The European External Action Service (EEAS) on Tuesday slammed US President Donald Trump's decision to lift restrictions on the use of anti-personnel landmines, saying that doing so violated the global norm against such weapons
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 04th February, 2020) The European External Action Service (EEAS) on Tuesday slammed US President Donald Trump's decision to lift restrictions on the use of anti-personnel landmines, saying that doing so violated the global norm against such weapons.
The shift in policy was announced on Friday. Now, US military commanders will be allowed to use anti-personnel landmines in exceptional circumstances. The move constitutes a reversal of a directive issued in 2014 by then-US President Barack Obama, which banned the use of landmines everywhere except for the Korean Peninsula.
"The decision by the United States Government to re-authorise the use of anti-personnel mines by US military forces outside of the Korean Peninsula undermines the global norm against anti-personnel mines. A norm that has saved tens of thousands of people in the past twenty years," the EU spokeswoman for foreign affairs and security policy, Virginie Battu-Henriksson, said in a press release published on the EEAS' website.
According to the press release, the EU finds the use of landmines completely unacceptable as well as incompatible with international humanitarian law, given that the majority of landmine victims are children.
An international campaign to ban landmines led to a 1997 treaty that was signed by more than 160 nations. The United States refused to sign the treaty, but the 2014 directive largely aligned the country with the treaty's requirements.
