The World Assembly

The General Assembly,

Pursuing endlessly the goals of Peace and Goodwill throughout the world,

Recognizing that landmines, in particular, are indiscriminate and persistent tools of war that inherently threaten the long-term safety of civilians in and near conflicted areas,

Finding the use of those inherently indiscriminate weapons as utterly abhorrent,

Concerned that conventional measures of mitigating risk, such as marking or mapping these weapons, is ultimately useless, due to mine migration, changes in topography, and difficult detection,

Hereby declares:

Landmines, or mines for brevity, shall be defined as weapons adopted and issued by recognizable military services, designed to be deployed on or below the ground, detonate via some manner of proximity, and utilized as a means of ambush, area denial, or tactical boundary in conflict.

Member states shall consider extant laws relevant to the customs of war to apply to their use of landmines, and observe them appropriately.

Landmines must have at least one of the following features:

• A pre-set timed deactivation function that will reliably cause the mine to automatically become inert and inactive after such time as the tactical value of the mine is no longer immediate;

• A remote deactivation function that will reliably cause the mine to immediately become inert and inactive;

• A trigger function that reliably lends itself to selectively target hostiles instead of civilians, vehicles instead of personnel, or characteristics inherent to military hardware instead of civilian hardware.

• A remote or pre-set timed detonation function in lieu of a victim-activated trigger.

Member states shall not utilize, purchase, manufacture, stockpile, or transfer in any way mines that do not retain at least one of the listed features.

Member states shall take every practical precaution to avoid collateral damage to civilians or civilian infrastructure in their placement of mines.

Member states shall remove or render inert those mines they have deployed outside their territory at the conclusion of hostilities.