Assessing the Ottawa Anti-Personnel Mine Convention Withdrawals

As security along their borders has deteriorated, Eastern European, Baltic, and Nordic States have scrambled to update and adapt their national defense strategies. Nearly all these States have publicly committed to significantly increase defense spending. To complement these increases, the European Commission has resolved to revitalize its members’ domestic military industrial bases. Meanwhile, these States are reevaluating longstanding military plans and policies, in some cases undertaking previously unimaginable measures. Most notably, Finland and Sweden abandoned their policies of non-alignment, joining NATO in 2023 and 2024 respectively. Each of these dramatic developments is a stark reminder of the pressing, dynamic, and even volatile nature of international security.

Security concerns have also prompted reconsideration of these States’ law of war obligations. Last year, the Lithuanian Parliament voted to withdraw from the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM). The treaty bans its parties from use, development, acquisition, transfer and providing assistance to others’ use of a wide range of weapons that use explosive sub-munitions against area targets. Other than Norway, Lithuania had been the only NATO member bordering Russia to ratify the CCM. To justify withdrawal, Lithuanian defense officials cited compelling needs including deterrence of invasion, rapid improvement of defense capabilities, and remedying interoperability difficulties with cluster munition-armed allies. They also noted failure of other States to join the CCM and significant improvements in cluster munitions technology as reasons to withdraw. On 20 September 2024, Lithuania formally notified the UN of its withdrawal from the CCM, which took effect on 6 March 2025.

Non-governmental humanitarian organizations were quick to criticize the move. Amnesty International characterized the withdrawal as “disastrous.” Human Rights Watch labeled the withdrawal “ill-considered” and a “stain” on Lithuania’s reputation. For its part, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) assessed the withdrawal as “unprecedented” and expressed its deep regret, alleging that withdrawal from any law of war treaty “tears at the fabric” of the law.

Despite these and other protests, further law of war withdrawals are in the works. Early last week, defense ministers of Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania announced a recommendation to withdraw from the 1997 Ottawa Convention on Anti-Personnel Mines (Ottawa Convention). Finland is reportedly considering withdrawal from the Ottawa Convention as well. Meanwhile, a UK ex-Defence Secretary recently backed a new report that urges the United Kingdom to withdraw from both the CCM and the Ottawa Convention, noting he was “beset by lawyers applying old and out-of-date treaties to new capabilities, which are vital to saving life and to countering Russian lethality.”

For those who view law of war development as an unswerving march toward a complete, uniform, and universal system of protective and humanitarian obligations, these events are understandably disappointing. However, careful reflection shows that rather than aberrations from or affronts to the law, they are inherent aspects of the law of war system; they are, in fact, the law of war at work as intended. They signal the dynamic and adaptive balance between interests of humanity and military necessity struck by diverse States, at various times, under an almost incomprehensibly broad and evolving range of idiosyncratic security conditions.

To more fully illustrate this fundamental structural point, this post examines the Ottawa Convention, details the withdrawing States’ recent approaches to anti-personnel mine regulation and explains military considerations that influence States’ landmine and law of war policies.

The Ottawa Convention

Attempts at direct international regulation of landmines can be traced to the preparatory and diplomatic discussions that formed the 1977 Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions. While the Protocols managed both to update rules to protect victims of war and to codify and revise rules for targeting operations, they did little to regulate any weapon specifically, including mines. Instead, States’ work to regulate specific weapons spun off to a separate treaty process hosted by the UN. In 1980, States adopted the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW). Six subsequent protocols to the CCW address a variety of weapon types. Two of these address mines and similar devices specifically: the 1980 CCW Protocol II; and the 1996 CCW Amended Protocol II.

Rather than ban mines as some had hoped, the two CCW protocols merely regulate their use. The CCW mine protocols restate general law of war rules such as the requirement to distinguish between combatants and civilians. However, they also include new obligations specific to mines concerning air delivery, deactivation, anti-handling measures, marking, and removal of mines, including anti-personnel mines.

In the mid to late 1990s, dissatisfied with the CCW Protocols’ failure to ban anti-personnel mines outright, private organizations inspired a diplomatic process to develop a full ban on anti-personnel mines. Substantially influenced by these non-governmental humanitarian organizations (an effort recounted in detail here and for which some of those organizations shared a Nobel Peace Prize), and no doubt facilitated by the contemporaneous end of the Cold War that had threatened large-scale land warfare for decades, the diplomatic process culminated in the 1997 adoption of the Ottawa Convention. The instrument bans States parties from the use development, production, acquisition, stockpiling, and retention of anti-personnel mines as well assisting, encouraging, or inducing others to do so (art. 1).

Ottawa Convention Withdrawal Provisions

Many, though not all, regarded the Ottawa Convention as a great leap forward for humanitarian concerns in war. But even for its States parties, the Convention never reflected an irreversible commitment. Like most modern law of war treaties, the Ottawa Convention includes procedures for withdrawal, also referred to in the law of treaties as denunciation. Reciting “national sovereignty,” Article 20 of the Convention permits withdrawal upon notice to the Convention’s other States parties, the treaty depositary (the UN Secretary-General), and the UN Security Council. In July 2023, Eritrea, which had been found to be in non-compliance with the Ottawa Convention for failure to report its mine clearance efforts, became the first State to announce its intent to withdraw from the Ottawa Convention. However, by October of that year it rescinded its notice.

Like many other treaties, Ottawa Convention withdrawal does not take effect immediately. A six-month waiting period precedes expiration of a withdrawing State’s obligations. Additionally, a State party’s withdrawal cannot take effect while it is engaged in an armed conflict.

Most law of war treaty withdrawal provisions do not require the withdrawing State to provide any justification for withdrawal. The 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), however, reflects an exception requiring a withdrawing State to indicate “the extraordinary events it regards as having jeopardized its supreme interests” (art. XVI).

For its part, the Ottawa Convention requires a withdrawing State to provide “a full explanation of the reasons motivating withdrawal” (art. 20(2)). As recounted in Professor Stuart Casey-Maslen’s thorough The Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention: A Commentary, the original draft of what became Article 20 had included a heightened justification requirement, identical to that appearing in the CWC withdrawal provision (p. 370). States, however, softened those material conditions in the adopted text to merely require that a withdrawing State provide “reasons,” which Professor Casey-Maslen notes, need not necessarily be “well founded or objectively reasonable” (p. 372).

The Ottawa Convention Reconsidered

If law of war treaties can be seen as settling events, moments of legal clarification and consolidation, the Ottawa Convention has proved otherwise. Far from unifying the community of States behind a humanitarian consensus, the Ottawa Convention produced a fractured landscape of anti-personnel mine obligations, regulations, and policies including a variety of shifting State approaches to anti-personnel mine legal obligations and policies.

States that have joined the Ottawa Convention and those that have resisted can be sorted somewhat predictably not only by their general attitudes toward international law but also according to their security postures and capabilities. Many States parties to the Ottawa Convention either did not face serious threats of land invasion at the time they joined or were members of alliances that included non-parties still capable of employing mines.

Eastern Europe, Baltic, and Nordic States

Though not an original signatory at the December 1997 Ottawa diplomatic conference, Lithuania signed the Ottawa Convention at UN Headquarters in February 1999, immediately prior to the Convention’s March 1999 entry into force. Lithuania then ratified the Convention in May 2003. Unlike Lithuania, neither Estonia nor Latvia originally signed the Ottawa Convention. However, each later acceded to it, Estonia in May 2004 and Latvia in July 2005. Although Poland signed at the original 1997 signing ceremony, it did not ratify the Convention until December 2012. While immediately prior to and after joining the Ottawa Convention each of these States had struggled with mild disruptions and interventions from Russia, none seemed to face a serious or imminent threat of land invasion at the time, and each benefitted from having recently joined the NATO security alliance.

In retrospect, Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula should have made clear that those States’ security environments had changed dramatically. By the time of Russia’s February 2022 full invasion of Ukraine, including an ill-fated attempted march on the capital city Kiev, Poland, the Baltic, and Nordic States had become acutely aware of their newly fraught security circumstances. All four share land borders with Russia, which had not only revealed its renewed territorial ambitions but also sent a clear message concerning its willingness to resort to unrelenting and costly, massed infantry attacks for even the slightest territorial advances against defending forces.

Thus, last week defense ministers of those border States announced jointly they would recommend withdrawal from the Ottawa Convention. Citing deterioration of their security environments and a “vulnerable Eastern Flank,” the ministers emphasized their need for “flexibility and freedom of choice” in weapon systems to bolster their defenses. Withdrawal from the Ottawa Convention, they contended, would send a “clear message” concerning their preparedness and capability to defend their territory.

The Baltic States and Poland are not the only Ottawa Convention parties considering withdrawal. Like Estonia and Latvia, Finland is not an original signatory to the Convention but it became the most recent European State to join the Ottawa Convention system anew, acceding in January 2012. In security terms, it finds itself similarly situated to the Baltic States and Poland. Finland shares a 1,300 km border with Russia, with which it has a history of invasion and conflict. In addition to having abandoned the policy of non-alignment and joining NATO, Finnish defense officials now talk openly of reconsidering the Ottawa Convention in light of Russian ground force deployments. Meanwhile, an influential citizens group has collected signatures to initiate the parliamentary debate and vote required to submit a withdrawal to the Ottawa Convention.

Ukraine

Finally, among the Ottawa Convention States arrayed along Russia’s Western border, Ukraine signed in February 1999 just prior to its entry in force, though it did not ratify the Convention until almost 7 years later in December 2005. Of the States party to the Ottawa Convention, Ukraine has indisputably suffered the bleakest change in its security situation since ratification. The security conditions it faced in 2005 barely resemble those it faces today. Not only has Russia’s occupation of portions of its territory where mines are stored made it impossible for Ukraine to fulfill its obligation under the Convention to destroy stockpiles of anti-personnel mines, the dire operational and tactical situation on its frontlines has drastically changed the costs of foregoing use of anti-personnel mines.

The opening phases of the 2022 full-scale invasion saw Russia attempt a mobile, mechanized attack aimed at seizing key terrain and infrastructure that lacked prepared defenses. When that effort failed, operational design and military tactics soon shifted to account for largely static, prepared battlelines. Russian (and North Korean) infantry formations now routinely attempt to identify and exploit thinly spread, dug-in Ukrainian infantry, to overwhelm their ability to direct and concentrate fire before they are overrun.

Anti-personnel mines, though notorious for misuse by many armed forces, offer substantial military advantages to defending forces. They are commonly understood to inflict human casualties. But rather than attrit enemy forces directly, their chief contributions to military necessity are to slow and channel enemy movement, part of so-called “countermobility operations” (paras. 2-15 – 2-20).

Slowing an infantry advance affords a defending force time to bring more weapons to bear on enemy forces. Effective military mine doctrine usually counsels that minefields should be overwatched by direct or indirect fire. Time gained from mine use also permits a defending force to shift additional forces to an area of enemy attack. In addition to slowing infantry advances, anti-personnel mines may channel or redirect their movement into an axis or area of the defender’s choice into which the defender can pour effective fire. In both respects, slowing and channeling, anti-personnel mines can prove invaluable force multipliers.

A Ukrainian decision to withdraw from the Ottawa Convention and to regain the military advantages that anti-personnel mines offer under these circumstances would be entirely understandable. The situation no doubt clears the very low material bar for withdrawal from the Ottawa Convention. However, as noted above, Article 20(2) of the Ottawa Convention delays the effect of a State’s withdrawal notification until the end of any armed conflict in which it is engaged. Thus, despite its desperate circumstances and the profound changes to its security since ratification, Ukraine remains bound by the Ottawa Convention until the end of its armed conflict with the Russian Federation.

Nonetheless, reports of Ukrainian anti-personnel mine use have emerged. Though Ukraine has enjoyed a degree of international sympathy and perhaps even some legal leeway in its challenging circumstances, these reports have not gone unnoticed. In early 2023, Ambassador Thomas Göbel of Germany, who presided over the 21^st Meeting of States Parties to the Ottawa Convention, announced his intention to clarify reports of Ukrainian armed forces using anti-personnel mines. But he expressed confidence in Ukraine’s cooperation to address non-compliance and noted, “Ukraine has always maintained its adherence to treaty norms and objectives.”

A 2024 reply from Ukraine appeared to momentarily vindicate the Ambassador’s confidence. It asserted Ukraine “continues to fully comply with its international obligations, including [the] Ottawa convention.” Although Russia is not a party to the Ottawa Convention, the reply characterized Russian uses of mines as violations of “laws and customs of war.” Further, the reply reported ongoing pre-trial criminal investigations of alleged uses of anti-personnel mines by Ukraine’s own forces.

Yet, in November 2024, the United States announced and confirmed it would supply Ukraine with anti-personnel mines. Although the U.S.-provided mines are reportedly highly detectable and non-persistent—meaning they expire after pre-set period not to exceed two weeks—their use by Ukraine likely does not comply with the Ottawa Convention.

The U.S. announcement surely calls into question whether earlier Ukrainian characterizations of its forces’ use of anti-personnel mines as infractions under investigation still holds, not to mention its commitment to the Ottawa Convention. But whether it wishes to be or not, no matter how long the war, no matter what tactical turn it takes, and no matter what Russia dishes out, Ukraine is seemingly stuck with the Ottawa Convention. In addition to the withdrawal article’s armed conflict clause, Article 1 of the Convention makes clear that States parties may resort to anti-personnel mines “never under any circumstances.”

Still, in late 2024, the Ukraine Ministry of Defense published a “Voluntary Report on Implementation of International Humanitarian Law.” It is a remarkable, thorough, and perhaps first-of-its-kind effort by a State engaged in an ongoing, large-scale and high-intensity fight for its existence. Concerning anti-personnel mines, the report acknowledges Ukraine’s obligations under the Ottawa Convention. It also notes extensive efforts since 2007 to destroy stockpiles of anti-personnel mines on its territory (p. 75). The report indicates that Russian occupation of some of that territory has prevented Ukraine from fulfilling that obligation “until the complete restoration of Ukrainian Constitutional law and order in such occupied territories … (p. 75-76).

But notably, the report does not directly address reported uses of anti-personnel mines by Ukrainian forces or the U.S. exports of mines. However, it relates that in 2024, legal reviews of “anti-infantry explosive devices” which are remotely controlled rather than “victim-activated” concluded that use of these systems is not subject to any Ottawa Convention prohibition (p. 81).

Critiques of Withdrawals

Similarly to the Lithuanian withdrawal from the CCM, a host of non-governmental organizations has already lamented the Baltic States’ and Poland’s proposed withdrawals from the Ottawa Convention.

 The group, Action on Armed Violence, labeled the withdrawing States’ move “a grave setback … undermining decades of progress.” The group went further, indicating the decision “raises broader questions about NATO’s commitment to international humanitarian law,” warning the withdrawal could “spread across Europe.” The U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines has also strongly condemned the announcements of withdrawal. The Campaign alleged withdrawal “runs contradictory to Latvia’s claim to advocate for international law … .”

Meanwhile, legal officers of the ICRC have recently sought to dispel arguments concerning the military utility of anti-personnel mines indicating that a 1996 ICRC study and a 2004 update to it found “no evidence to support claims that [anti-personnel mines] are indispensable or of high military value,” couching withdrawal efforts as “[e]xceptionalist narratives.” Joining these organizations, Norway’s Foreign Minister has urged reconsideration and estimated landmines “have no place in modern warfare.”

Concluding Thoughts

In an interesting turn of events, the same week the defense ministers of Poland and the Baltic States announced their withdrawal recommendations, the Ottawa Convention added a new State party. On 12 March 2025, Marshall Islands, an original 1997 signatory, ratified the Ottawa Convention. For now, Marshall Islands takes its place as an Ottawa Convention State party alongside Ukraine and the States considering withdrawal.

Yet its current security situation could not be more different from that of those States. While a fully sovereign State, according to a 1986 Compact of Free Association with the United States, amended in 2004 and 2024, Marshall Islands has committed “full authority and responsibility for defense and security matters to the United States,” a non-Party to the Ottawa Convention which recently loosened its anti-personnel mine policy. In fact, Marshall Islands has no regular armed forces and no land borders, putting its Ottawa Convention ratification in a substantially different light than many other States’, including those on the now dangerous frontier of Eastern Europe.

The urge to consider the law of war development as having a ratchet effect, involving one-way, irreversible adjustments achieving humanitarian goals, is understandable. The trend of law of war treaties has arced decidedly toward adopting further and further restraints on the means and methods of warfighting. Diplomatic and treaty review conferences have nearly universally explored additions to rather than repeals of these restraints.

But in his foreword to Ukraine’s “Voluntary Report on Implementation of IHL,” the Ukrainian Defense Minister observed importantly, “the extreme conditions of war are an ultimate test for legal obligations so solemnly declared in times of peace and prosperity.” That not all law of war measures adopted in peace would pass that test should not be surprising.

Restraints of warfare that appear supportable at one point in a State’s international relations may prove otherwise over time and changed conditions of security. Fluctuations in States’ decisions to regulate or ban anti-personnel landmine use, such as those highlighted in this post, reflect the highly complex nature of the subject and the dynamic and delicate balance States strike by consenting to law of war instruments. Neither considerations of humanity nor military necessity factor exclusively, conclusively, or permanently in these decisions.

Ultimately, most law of war adoptions, repeals, and repudiations by States do not reflect discoveries of universal, constant, or immutable truths. They are instead snapshots of individual States’ ongoing, pragmatic assessments of security considerations and feasible humanitarian protections. While critiques of withdrawals from law of war instruments may fairly weigh in on the humanitarian and military equities and merits of such decisions, characterizing withdrawals from law of war instruments per se as betrayals of the law of war reveals a profound misunderstanding of its essential and dynamic workings.

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Sean Watts is a Professor in the Department of Law at the United States Military Academy, Co-Director of the Lieber Institute for Law and Land Warfare at West Point, and Co-Editor-in-Chief of Articles of War.

The views expressed are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense. 

Articles of War is a forum for professionals to share opinions and cultivate ideas. Articles of War does not screen articles to fit a particular editorial agenda, nor endorse or advocate material that is published. 

 

 

 

 

Photo credit: SPC Derek Gaines