In December 1997, 123 countries signed the Ottawa Mine Ban Treaty, which banned the deployment, stockpiling, production and sale of anti-personnel mines, and ensured their destruction.

One week later, Handicap International and its partners* at the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) were collectively awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of five years of hard campaigning to reach this end.

The campaign had launched simultaneously in Lyon, London, Frankfurt and New York in 1992, to rid the world of a weapon that does not discriminate between military personnel and civilians. To this day, our  campaign against landmines and cluster bombs continues.

On the eve of his departure for Oslo to receive the Nobel Prize, Philippe Chabasse, then co-director of Handicap International wrote: "There will certainly be a few of us at Handicap International who remember the near-empty rooms when we organized our first conferences, from May 1992 onwards, when we tried to explain to journalists and political leaders the extent of the devastation caused by mines."

In Oslo, Tun Chanareth, who represented another 30,000 Cambodian mine accident survivors, received the Nobel Peace Prize in everyone's name. “He was proudly holding up the certificate and medal in front of the international media,” said Jean-Baptiste Richardier, executive director of Handicap International. “Overwhelmed by the emotion, the public rose and gave the co-Nobel Laureates an enthusiastic round of applause."

In 1998, the international campaign decided to create the Mines Observatory to monitor the application and respect of the Mine Ban Treaty.

* Human Rights Watch/Arms project (USA), Medico International (Germany), Mines Advisory Group (UK), Physicians for Human Rights (USA) and Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation (USA).