Support for the Land Mine Treaty

Antipersonnel land mines are weapons of mass destruction that claim life or limb of another innocent victim every 20 minutes. Peacekeepers, humanitarian workers, and missionaries daily risk death and injury from land mines. Today, 135 countries have signed the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty. Religious leaders, physicians, veterans, humanitarian activists, environmentalists, and human-rights advocates have called upon the United States to sign the Mine Ban Treaty.

Antipersonnel land mines are a growing threat to human community and the environment, kill or maim hundreds of people every week, bring untold suffering and casualties to mostly innocent and defenseless civilians and especially children, obstruct economic development and reconstruction, inhibit the repatriation of refugees and internally displaced persons, and have other severe consequences for years after emplacement.

Therefore, the General Conference of The United Methodist Church, calls upon the President of the United States and, if need be, his successor, to endorse the "Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction," commonly called the Mine Ban Treaty; and further, that our Council of Bishops, the general superintendents of The United Methodist Church, send representation of that body to deliver this heartfelt call to the President as soon as possible after the adjournment of the year 2000 General Conference.

We commit ourselves to strategies of advocacy against the deployment of land mines, de-mining, and caring for persons who have been wounded by land mines.

We call upon U.S. citizens and the U.S. Government to increase resources for humanitarian de-mining, mine awareness programs, and increased resources for landmine victim rehabilitation and assistance; and we ask that the secretary of the General Conference to send this resolution to the President of the United States Senate and to the speaker of the U. S. House of Representatives as soon as possible after the adjournment of the year 2000 General Conference.

ADOPTED 2000

See Social Principles, ¶ 165B and C.

From The Book of Resolutions of The United Methodist Church — 2004. Copyright © 2004 by The United Methodist Publishing House. Used by permission.