There are guidelines and UN documents and resolutions stressing the specific need to implement gender perspectives and considerations in mine action programmes:

• The UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000) on “Women, Peace and Security” specifically emphasises “the need for all parties to ensure that mine clearance and mine awareness programmes take into account the special needs of women and girls”.

• The United Nations published a revised version of the Gender Guidelines for Mine Action Programmes in March 2010;

• The UN Department of Disarmament Affairs (DDA) has called attention to the need to take gender perspectives into account in landmine programmes; and

• Both the Beijing Platform for Action in 1995 and the 1998 Commission on the Status of Women highlighted the special concerns of women in mine affected areas.

• The Cartagena Action Plan 2010-2014 of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production, Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction (APMBC, adopted in 1997) mentions gender as a guiding principle in the introduction and in relation to Clearance, Risk Education, Victim Assistance, Cooperation and assistance, Sex and age disaggreagated data and Reporting.

• The Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM, adopted in 2008) is the only disarmament treaty that specifically underlines the importance of gender, for instance it recognises in its preamble “the need to provide age- and gender-sensitive assistance to cluster munition victims and to address the special needs of vulnerable groups”. The Vientiane Action Plan (VAP) of the CCM adopted in November 2010 at the First Meeting of States Parties in Lao PDR also includes gender issues in several action points.

• For a detailed analysis of gender in APMBC and CCM Action Plans click here