- Making it Work (MIW) is a global multi-stakeholder initiative supporting the effective implementation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).
- Source is an international information support center designed to strengthen the management, use and impact of information on health and disability.
- The U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines and Cluster Bombs, currently coordinated by Handicap International, is a coalition of thousands of people and U.S. non-governmental organizations working to convince the U.S. government to join the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty and the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions.
Our fight against landmines and cluster bombs
December 10 1997: Handicap International Joint Nobel Winner
Just over ten years ago, on 10 December 1997, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the representatives of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL). The prize ensured that each of the associations involved, including the campaign's co-founder Handicap International, enjoyed international recognition for their efforts.
The international campaign to ban anti-personnel mines was launched simultaneously in Lyon, London, Frankfurt and New York in 1992, based on the determination of its six founding organisations* to rid the world of a weapon that does not discriminate between military personnel and civilians. Five years later, on 3 December 1997, thanks to the exceptional campaign organised by civil society groups, moral authorities, and certain governments such as Canada, 123 countries signed the Ottawa Mine Ban Treaty, which banned the deployment, stockpiling, production and sale of anti-personnel mines, and ensured their destruction.
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 organised 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."
"Overwhelmed by the emotion"
"A few days later, in Oslo," recalls Jean-Baptiste Richardier, Executive Director of Handicap International , "Tun Chanareth, representing 30,000 Cambodian mine accident survivors, received the Nobel Peace Prize in everybody's name, proudly holding up the certificate and medal in front of the international media! Overwhelmed by the emotion, the public rose and gave the co-Nobel Laureats an enthusiastic and endless round of applause."
In 1998, the international campaign decided to create the Mines Observatory to monitor the application and respect of the Ban Treaty and, more generally, to assess the efforts made by the international community to resolve the challenges posed by mines.
* 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).
