UN General Assembly
1996

Conventions banning chemical and biological weapons. The next step is the start of negotiations for a cut-off treaty. The European Union will also give priority at this session to measures to deal with the menace of the indiscriminate use of anti-personnel landmines. Today, there are over 110 million landmines in our earth, mostly in developing countries. They kill, indiscriminately, 26,000 people every year, mostly civilians, many of them women and children. Anti-personnel landmines have disabled a quarter of a million people. It is an incredible and obscene irony that at a time when the United Nations, with the active support of the European Union and other States, is continuing its vital work of mine clearance, further millions of anti-personnel landmines are still deployed annually. The European Union has endorsed the appeal made by the Security Council to all States to contribute to the Voluntary Trust Fund for Assistance in Mine Clearance. We call upon all Member States of the United Nations to join with the European Union, in a spirit of common humanity, to put an end to