Vatican City, Aug 7, 2005 / 22:00 pm
During his address at the 11th session of the Convention for the prohibition or limitation of the use of some conventional weapons that can produce excessive or indiscriminate traumatic effects, the Holy See’s representative, Archbishop Silvano Maria Tomasi, called for a moratorium on the production and use of hidden weapons, especially antipersonnel mines.
The archbishop noted that the use of certain armaments in numerous conflicts following World War II allow us today “to make objective judgments from the standpoint of humanitarian international law, as well as from a strictly pragmatic point of view, about the consequences of the use of an entire category of arms,” especially antipersonnel mines.
Archbishop Tomasi underscored that numerous humanitarian organizations have shown that today there is need “to seriously reflect on the legitimacy of the use of mines.”
“The dead and wounded victims of mines number in the millions,” he said, noting as well the difficulty they pose for refugees who wish to return to their homelands and for the development of those countries contaminated by unexploded mines.