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Wired activists find strength in cyberspace
By CNN Interactive Writer KC Wildmoon
(CNN) -- In 1991, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines was a group of three people wanting to do something about anti-personnel devices. Six years later, it is network of 1,000 organizations which has managed to sell more than 120 countries on a worldwide ban.
Credit for the formidable task goes in large part to Jody Williams, coordinator for ICBL, which shared with her the Nobel peace prize. But credit also goes to cyberspace, where Williams and her staff did most of their coalition building.
Rising some mornings as early as 3:30, Williams spent much of the last year e-mailing pleas and dispatches from her Vermont farmhouse, trying to convince yet another country to join her campaign.
Quick response team
Her approach was effective. More organizations came on board, more countries agreed to sign the treaty. By the time of the treaty conference in September, the movement had taken on a life of its own in cyberspace. E-mail was flying back and forth from Oslo, Norway, to the United States, to Cambodia, to wherever ICBL members monitored the negotiations that would eventually lead to a treaty banning land mines.
"During the treaty negotiations, (the 11 steering committee members) were receiving daily updates," said Mary Wareham, coordinator of the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines, an ICBL member organization. The updates helped keep members up to date with information about what their respective countries were doing.
With immediate information, Wareham said, the committee members could quickly respond to keep their governments in line toward the ultimate goal -- a complete ban on land mines.
It worked. On September 18, the three-week, 89 nation conference ended with a draft treaty designed to completely eliminate land mines 10 years after it goes into effect.
Mobilizing forces
Robert Muller, president of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, who launched the anti-land mine campaign, said the Internet was central to the success of the ICBL campaign. "The fact that we can move information around at immediate speed and low cost is the key to moving any massive group of people or organizations," he told the New York Times.
It wasn't always that way.
In the beginning, there was a fax machine and a phone. But e-mail quickly became the communication tool of choice. Why?
Simple, Wareham said. "It's fast, convenient, easy to use, and it's cheap."
And it's effective. "(E-mail) played a very important role," Wareham said. "We created the momentum for this political process."
From grassroots to hi-tech networks
Once e-mail became the chief means of communication, the coalition blossomed. In May 1996, ICBL was a coalition of 500 non-governmental organizations in 30 countries. Today, it has more than doubled to over 1,000 non-governmental organizations in more than 60 countries.
"When you look at how far and how fast we've moved in the last year and a half, much of that is attributable to our means of communicating," Wareham said.
The international campaign updates its member coalitions, the member coalitions update their member organizations.
"And many people out there maintain their own distribution networks," she said. "They'll forward the releases again."
And, of course, information is readily available from the campaign's home page on the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation Web site. Armed with a laptop computer, modem and cell phone, ICBL supporters traveling by bus to Ottawa for the December signing of the land mine treaty posted daily dispatches on the Internet.
White House not off the hook
It all spells a grass-roots movement fueled electronically. But it's not over yet. The treaty signed in Ottawa in December by 121 countries won't go into effect until six months after the first 40 nations have ratified it, a process expected to take two years.
And then there's the United States' refusal to sign the treaty, a major disappointment for ICBL.
No doubt the White House hasn't seen its last e-mail from the campaign that won the Nobel Peace Prize.
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Related stories:
- Anti-land mine conference opens - December 10, 1997
- Anti-land mine activists win Nobel Peace Prize - October 10, 1997
Related sites:
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- The International Campaign to Ban Landmines -- Information from one of leading organizations in the effort to secure a worldwide ban on land mines, including the text of the treaty to ban land mines drafted to be signed in December.
- U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines
- Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation
- Robert Muller
- Land mines: A deadly inheritance -- part of UNICEF's recent report, "Impact of Armed Conflict on Children," explaining how land mines hurt children throughout the world.
- Ban Land Mines Project - an extensive list of links to articles on land mines and other sites devoted to the issue from the Canada-based Physicians for Global Survival.
- The Humanitarian Foundation of People Against Landmines - land mine information from an organization dedicated to removing land mines from Angola.
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