Sri Lanka to ratify Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention

Sri Lanka on Thursday said it would ratify the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention in order to make the country mine free, Deputy Foreign Minister Harsha De Silva said.

In a media briefing in the capital, De Silva said that the demining process was an important step for the resettlement of internally displaced people and the government was committed to becoming mine free very soon.

"Sri Lanka has finished the war and we are now committed to destroy all the landmines in the country," De Silva said.

Sri Lankan troops fought a 30-year civil war with Tamil Tiger rebels which ended in May 2009, with the defeat of the rebels.

The military said that following the end of the conflict, 2064 acres of land in the country, mostly in the north and east, had to be cleared from landmines and explosives which had been buried by the rebels.

As of December, the army, together with demining agencies, had cleared 2,000 acres of land, vowing to complete the entire demining by 2020.

Thousands of minority Tamils who had been displaced by the war have already been re-settled back in the cleared areas with the help of demining agencies.

The new government of President Maithripala Sirisena has pledged to re-settle all the families affected by the war in the coming years and has already launched a national mine action program to make the country mine free. Endit