Foreign Affairs requested the Ministry of Defence to provide information on the state of affairs regarding the destruction of the Gator mines used by the Dutch Royal Air Force. The Netherlands had been approached by other States Parties who had made inquiries about the destruction process. Six months later, in February 2002, members of the SC on Stockpile Destruction asked the Netherlands why it had not yet destroyed its stockpile of Gator mines. Various countries were surprised that the Netherlands, considered a front runner in the Ottawa process, was taking so much time. In March 2002, the States Parties once again addressed the Netherlands about the matter. At the plenary session of the SC on Stockpile Destruction, the Netherlands was mentioned as one of the few Western countries that had not yet met its stockpile destruction obligation.
In reaction to this international pressure, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs suggested to the Ministry of Defence that the Gator mines be destroyed as soon as possible, pointing to the proactive role the Netherlands aimed to play in encouraging compliance with the convention. The Dutch wished to avert unnecessary censure. Once again, the Ministry of Defence was requested to inform the Ministry of Foreign Affairs about the Gator mine destruction. In July 2002, the Ministry of Defence reported that it had contracted a German firm to destroy the Gator mines. The destruction would be completed in the fourth quarter of 2002. In November 2002, the Dutch delegation in Geneva reported that the Netherlands had been approached once again about the slow stockpile destruction process. In the same month, the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defence had a meeting on the issue, during which it was reported that the Gator mines had been destroyed on 12 November 2002. In January 2003 the formal confirmation of the stockpile destruction was communicated to the depository of the Ottawa Convention. The second impediment to the Dutch policy objective regarding stockpile destruction was the relatively large number of anti-personnel mines that the Netherlands had kept for training purposes. Article 3 of the Ottawa Convention allowed for the possession of anti-personnel mines for the development of and training in mine detection, mine clearance, or mine destruction, but did not specify the maximum permitted number of such mines. The article merely stated: ‘The amount of such mines shall not exceed the minimum number absolutely necessary for the above-mentioned purposes.’ In practice the norm of ‘several hundreds or thousands’ of anti-personnel mines was adopted by Ottawa’s States Parties.
In 1997 the Netherlands had adopted the threshold of 5,000 anti-personnel mines for training purposes. This proved to be a high threshold, and after 1997 the Netherlands
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was regularly questioned by other countries regarding the necessity of this.332 Although
the number of Dutch anti-personnel mines fell after 1997, it increased again to more than 4,000 in 2001, after the Netherlands bought anti-personnel mines from Denmark for training purposes.
This criticism hindered Dutch policy regarding stockpile destruction in other Ottawa states at least once. In 2002, together with Italy, the UK and the US, the Netherlands responded to a call from the SC on Stockpile Destruction to approach countries that had problems in meeting the stockpile destruction deadline. In that context, the Netherlands approached Macedonia and Turkmenistan. With respect to Macedonia, the government questioned whether the 4,000 anti-personnel mines that Macedonia wished to retain for training purposes was not too high. In a memorandum to the Dutch mission in Macedonia, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs communicated that if the Netherlands expressed doubts about the 4,000 anti-personnel mines of
Macedonia, the Netherlands could expect questions regarding its own stockpile of training anti-personnel mines.
As the Dutch stockpile of anti-personnel landmines dwindled, this impediment became less relevant over time. In 2006, the co-chairs (Belgium and Guatemala) of the SC GSO invited the Netherlands to give a presentation during the intersessional from 8 to 12 May 2006 on the Dutch stockpile of anti-personnel mines retained for training and education purposes. The Dutch delegation stated that in 2005 the Netherlands retained 2,878 anti-personnel mines – 298 mines less than in 2004. It was stated that the number of Dutch anti-personnel mines showed a structural decrease and that the Netherlands intended this trend to continue. The delegation also stated that it planned to replace some of the retained anti-personnel mines with ‘simulation mines’ that would take over the training and education functions of real anti-personnel mines. Nonetheless, it also recognised that it would remain necessary to use real anti- personnel landmines for training purposes.
7.9 Conclusions
Assessment of the effectiveness of the Dutch interventions within the framework of the Ottawa Convention on the basis of the four evaluation criteria leads to the following conclusions:
Universalisation
The Dutch interventions with regard to universalisation were connected to the national policy objective on the issue. Since December 1997 national policies have aimed at
332 The Landmine Monitor Report of 2006 mentioned that over 227,000 anti-personnel mines had been retained by 69 States Parties under Article 3 of the Ottawa Convention. Five parties accounted for nearly one third of all retained mines: Brazil, Turkey, Algeria, Bangladesh and Sweden (Landmine Monitor, 2006).
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