Today I am launching an international effort to ban antipersonnel landmines....The United States will lead a global effort to eliminate these terrible weapons and to stop the enormous loss of human life. — President Bill Clinton, May 16, 1996 Despite the Clinton Administration's attempts to lay claim to the mantle of global leadership in the effort to ban antipersonnel landmines, the United States has refused to ban—or even formally suspend—the production of antipersonnel mines. From 1985 through 1996, the U.S. produced more than four million new antipersonnel mines. At the same time that President Clinton was urging the rest of the world to move toward the total elimination of the weapon, the Pentagon was awarding contracts to dozens of U.S. companies to manufacture antipersonnel mines to replace those used in the Persian Gulf War. The U.S. currently has a stockpile of 15 million antipersonnel mines, although three million older mines are scheduled to be destroyed by the end of 1999.

1. The USCBL, a coalition of more than 180 non- governmental organizations across the country, is part of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), which has been nominated for the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize. Human Rights Watch serves as the chair of the Steering Committee of the USCBL.

In this report, Human Rights Watch—as part of a coordinated national effort to promote a total ban on antipersonnel landmines—identifies forty-seven U.S. companies that have been involved in the manufacture of antipersonnel mines, their components, or delivery systems. That is more than twice the number of companies previously acknowledged by the Department of Defense (DoD). This report is to be the basis for a "stigmatization" campaign by the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines (USCBL) to press all companies that have been involved in antipersonnel mine production in the past to renounce any future activities related to antipersonnel mine production. As a result of our research and dialogue with the manufacturers, seventeen of the forty-seven companies have already agreed to Human Rights Watch's call to renounce any future involvement in antipersonnel mine production. Motorola was the first, and the most visible, to renounce in June 1996. Others include Hughes Aircraft, Olin Ordnance, Kemet, Microsemi, AVX, and Dyno Nobel.1

Some of the largest companies that have declined to renounce future involvement in antipersonnel landmine production are General Electric, Alliant Techsystems, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Thiokol. Some companies that have declined to renounce future involvement in production are now involved in developing technology to detect, remove, and destroy uncleared antipersonnel mines, including Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Mohawk, and Ensign-Bickford. In the U.S., no single company is responsible for the production of antipersonnel mines from beginning to end. The Pentagon will usually award a contract to one large company which will in turn buy component parts from many other companies. Final assembly of mines is often done in government-owned, contractor-operated Army Ammunition factories. Thus, the landmine industry in the U.S. consists more of component suppliers than "mine producers" per se. Some companies that have supplied components for antipersonnel mines objected to their inclusion in this report by claiming that they are not "mine producers." Human Rights Watch has identified many electronics companies that have sold millions of tiny components for use in antipersonnel mines. Many of these components can also be used in any number of consumer appliances and products, from pagers to refrigerators. Human Rights Watch has asked U.S. companies to make every effort to insure that their products are not used in antipersonnel mines, so that the same chips that power children's computers in the U.S. do not end up in landmines that might one day blow up children in another country. The forty-seven companies are located in twenty-three states. Six of the companies are foreign-owned. Individual companies have profited from landmine contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Alliant Techsystems, in Hopkins, Minnesota, appears to be the largest recipient of landmine production contracts. DoD records show that Alliant won $336,480,000 in antipersonnel and antitank landmine production contracts from 1985 to 1995. Alliant is also the parent company of Accudyne Corporation, in Janesville, Wisconsin, which reaped an estimated $150 million in landmine production contracts in the same time period.