BEIRUT -- Lebanon is a country reborn, at least according to the millions of tourists flocking to Beirut and MPs who claim the Land of the Cedars is a beacon for tolerance and respect of human rights in the Middle East.
But beneath the veneer of Lebanon as a state of acceptance and civil liberty lurks a threat to natives and visitors alike, a threat which successive governments have repeatedly refused to address.
Landmines still carpet millions of square meters of Lebanese soil and, according to the country's UN Special coordinator, Lebanon cannot claim to be winning its war on human rights abuses before eradicating this subterranean scourge.
Lebanon should sign up to the Ottawa Treaty banning the use of landmines just as it has ratified the Oslo Convention outlawing cluster-bombs, Michael Williams said in an address to Lebanese parliament last week.
His call coincided with the meeting of signatory representatives from across the globe, who gathered in Columbia to review the Ottawa Treaty 10 years after its inception.
Lebanese know firsthand the devastating effects of landmines. From the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in the north, to the mine-peppered, UN-demarcated Blue Line in the south, mines pose a lethal and indiscriminate threat to farmers tilling fields, women gathering zaatar (thyme) or children simply playing in the dried grass.
But as indiscriminate as landmines are, Lebanon's approach to their continued presence is anything but.
Whereas large-scale cluster munition clearing operations have been at work since the cessation of hostilities between Lebanon and Israel in July-August 2006 -- in which Israeli warplanes carpeted much of south Lebanon with up to 4 million cluster-bomb fragments -- landmine removal has stalled.
Mines are still strewn across remote areas of the Chouf mountain range and close to the Syrian border, remnants from Lebanon's devastating 15-year Civil War, which was ended two decades ago.
Clearance in these areas has been underway for a number of years, but progress remains achingly slow as government and NGOs turn attentions to other security issues.
The reconstruction of Nahr al-Bared following clashes between the Lebanese Army and Fatah al-Islam militants in April 2007 is currently on hold, allegedly due to the presence of ancient ruins underneath the camp (not that subterranean ruins in Lebanon are normally a consideration for developers).
Landmines, too, lie beneath the ruins of the northern Palestinian camp, placed by Fatah al-Islam members and other extremists during hostilities which destroyed up to 95 percent of buildings and displaced thousands of refugees.
Lebanese security forces are not allowed into refugee camps, so any proposal for demining Nahr al-Bared has yet to be broached. Even if the political ability to remove mines existed, the will would not automatically follow in helping inhabitants who still don't have citizenship after more than 60 years in Lebanon.
Condemnation of landmine use from Lebanese politicians, army officials and NGO workers has been unequivocal, yet this blight on Lebanon persists, largely down to continuing antipathy between Beirut and Tel Aviv.
Experts argue that landmines are being deliberately left in place, particularly in the south, to serve as a deterrent to the Israeli military who originally laid them, irrespective of the negative impact the munitions have on citizen's lives and livelihoods.
If consensus is reached on a landmine ban at a governmental level, still a number of non-state actors -Fatah al-Islam and Hizbullah included - would be unlikely to agree to remove munitions and refrain from their use.
The issue of non-state arms in Lebanon has been hotly debated, with the cabinet reiterating Hizbullah's right to bear arms as part of its resistance against Israel. Landmines, however, ought to be a red line; their use in Lebanon benefits no party and risks the safety of communities various non-state actors profess to protect.
Lebanon's official policy welcomes joining Ottawa. That it is still not a member of a pact banning all landmine use, 10 years after such an agreement was forged, is a withering indictment of Lebanon's aspirations to becoming an exemplary observer of human rights.
Its government should recognize that labeling swaths of countryside "no go" areas is not a viable method of reducing the threat of landmines.
At the end of 2009, Lebanon is enjoying relative stability compared to the years marred by conflict such as in the south and Beirut in 2006 and at Nahr al-Bared in 2007.
The new coalition cabinet, after more than five months of prevarication, can finally set about improving the rights of sections of society whose treatment has historically lagged behind the rest of the population.
But as long as Lebanon refuses to embrace the Ottawa Treaty and categorically outlaw landmine use, many of its citizens will continue to suffer abuses of a fundamental prerogative - the right to safety and security.