Landmines

In the last two years, FCNL constituents have sent Congress over a thousand letters urging lawmakers to speak out against landmines. Yet despite President Biden’s campaign promises, the policy remains unchanged.

Two years ago this week, the Trump administration revised government policy on anti-personnel landmines to allow the U.S. military to employ, develop, produce, and acquire these indiscriminate and immoral weapons.

Landmines are ineffective, immoral, and recklessly negligent weapons because they do not discriminate between combatants and civilians. Even as U.S. taxpayers fund the removal of landmines globally, the Biden administration is allowing the U.S. military to develop and deploy new ones.

No U.S. president has ever signed the Mine Ban Treaty or directed full compliance with it.

FCNL’s Diane Randall joined a 35 other leaders in calling on President Biden to adopt a new landmine policy that sets the United States on course not just to “curtail the use of landmines,” but to ban their use without geographic exception, and to swiftly accede to the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty.

Today marks 100 days of stonewalling by the Secretary of Defense. On May 6, more than one hundred members of Congress sent a letter to Secretary Esper seeking clarification on the new U.S. landmine policy. Secretary Esper has not answered a single question.

Washington, DC – More than 60 national and international groups urged the administration, Congressional leadership, and the American public today to reject once and for all the worldwide production and use of anti-personnel landmines and join the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty.