Landmines kill and maim long after wars have ended.
These weapons of no discrimination remain in the ground for years, maybe even decades, before someone or some animal comes along to detonate them. Then they maim and kill children, farmers and everyday citizens just as readily as they do people serving in the military.
The United Nations reports that landmines claimed 4,200 victims in 2010.
Today is desgnated the International Day of Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action.
What can we do on this day?
- Participate in the Lend Your Leg Campaign.
- Take the pledge to support call for a landmine-free world.
- Ask the Obama Administration to submit the Mine Ban Treaty (also known as the Ottawa Convention) to the Senate for ratification.
- Support the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.
- Learn more.
Pray
We praise you, Holy Spirit, our Advocate and Comforter. Help us to affirm life in the midst of death, supporting us as we confront the power of destruction, urging us to hammer swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, so that wolves and sheep live together in peace, life is celebrated, and creation is restored as the sphere of the living. Holy Spirit, we praise you. Help us to affirm life in the midst of death.
Adapted from Peacemaking Through Worship, Volume II, Jane Parker Huber, editor; Produced by the PresbyterianPeacemaking Program, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
General Assembly Policy
Presbyterian General Assemblies have called for the U.S. to address the use of landmines. The 214th General Assembly (2002) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) directed the Stated Clerk to once again petition the president of the United States, the secretary of state and the members of the United States to take every necessary step to assure United States ratification of the Ottawa Convention in this Year of Our Lord 2002 and to join with the countries that have already taken the lead in the banning of antipersonnel land mines and are engaged in the removal of those antipersonnel land mines that have already been distributed.