department explained.
The Fifth Review Conference, which is currently underway, will address specific challenges in implementing the convention.
These include securing adequate funding for mine clearance, advancing technological solutions to speed up the clearance process, and improving the rehabilitation and reintegration of landmine survivors.
Strengthening international cooperation and partnerships between states, international organisations, and non-government organisations (NGOs) will be key themes, ensuring that affected countries have the resources and support they need to meet their obligations.
“It remains imperative for all countries to ratify or accede to the Convention, thereby reinforcing the global effort to eliminate anti-personnel mines.
“This is all particularly important in the context of the continued production, transfer, and use of landmines, including in current conflicts where landmines are being used despite their devastating, indiscriminate humanitarian impact.”
The department said South Africa underscored the importance of upholding the integrity of the convention and condemns the use, transfer, and stockpiling of antipersonnel mines by any actor under any circumstances.
“Such actions undermine International Humanitarian Law and pose significant challenges to global efforts towards a mine-free world.
“As a former producer and exporter of anti-personnel mines, South Africa has been active in the global process to ban anti-personnel mines. It played a prominent role in the Ottawa Process to negotiate the Treaty and was a key member of the ‘core group’ of governments responsible for developing and promoting the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Treaty.”
According to the department, South Africa dismantled its production capacity and halted all anti-personnel landmine production by 1995, reinforcing its commitment to a mine-free world.
The country ratified the Mine Ban Treaty in 1998, and the convention came into force for South Africa on 1 March 1999.
“South Africa will continue to draw from its rich history of association with the Mine Ban Treaty to work towards an anti-personnel mine-free world.” – SAnews.gov.za
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Roller Turtle
The Man who could only Drink Milk
I know an old man who had lived a life full of adventure, but his health started to catch up with him. He\’d run the Boston Marathon, was an avid surfer, and climbed Everest, but he\’d started to have abdominal pains around his 85th birthday and went to see a doctor. Sadly, he ultimately was diagnosed with a rare degenerative liver disease that slowly made him allergic to everything he ate.
He kept copious notes, and as an avid gastronomist slowly grew to despair as everything he\’d spent his life enjoying became something he could no longer eat. Alcohol went first, then mushrooms, then bread, then root vegetables, then coffee, one at a time he had to remove them from his diet. The doctor was clear: if he kept eating something his liver rejected the autoimmune response would be quick and severe, and would lead to a painful death. Little by little, everything was taken away as an option, until the only thing that remained was milk.
In some ways, this actually made life easier, because the mental strain of remembering what he could and couldn\’t eat was gone, but then so was the joy in variety. But he took it in stride, and got his own cow and took classes from a farmer to learn everything he could about the only thing that could give him sustenance. And even within milk, he could still have yogurt, butter, cream, some cheeses, and other milk-derived products he hadn\’t fully rejected yet, so it wasn\’t all bad. But then one day a few months later he felt the pain again, and he knew cow\’s milk was no longer an option.
Lacking other options, he tried goat\’s milk, and he was delighted that it worked! The protein structure is just different enough that his body still tolerated it. That bought him another month. And that\’s when we came up with a wonderful plan to go on one last grand adventure around the world. If he could get one month of life out of the milk of every mammal, he\’d actually have a few more years to enjoy life to the fullest and see the world in all its beauty. Each month, we\’d pick a place with a new mammal, and he would immerse himself fully with the locals, learn all the ways to prepare the milk, and just enjoy the hand he had been dealt as much as he could.
We milked sheep in New Zealand. Camels in Egypt. Zebras in South Africa. Giant bats in Indonesia. Do you know how many Peruvian cuy you need to milk to get a single glass? I do. Even as his health slowly faded, he stayed cheerful, and I felt lucky to join him on the adventure of a lifetime. That brings us to today when he got to the very end of his spreadsheet, and declared that he was now allergic to every mammal. He\’d enjoyed his journey, but his time had come to an end, for there was nothing left to milk.
To which I said nonsense, I bet we can milk a few thousand karma out of this post.
RedFeet
Y\’know, I could have sworn South Africa had apartheid.
Is this the Mandela Effect?