The People’s Treaty

What is the People’s Treaty?

The Cluster Munition Coalition, in collaboration with Mines Action Canada and Handicap International, launched the People’s Treaty on 30 May – the final day of the Dublin Diplomatic Conference on Cluster Munitions after the 111 participating states unanimously adopted the new treaty.

The People’s Treaty is a petition that people across the world will be asked to sign to make sure that as many states as possible sign the new treaty in Oslo from 2-3 December 2008. It is only six months between Dublin and Oslo to ensure that countries – your country – will be ready to sign and ratify the treaty so that it can become binding international law.

How can I take part?

All campaigners are encouraged to sign the Peoples’ Treaty and to encourage others to sign it too as a campaign action after Dublin. There are two ways to sign the treaty: as an individual citizen or as a community leader representing a group, constituency, congregation or organization. Anyone can sign the People’s Treaty and everyone should. All signatures count!

http://www.minesactioncanada.org/peoples_treaty/

* Place a link on your website to the People’s Treaty directing people to sign up online
* Organise campaign actions to collect signatures for the People’s Treaty. You can download petition forms from the website. You will then need to enter the details of people who sign up at your events on the People’s Treaty website, where the global total of signatories is stored.
* Ask community leaders and VIPs to sign the People’s Treaty, providing a photo and a quote to put on the website. Leaders and VIPs could include survivors, faith leaders, members of parliament, mayors, heads of well-known organisations, sports-stars, film and TV stars, musicians, artisits, former and current military personnel, clearance operators, to name a few.

Tools and resources to organize activities and other campaign resources will be available on the website shortly, and toolkits will be distributed to campaigners in July and August. The toolkit will be available in Arabic, English, French and Spanish.

Please keep in touch with us to let us know about the actions you are holding to get people to sign up to the People’s Treaty, and send us photos of your actions for the People’s Treaty photo gallery! Let us know how many signatures you plan to collect between now and Oslo.

Background

Ten years ago on December 3rd, 1997 in Ottawa Mines Action Canada (MAC), in collaboration with campaigners from around the world, launched the first “People’s Treaty”. While inside the conference hall 122 governments signed the historic Mine Ban Treaty banning antipersonnel mines, outside ordinary citizens demonstrated their personal commitment by signing the People’s Treaty.

The People’s Treaty was born out of the tremendous ground-swell of support from citizens around the world who wanted to stop the suffering caused by antipersonnel landmines. The People’s Treaty provided a vehicle for ordinary people to also “sign” the treaty committing themselves’ to ensuring the goals of the Mine Ban Treaty are realized and ensuring their government meets its obligations. Since that time, the People’s Treaty has received hundreds of thousands of signatures from all over the globe and provided a vehicle for the International Campaign to Ban Landmines to engage the public, generate media attention and put pressure on governments.