Landmines

Trillium Asset Management Corporation (“Trillium”) is the co-sponsor of a shareholder proposal urging General Electric to renounce any involvement in producing landmines.
Landmines are weapons of little or no military value. They are used principally as weapons of terror against civilians — planted, for example, in fields and wells to discourage settlers. The effect is devastating. Twenty-two thousand persons are maimed or killed by landmines every year. Ninety percent are civilians and 20-30% children). Entire communities have been turned into refugee populations who cannot return to their mined homelands.

Fortunately, anti-landmine activists are waging a multi-front “war” of their own against these heinous and indiscriminate weapons. Building a movement that grew with extraordinary speed via the Internet , the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) launched a push for the Mine Ban Treaty in the early 1990s, which has now been ratified by 101 nations. (One hundred thirty-eight countries have signed, but not ratified the treaty.) Unfortunately, the U.S., Russia and China are not among them.

In 1997, Human Rights Watch, an ICBL affiliate organization, identified and wrote to 47 companies that manufacture (or had in the past manufactured) land mines or their components, calling upon them to renounce firmly any future involvement in the business. Nineteen companies, including Motorola, took the pledge. The most prominent company not to create a firm anti-landmine policy is General Electric.