Mr. Speaker, land mines and anti-personnel devices are a humanitarian disaster. There are over 100 million of them seeded in over 60 countries of the world. From Mozambique to Chechnya, from Cambodia to Angola they lie silently in wait for their next victim.
They cost between $30 and $70 to make and are made by such countries as the United States, Italy and even Canada. Most are designed to maim and not kill, and some are even designed to look like toys so that children will pick them up and get their arms blown off. This is a perverted logic if ever there was one.
The majority of the victims are innocent women and children.
In developing countries wracked by civil war, it costs between $300 and $700 to remove them. Last year we removed 85,000 but seeded two million at the same time.
I put a private members' bill forward on September 21 asking the House to ban land mines and anti-personnel devices. I hope for the sake of the most impoverished people in the world the House joins hands to do just that.