Finland’s parliament voted overwhelmingly to pull out of a major international treaty on antipersonnel land mines on Thursday as the Nordic country seeks to boost its defenses against an increasingly assertive Russia next door.
Finland shares a 1,340km land border with Russia and joined NATO in 2023. Finland says land mines could be used to defend its vast and rugged terrain in the event of an attack. Finnish lawmakers voted 157 to 18 to move forward on a government proposal to leave the Ottawa Convention.
The Nordics and Baltics have been sounding the alarm on a potential Russian incursion since it launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Photo: AFP
Ukraine is among the countries that are the most affected by land mines and discarded explosives, as a result of Russia’s ongoing war, analysts said.
The Ottawa Convention was signed in 1997 and came into force in 1999. Nearly three dozen countries have not acceded to it, including some key current and past producers and users of land mines such as the US, China, India, Pakistan, South Korea and Russia.
A report released last year by international watchdog Landmine Monitor said land mines were still being used in 2023 and last year by Russia, Myanmar, Iran and North Korea.
In the Baltics, lawmakers in Latvia and Lithuania earlier this year voted to exit the treaty.
International Committee of the Red Cross president Mirjana Spoljaric said civilians would pay the price if more countries leave the treaty.
“The global consensus that once made anti-personnel mines a symbol of inhumanity is starting to fracture,” Spoljaric said in a news release earlier this week. “This is not just a legal retreat on paper — it risks endangering countless lives and reversing decades of hard-fought humanitarian progress.”
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