Team:Edinburgh/mapxmlpapua



Papua New Guinea <![CDATA[Papua New Guinea (PNG) acceded to the Mine Ban Treaty on 28 June 2004. The treaty will enter into force for the country on 1 December 2004. The status of national implementation measures is not yet known. Its initial Article 7 transparency measure report is due to be submitted by 30 May 2005.

Papua New Guinea notes that it has always supported the Mine Ban Treaty, “having sent representatives to various regional and international meetings...[and] voted in favour of pro-ban United Nations General Assembly resolutions in previous years.” While it was not present at the Fifth Meeting of States Parties, PNG did vote in support of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 58/53 on 8 December 2003, as it had done on similar pro-ban resolutions in previous years.

Papua New Guinea states that it has never used, produced, or transferred antipersonnel mines. n February 2004, a representative disclosed that the PNG Defence Force maintains “only a small stockpile of less than one hundred mines for training purposes. These are command-detonated claymore mines imported from Australia twenty-one years ago.”

Papua New Guinea is not mine-affected, but parts of the country still have a residual unexploded ordnance (UXO) problem dating from World War II. A 2003 report suggested the effects of this contamination were more complicated than elsewhere in the Pacific. Between July 2003 and March 2004, an Australian company, Milsearch, conducted a survey of UXO contamination from World War II as part of Rabaul-Kokopo road repairs. An internal conflict between 1988 and 1997 on the island of Bougainville did not include antipersonnel mine use, but improvised explosive devices may have been used. Landmine Monitor has not recorded any mine or UXO casualties in the country.

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