AG/RES. 1496 (XXVII-O/97)
THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE AS AN
ANTIPERSONNEL-LAND-MINE-FREE ZONE
(Resolution adopted at the seventh plenary session, held on June 5, 1997)
THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY,
TAKING NOTE of the report of the General Secretariat on the Mine-Clearing Program in Central America (AG/doc.3465/97);
NOTING WITH GRAVE CONCERN that, according to the same report, there are still thousands of antipersonnel land mines in Central America and that there is information regarding their existence in other areas of the Hemisphere;
CONCERNED that these antipersonnel land mines are constantly producing innocent victims in Latin America, destroying the economic assets of rural populations, and hindering the normal development of society as a whole;
MINDFUL that enormous human, financial, and technological resources are needed for mine- clearing in the affected areas in Latin America and that the resources available to dispatch this urgent task are limited;
RECALLING resolutions AG/RES. 1299 (XXIV-O/94), AG/RES. 1335 (XXV-O/95), AG/RES. 1343 (XXV-O/95), and AG/RES. 1411 (XXVI-O/96) on antipersonnel land mines;
ALSO RECALLING United Nations General Assembly resolution A/51/45 S, sponsored by 24 member states of the Organization of American States (OAS), which, inter alia, urges states to pursue vigorously an effective international agreement to ban the use, stockpiling, production, and transfer of antipersonnel land mines with a view to completing the negotiation as soon as possible;
MINDFUL of United Nations General Assembly resolutions 49/79 and 50/74, concerning the Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May Be Deemed to Be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects, and Protocol II to this convention;
RECOGNIZING the support of the OAS General Secretariat and of individual states and other international institutions with regard to mine-clearing efforts in Central America;
WELCOMING the outcome of the Ottawa Conference "Towards a Global Ban on Anti- Personnel Land Mines," and taking note of the growing number of countries that have pledged support for initiatives aimed at the global elimination of the production, stockpiling, use, and transfer of antipersonnel land mines, including the Ottawa Process and the efforts of the Disarmament Conference to reach a legally binding international agreement to ban antipersonnel land mines;
APPRECIATIVE of all the initiatives to increase awareness of the danger of antipersonnel land mines and to strengthen international efforts in order to attain a legally binding international agreement to ban antipersonnel land mines permanently;
ALSO WELCOMING the statement by Mexico declaring itself an antipersonnel-land-mine-free zone and the joint statement by the Central American and CARICOM foreign ministers proposing that their region should become an antipersonnel-land-mine-free zone by 1999;
COMMITTED to the goal that those member states affected by the scourge of antipersonnel land mines may be permanently free of them, after the mine-clearing operations have been completed, and that the nations of the Hemisphere may focus all human and financial efforts on national development, democracy, and hemispheric solidarity;
RECOGNIZING the contributions of member states to the integrated register of antipersonnel land mines, which provides information on, inter alia, antipersonnel land mine stockpiles, the number of antipersonnel land mines removed during the past year, and the plans for clearance of the remaining antipersonnel land mines; and
EXPRESSING its deep satisfaction with the increasing number of member states that have declared bans or moratoria on the production, use, and transfer of antipersonnel land mines or that have begun to destroy stockpiles,
RESOLVES: