Policy

The Republic of Tunisia signed the Mine Ban Treaty on 4 December 1997 and ratified on 9 July 1999, becoming a State Party on 1 January 2000.

Tunisia has listed 10 laws that it considers implementation measures for the Mine Ban Treaty.[1]

Tunisia submitted its annual Article 7 transparency report in 2018, covering the period from April 2017 to April 2018.[2]

Tunisia has participated in most past meetings of the convention, but did not attend the Meetings of States Parties in 2016 and 2017.

Production, transfer, stockpile destruction, and retention

Tunisia has never produced or exported antipersonnel mines, but has imported them in the past.[3] Tunisia completed the destruction of 18,259 stockpiled antipersonnel mines in September 2003.[4]

In its initial declaration in July 2000, Tunisia reported retaining 5,000 antipersonnel mines (4,000 PMA-3 and 1,000 PROM-1) for purposes permitted under Article 3 of the Mine Ban Treaty.[5] In its Article 7 report submitted in 2018, Tunisia reported that it retains 4,460 mines for training and that 49 mines were used for training purposes during the April 2017 to April 2018 reporting period.[6] Tunisia has not specified the type of retained mines that it has destroyed, nor has it reported in detail on the intended purposes and actual uses of retained mines, as agreed by States Parties in 2004.

Use

Since April 2013, new use of improvised mines by non-state armed groups has been reported during the Tunisian armed forces’ ongoing operations against Islamist rebel forces in the region of Jebel Al-Cha’anby in Qsrein Wilaya/Kasserine governorate near the Algerian border.[7]

New casualties caused by victim-activated improvised mines continue to occur in 2018 in the Jebal Al-Cha’anby area.[8] The Monitor cannot confirm when the improvised mines were laid.[9] (See the Casualty and Victim Assistance profile for more details.)

Previously, in May 2013, the Ministry of Defense stated that the mines laid at Jebel Al-Cha’anby were homemade mines constructed from a plastic container with a chemical initiator, making detection difficult.[10] A spokesperson said, “the mines that exploded were made of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and flammable materials that can easily explode when exposed to heat.”[11]

In May 2013, a police official told Human Rights Watch (HRW) that the late April casualties were caused by “artisanal” (or homemade) antipersonnel mines that exploded horizontally, and from this description, the mines would appear to be homemade tripwire-initiated explosive devices similar to Claymore mines.[12] Tunisia has not reported on the contamination by improvised landmines in its annual Article 7 transparency report.