Policy

The Czech Republic signed the Mine Ban Treaty on 3 December 1997 and ratified it on 26 October 1999, becoming a State Party on 1 April 2000. National implementation legislation entered into force on 3 December 1999 and the criminal code was amended to provide penal sanctions for violations of the treaty.

The Czech Republic submits annual Mine Ban Treaty Article 7 reports. It attends meetings of the treaty semi-regularly, but did not attend the Third Review Conference in Maputo in June 2014. It did attend the Seventeenth Meeting of States Parties in Geneva in November 2018 and the intersessional meetings in Geneva in June 2019, but did not provide a statement at either meeting.

In December 2018, the Czech Republic voted in favor of UN General Assembly (UNGA) Resolution 73/61 promoting implementation of the Mine Ban Treaty, as it has done in previous years.[1]

The Czech Republic is party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons and its Amended Protocol II on landmines and Protocol V on explosive remnants of war. It is also party to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

Production, transfer, use, and stockpiling

The Czech Republic completed destruction of its stockpile of 324,412 antipersonnel mines on 15 June 2001, far in advance of its 1 April 2004 treaty-mandated destruction deadline. The Czech Republic initially retained 4,849 mines for training and development purposes, which was reduced to 2,180 by the end of 2018.[2]

The former Czechoslovakia was a significant producer and exporter of arms, including antipersonnel mines. The Czech Republic inherited the landmine production facilities when the country divided.[3] Czechoslovak state factories produced ten types of antipersonnel landmines: the PP-Mi-Ba, the PP-Mi-D, the PP-Mi-D II, the PP-Mi-Sb, the PP-Mi-Sr, the PP-Mi-Sr II, the PP-Mi-St-46, the PP-Mi-Na, the PP-Mi-S1, and the PP-Mi-Sk.[4] Czechoslovakian mines were widely exported and used in Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, the former East Germany, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Namibia, Nicaragua, Somalia, South Africa, and Zambia.[5] Production ceased in 1989. The Czech Republic imposed a three-year moratorium on antipersonnel mine exports in October 1994, and extended it indefinitely in November 1997.

The Czech Republic has no known mined areas, but unexploded ordnance (UXO) from World War II are still found. In 2004, the Czech Republic finished clearing two military areas contaminated by World War II UXO.