The Landmine Ban: A Case Study in Humanitarian Advocacy

This Occasional Paper analyses the successful effort to establish an international treaty to ban landmines. Whereas some treatments of the campaign concentrate largely on the efforts of NGOs, Hubert sees in the dynamic interaction among four sets of actors - NGOs, the ICRC, the UN, and member states - the secrets of success. He identifies three broad elements that contributed to the final result: the negotiating context, coalition-building among the four sets of actors, and campaign messaging. He compares and contrasts the landmines experience with three other international advocacy campaigns: to create an international criminal court, to adopt a convention on child soldiers, and to ban small arms transfer.

In a Preface to the Occasional Paper, S. Neil MacFarlane draws linkages between the landmines experience and Politics and Humanitarian Action, his earlier study which the Hubert paper illustrates. The successful negotiation of the treaty illustrates the proposition, MacFarlane notes, that state calculations of political interest are not immutable but may be affected by "informed, well-organised, professional and coordinated advocacy."