Swiss Campaign to Ban Landmines

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The Swiss Campaign to Ban Landmines

A long-time member of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), the Swiss Campaign to Ban Landmines (Swiss Campaign) is an umbrella organisation composed of about 50 Swiss NGOs gathered around the common objective of banning antipersonnel landmines and similar indiscriminate weapons (such as cluster munitions or anti-vehicle landmines). At the national level, the Swiss Campaign to Ban Landmines successfully advocated in favor of a national ban of antipersonnel landmines and of Switzerland’s signature and ratification of the Ottawa Treaty in 1995-1997.Within the ICBL, the Swiss Campaign was a member of the Non State Actors Working Group, which it co-chaired until the end of 2004. The Swiss Campaign has also participated in the creation of Geneva Call, which primarily aims at engaging armed non-state actors in a total ban of antipersonnel landmines. Moreover, the Swiss Campaign has supported the creation of other national campaigns of the ICBL, such as the Nepal Campaign to Ban Landmines or more recently, the Turkish Campaign to Ban Landmines. Both these organisations are now independent members of the ICBL. The Swiss Campaign is also a member of the Cluster Munition Coalition and supports current efforts to ban cluster munitions.

See also: www.stopmines.ch

Gender and Mine Action Programme

In December 2006, the Swiss Campaign launched a programme to encourage and support the mine action sector to mainstream gender through its policy, programming and operations. The objectives of the programme are to:

• Conduct research and evaluation on the different impact of mines and of mine action policy and operations on men and women. The research takes as a starting point current and previous activities and achievements in this area.
• Produce a publication on gender and mine action to be made available free of charge to mine action stakeholders and women’s grass roots and civil society organisations. The publication, which will be available in April 2008, will consist of the findings from the research process together with a collection of best practices from the field.
• Advocate to governments, stressing the importance of taking into account the question of gender in their discussion, programming and funding of mine action.
• Support women-based organisations in building capacity on gender and mine action and on lobbying for the establishment or reinforcement of national mine action campaigns in their countries, where that country has not acceded to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction (the Ottawa Convention).

See also: [www.scbl-gender.ch]