Norway
Mine Ban Policy
Policy
The Kingdom of Norway hosted the negotiations for the Mine Ban Treaty in September 1997. It signed the Mine Ban Treaty on 3 December 1997 and ratified it on 9 July 1998, becoming a State Party on 1 March 1999. Legislation to enforce the antipersonnel mine prohibition domestically was passed on 16 June 1998.[1]
Norway has played a crucial role in developing Mine Ban Treaty structures and processes. It served as co-rapporteur and later co-chair of the Standing Committees on the General Status and Operation of the Convention (2000–2002, 2010–2012), Victim Assistance (2003–2005), Mine Clearance (2005–2007), Stockpile Destruction (2013–2014), and Cooperative Compliance (2018). Norway was president of the Second Meeting of States Parties in 2000. Norway also served as president of the Second Review Conference, also known as the Cartagena Summit on a Mine-Free World, held in Cartagena, Colombia in November–December 2009. Norway served as President of the Fourth Review Conference in Oslo, in November 2019.
Norway established and coordinated the Contact Group on Resource Mobilization. At the Tenth Meeting of States Parties to the Mine Ban Treaty in November–December 2010, Norway agreed that the Contact Group be subsumed into the new Standing Committee on Resources, Cooperation and Assistance.
Norway regularly attends meetings of the treaty, including the Third Review Conference in Maputo in June 2014, and more recently, the Seventeenth Meeting of States Parties in Geneva in November 2018, where it made statements on victim assistance, cooperation and assistance, cooperative compliance, and stockpile destruction.[2] It also attended the intersessional meetings in Geneva in May 2019, where it provided a statement on Article 5 implementation.[3]
Norway is party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons and its Amended Protocol II on landmines and Protocol V on explosive remnants of war. It is also party to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.
Production, use, stockpiling, and transfer
No significant production of antipersonnel mines is known to have taken place in Norway; some mine components were manufactured in the early 1990s. Mines were previously imported. Norway completed the destruction of its stockpile of 160,000 antipersonnel mines in October 1996; no mines were retained for training and development purposes.
[1] Odelstingsproposisjon nr. 72 (1997–1998), (Parliamentary Bill no. 72, About the law on the implementation of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and On their Destruction), p. 10.
[2] Statement of Norway, Mine Ban Treaty Seventeenth Meeting of States Parties, Geneva, 27 November 2018; statement of Norway, Mine Ban Treaty Seventeenth Meeting of States Parties, Geneva, 29 November 2018; statement of Norway, Mine Ban Treaty Seventeenth Meeting of States Parties, Geneva, 29 November 2018; and statement of Norway, Mine Ban Treaty Seventeenth Meeting of States Parties, Geneva, 30 November 2018.
[3] Statement of Norway, Mine Ban Treaty Intersessional Meetings, Geneva, 24 May 2019.