NEW YORK — "I heard a thundering sound and saw darkness all around me. I spent three months in the hospital, and lost my leg and my son. I had stepped on a landmine and the world as I knew it had come to a halting end," wrote Monica Piloya, chairperson of the Gulu/Amuru Landmine Survivors' Network in northern Uganda — one of thousands of women who have been maimed by landmines.
On Nov. 30, 15 Nobel Peace laureates sent a letter to U.S. President Barack Obama, urging him to have the United States join the ban on antipersonnel landmines. The U.S. is still one of 39 states that remain outside the treaty. The 10h Meeting of the States Parties to the Mine Ban Treaty was held at the United Nations in Geneva last week. The U.S. attended as an observer delegation.
Mrs. Piloya's ordeal didn't end: "I returned to live with my husband, but everything had changed. He verbally abused me, telling me I was useless, helpless. My in-laws told him, 'Monica is disabled, get another woman.' After a year, my husband left. I was four months pregnant at the time and struggling to care for my older child as well."