Policy

The Kingdom of Sweden signed the Mine Ban Treaty on 3 December 1997 and ratified it on 25 November 1998, becoming a State Party on 1 May 1999. National implementation of the Mine Ban Treaty was achieved primarily by additions to existing legislation, including penal sanctions for violations of the treaty’s prohibitions, which also entered into force on 1 May 1999.[1]

Sweden has attended most meetings of the treaty, including the Third Review Conference in Maputo in June 2014. More recently, Sweden attended the Seventeenth Meeting of States Parties in Geneva in November 2018, where it provided an update on its contributions to mine action worldwide.[2] Sweden also attended the intersessional meetings in Geneva in June 2018. Sweden consistently submits annual Article 7 transparency reports.

Sweden served as co-rapporteur and then co-chair of the Standing Committee on Mine Clearance from 2003–2005, on the Committee on Cooperative Compliance from 2015–2016, and on the Committee on Enhancement of Cooperation and Assistance in 2019. Sweden also served as Vice President of the Sixteenth Meeting of States Parties in 2017.

Sweden 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 a party to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

Production, use, transfer, and stockpiling

Sweden is a former antipersonnel mine producer and exporter, and Swedish forces stockpiled antipersonnel mines. The Swedish companies FFV, Bofors, and LIAB previously produced and developed 21 different types of antipersonnel mines.

Sweden destroyed 3,365,000 stockpiled antipersonnel mines between 1996 and December 2001, including 2,348,149 after the treaty entered into force on 1 May 1999. Sweden initially announced it would retain 13,948 antipersonnel mines for training and development purposes, but revised this total upwards to 16,015 in 2003. As of the end of 2018, Sweden still retained 6,009 antipersonnel mines.[3] In May 2012, Sweden stated that “each deminer must detect and clear at least one live anti-personnel mine during training in Sweden in order to become a certified deminer.”[4]

Swedish export of antipersonnel mines was limited, mostly consisting of mine components. Bofors did export large numbers of antipersonnel mines to Germany in the 1950s and 1960s, and more than one million mines in 1971. The company exported 33,000 Mina 5 to Pakistan in 1958. Some reports indicate that these mines, apparently resold by Pakistan many years later, were deployed by mujahidin guerillas in Afghanistan.[5]