The Ottawa Treaty, formally the Convention on the Prohibition of Anti-Personnel Mines, was opened for signature in a rapid diplomatic campaign led by Canada and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. Jody Williams and her coalition received the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize on the same day in Oslo, underscoring the treaty's grassroots origins. It has since been ratified by over 160 nations, though the United States, Russia, and China remain outside it.
The campaign to ban landmines began not in government ministries but among aid workers and doctors who had seen the weapons' toll firsthand: farmers missing limbs, children maimed decades after wars had ended, fields rendered unusable for generations. Jody Williams, an American activist, helped organize the International Campaign to Ban Landmines in 1992, coordinating hundreds of nongovernmental organizations across dozens of countries into a unified political force.
Canada's foreign minister, Lloyd Axworthy, seized on the momentum and launched what became known as the 'Ottawa Process,' a fast-track diplomatic effort that bypassed the slower UN Conference on Disarmament. In barely fourteen months, the process produced a treaty text, and on December 10, 1997, representatives from more than 120 countries signed the Convention on the Prohibition of Anti-Personnel Mines in Oslo.
The timing was deliberate: that same day, in the same city, Williams and her campaign received the Nobel Peace Prize for their work. The treaty prohibited the use, stockpiling, production, and transfer of anti-personnel mines and required destruction of existing stockpiles. It remains one of the most successful examples of civil society reshaping international law, though major military powers, including the United States, Russia, and China, have never signed it.