Policy

The Slovak Republic signed the Mine Ban Treaty on 3 December 1997 and ratified it on 25 February 1999, becoming a State Party on 1 August 1999. Slovakia believes that existing legislation is sufficient to enforce the antipersonnel mine prohibition domestically.

Slovakia regularly attends meetings of the treaty, including the Third Review Conference in Maputo in June 2014. More recently, Slovakia attended the Seventeenth Meeting of States Parties in Geneva in November 2018 and the intersessional meetings in Geneva in May 2019. However, Slovakia did not provide a statement at either meeting. Slovakia consistently submits annual Article 7 transparency reports.

Slovakia served as co-rapporteur and then co-chair of the Standing Committee on Stockpile Destruction from 1999–2001.

Slovakia is party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons and its Amended Protocol II on landmines and Protocol V on explosive remnants of war. Slovakia is also party to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

Production, use, transfer, and stockpiling

The former Czechoslovakia produced and exported antipersonnel mines. However, when the country divided, Slovakia did not inherit any of Czechoslovakia’s landmine production facilities.[1] Slovakia introduced a moratorium on antipersonnel mine transfers in 1994. There are no known mined areas in Slovakia, however unexploded ordnance from World War II is found occasionally.

Slovakia completed destruction of its stockpile of 187,060 antipersonnel mines on 31 August 2000. It initially announced it would retain 7,000 antipersonnel mines for training and development purposes but reduced this to 1,500 by July 2001. As of the end of 2018, only 1,035 mines were retained.[2]