Anti-landmine advocates urge Canada to try keeping Ukraine, others in Ottawa Treaty

Suleiman Khalil, 21, who lost his leg in a landmine explosion while harvesting olives with his friends in a field, walks outside his home in the village of Qaminas, east of Idlib, Syria, Wednesday, April 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)

OTTAWA — Canadian advocates are urging Ottawa to protect the 1997 treaty Canada brokered to stop the use of landmines, as six countries on Europe’s eastern flank move toward using the explosive weapons.

“I’m deeply concerned about this,” said Sen. Marilou McPhedran. “Thousands and thousands of lives have been saved because of this treaty.”

Global Affairs Canada says it’s in talks with countries moving away from the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention, often referred to as the Ottawa Treaty, which since 1999 has banned the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of anti-personnel landmines.

Since then, Canada has spent millions of dollars to help rid the world of landmines that overwhelmingly injure and maim civilians and children, including in Ukraine.

In a statement provided on Wednesday, Global Affairs Canada spokesman Louis-Carl Brissette Lesage said Canada is aware countries are making “difficult and complex decisions” around the treaty, and has been in “ongoing dialogue” with them to emphasize Canada’s strong support for the Ottawa Treaty.

“Support for the Ottawa Convention and its universal adherence remains a core priority for Canada,” he wrote.

“We view the Convention as one of the most successful humanitarian disarmament treaties, given its prohibition of anti-personnel landmines, which disproportionately harm civilians.”

But it’s starting to unravel.

On June 29, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a decree to withdraw Ukraine from the convention, though the treaty technically bars states from exiting while engaged in an armed conflict.

On June 27, all three Baltic countries — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — issued official notices with the United Nations that will have each pull out of the treaty in six months. That would be the first time any signatories had exited the treaty.

Poland and Finland are undertaking parliamentary moves to get to such a step.

All six countries have cited the growing threat from Russia to front-line states, including the fact Moscow uses landmines and isn’t a member of the treaty.

Mines Actions Canada condemned the “rushed processes” to pull the three Baltic countries out of the convention, and urged Ottawa in a statement “to speak up and engage with our allies in defence of the Ottawa Treaty.”

In an interview, the group’s head, Erin Hunt, said European countries are usually the staunchest supporters of international law, and demonstrate a double standard if they decide to pull back when under pressure.

“The Ottawa Treaty is one example of a global decision that there is limit to war. And to withdraw from that when there’s a threat of conflict does not speak very highly to our convictions, to make war safer for the people who are not fighting,” she said.

Landmines can kill or maim people even decades after a conflict ends, and can disproportionately harm civilians.

Research by the International Committee of the Red Cross shows that landmines aren’t useful in preventing war nor in actual conflict, which Hunt says is why the U.S. stopped producing those arms.

She argued the recent increase in drone warfare makes landmines even less useful.

McPhedran helped organize an advocacy event with Humanity and Inclusion Canada last month that featured Lloyd Axworthy, the former foreign affairs minister who helped broker the Ottawa Treaty.

McPhedran said the treaty has had “a hugely positive humanitarian impact.”

She noted that the Carney government has made protection of civilians a central part of its foreign policy, and has asked the government to host an event to mark three decades of the treaty in 2027.

Brisette Lesage wrote on behalf of Global Affairs Canada that Ottawa will continue to highlight the impact of anti-personnel landmines on civilians, and work with advocates “to assess the implications of this development and to explore ways to uphold and strengthen the critical norms enshrined in the Treaty.”

Axworthy said exiting the treaty could speed up the disintegration of the global order and the suspension of other arms-control measures, particularly as countries rush to boost their military spending.

He said Eastern European countries have legitimate security concerns, but have no demonstrable proof that using landmines will actually stem Russian aggression.

“Ukraine is already one of the most corrupted countries in the world, with landmines. And not just Russian landmines, but Ukrainian landmines,” he said.

“The level of destruction — of killing and maiming and wounding for the next 100 years is being sewn into those fields right now. And it’s not necessary.”

The international watchdog Landmine Monitor said in a report last year that landmines were still actively being used in 2023 and 2024 by Russia, Myanmar, Iran and North Korea.

Nearly three dozen countries have not adopted the Ottawa Convention, including some key current and past producers and users of landmines such as the United States, China, India, Pakistan and South Korea.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 3, 2025.

Dylan Robertson, The Canadian Press