Things That Go Boom

Despite being banned, anti-personnel landmines and unexploded submunitions still litter fields from Bosnia to Bangladesh. And they’re even being used in Ukraine. Does that mean the treaties that ban their use aren’t working? Experts say the story isn’t so simple, and that, actually, the treaties to ban these weapons have shown a new way forward: one where norms stigmatize the return to these weapons and constrain even the biggest superpowers.

But what will it take to clean up the mess left behind? And can anti-nuclear activists repeat the party trick?

GUESTS: Treasa Dunworth Associate Professor of Law, University of Auckland; Matthew Breay Bolton, Professor of Political Science, Pace University; Sera Koulabdara, Executive Director, Legacies of War; Alex van Roy, Chief Operations Officer, FSD

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

How War Changes Land: Soil Fertility, Unexploded Bombs, and the Underdevelopment of Cambodia, Erin Lin, American Journal of Political Science

Political Minefields: The Struggle Against Automatic Killing, Matthew Breay Bolton, Bloomsbury Academic

Humanitarian Disarmament: An Historical Inquiry, Treasa Dunworth, Cambridge University Press

Legacies Library: Resources on the Secret War in Laos