The International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) and its United States co-ordinator, Ms Jody Williams, won the Nobel Peace Prize yesterday. Ms Williams immediately called on those countries still resisting the ban to "come on board".
"The International Campaign is deeply grateful to the Nobel Committee for its recognition of our work to ban this insidious, indiscriminate weapon," she said.
The $1 million award, which humanitarian organisations hope will help keep interest in the issue high, is also seen as a tribute to the Princess of Wales, who was a strong supporter of the ICBL before her death on August 31st. Princess Diana made trips to Angola and Bosnia to support a total ban on the weapons which kill or maim 26,000 people annually around the world.
"The princess gave a face to the victims. She made people in the street realise the impact of this weapon on the poor and the destitute," Ms Williams said.
The ICBL's efforts are to culminate in December with the signing in Ottawa of an international treaty against landmines. A draft treaty, which will go into effect six months after the 40th country signs on, was agreed during a conference in Oslo last month.
"The ICBL and Jody Williams started a process which in the space of a few years changed a ban on anti-personnel mines from a vision to a feasible reality," the jury said. The treaty is "to a considerable extent a result of their important work," it noted.
Ms Williams said the award would "add pressure to those countries that have not come on board", noting the campaign "will focus its attention on those countries".
But Washington - which has balked at signing the treaty because it says it fails to protect US soldiers, especially on the Korean peninsula where it had sought a nine-year exemption - said it would not change its policy.
President Clinton has "responsibilities as commander-in-chief to protect our men and women who are deployed around the world and in the name of the international community to keep the peace," the White House spokesman, Mr Mike McCurry, said.
By contrast, Russia appeared to soften its position on landmines. Moscow, which did not agree to the Oslo treaty, "supports and will support the objective" of the ban, President Yeltsin said at a Council of Europe summit in Strasbourg.
Officials in mine-ridden countries, such as Afghanistan and Cambodia, hailed the prize. "The prize will contribute very much to the campaign against landmines," said Mr Sam Sotha, national director of the Cambodia Mines Action Centre.
The UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan, also called on "all governments" to sign the ban. In Dublin, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Andrews, welcomed the decision of the Nobel committee, and the Irish Red Cross Society congratulated the ICBL and its co-ordinator.
The decision has also been welcomed by the Catholic peace movement, Pax Christi. Its general secretary, Mr Tony D'Costa, specifically thanked the Irish Government for its support, and called for those countries which refused to sign the Ottawa Treaty banning landmines to be stigmatised.
The Nobel jury called the ICBL "a model for similar peace in the future, (which) could prove of decisive importance to the international effort for disarmament and peace".
The umbrella organisation, the 15th to win the Nobel Peace Prize, had been one of the hottest tips to win this year's award. It was created in 1992 and comprises more than 1,000 local and international organisations from 60 countries in the fields of development, environment, arms control, human rights and medical assistance.
There are about 110 million anti-personnel mines scattered in 64 countries around the world. Worldwide, there is one casualty every 22 minutes, most of them women or children. It would take $33 billion and 11 centuries, at the current pace, to clear the 110 million active mines scattered in 64 countries around the world. Russia, China and the United States are the leading producers of landmines.
Ms Williams (47), a native of north-eastern Vermont state, has spoken extensively around the world on the issue of landmines. She is the author of After the Guns Fall Silent: the Enduring Legacy of Landmines.
Alfred Nobel, the Swedish scientist and industrialist who created the prize in his will in 1895, wanted to honour those who "shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses". Ironically, Nobel's career centred on developing better explosives, including dynamite. As a young man, he travelled to Saint Petersburg in the 1850s to help his father develop torpedoes and mines.