wfn.org | Churches Are Asked to Ring Bells on March 1 for Land-Mine Ban

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17-February-1999 
99069 
    World's Churches Are Asked to Ring Bells 
    on March 1 for Land-Mine Ban 
 
    by Edmund Doogue 
 
GENEVA--Monday, March 1, is almost certain to be the date of the biggest 
bell-ringing event in history when churches celebrate the implementation of 
the Ottawa Mine Ban Treaty. 
 
    Churches in many countries, including Brazil, the United States, the 
United Kingdom, France, Italy and Switzerland, have already announced they 
will ring their bells on March 1.  The International Campaign to Ban 
Land-Mines hopes within the next two weeks to enlist more churches around 
the world to join the project. 
 
    David Hillman, campaigns officer for the UK Working Group on Land-Mines 
told ENI in a telephone interview from London on Feb. 12 that people should 
not think that  March 1 "is like the end of apartheid, something which we 
can tick off the list.  Anyone who thinks about this issue must realize 
that it's as important as ever." 
 
    The bell ringing would not only celebrate the implementation of the 
treaty, but would also express a commitment to continue the campaign to get 
more countries to sign the treaty, he suggested. 
 
    Although 133 countries have signed the Ottawa Mine Ban Treaty, 
land-mines in many parts of the world continue to maim and kill.  "The 
reality is that widespread land-mine contamination causes approximately 
24,000 deaths and injuries every year -- that is, one man, woman or child 
every 20 minutes,"  Hillman said.  "Apart from a seemingly never-ending 
line of amputees, each with their own tragic story, land-mines are an 
ongoing developmental disaster depriving people from the poorest countries 
of the land they need to survive." 
 
    Hillman is the original source of the proposal to have churches ring 
their bells on March 1. 
 
    Rebecca Larson, secretary for research and development education at the 
Lutheran World Federation's (LWF) headquarters in Geneva, told ENI that at 
a meeting in Ottawa, Canada, in December 1997, 122 countries had signed the 
Ottawa Mine Ban Treaty.  The total number of 
countries which had now signed was 133, but 50 others had not signed, 
including the United States and China, she said. 
 
    "There's a very active campaign in the U.S., and on March 1 there will 
be pressure on President [Bill] Clinton for the US to sign," said Larson, 
LWF representative on the coordination committee of the International 
Campaign to Ban Land-mines. 
 
    Of more than 1,000 non-governmental organizations which are grouped in 
the International Campaign, more than a third are Christian churches, 
church-related organizations or organizations representing other faiths, 
according to Larson.  "Throughout the past five years there has been a 
significant spiritual element in the campaign, and at the intergovernmental 
meetings regarding the treaty there has been ecumenical and interfaith 
prayer for the ban on land-mines, for the de-miners, and for the victims 
and survivors of land-mines," she said. 
 
    She added that the LWF and the World Council of Churches, both based in 
Geneva, had played an important role in promoting the Ottawa Mine Ban 
Treaty ban. 
 
    The issue of land-mines, she added, was one which lent itself to 
cooperation between churches because it was a humanitarian question.  "And 
because churches are on the ground in many of these countries [where 
land-mines have been laid], it's a pastoral issue.  It's also a 
development issue -- if the roads are mined, if the land is mined, then 
even after a war ends, people cannot live in peace because the war 
continues in the ground." 
 
    Larson told ENI that with the treaty in force, the process of 
"de-mining" around the world would take several decades. 
 
    She urged churches to ring their bells on March 1 to: 
 
      Celebrate the entering into force of the Ottawa Mine Ban Treaty; 
      Warn that the issue of land-mines is not over and will not be over 
until all countries sign the ban, until the casualty rate is reduced to 
zero and the world is rid of all land-mines 
      Grieve for all the victims and survivors of landmines. 
 
    In many countries churches will ring bells at noon local time on March 
1.  However, churches in capital cities world-wide will be asked to ring 
bells at 12 noon GMT. 
 
    According to Hillman, "we are appealing to churches and to bell-ringers 
throughout the UK, Europe and the wider world to commemorate this day with 
either a peal or a quarter-peal.  We are asking for two sorts of ringing. 
The first to be celebratory, the second reflecting upon the victims 
and survivors of mine accidents, and the ongoing horror that land-mines 
exact upon innocent lives, to be rung half-muffled." 
 
    Hillman added that the Guinness Book of Records had already expressed 
interest in the March 1 event's possibility of creating a bell-ringing 
record.  However, Hillman added, this record was likely to be overtaken 
within a matter of months by bell-ringing planned at the start of the third 
millennium. 

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