Though the U.S. government failed to see the wisdom in eliminating a weapon that can maim and kill civilians generations after a war's end, Williams still took home the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for galvanizing in five years international support for a ban on land mines.

Williams spoke Wednesday night at Franklin & Marshall College without notes, sitting at a table before a full house at Stahr Auditorium, calmly picking at the lid to her water bottle.

She said her mother still bugs her about becoming a lawyer. She chuckled at Glamour magazine voting her one of America's 10 most important women shortly after she won the Nobel prize.

She invited e-mail, saying, "When I invite you to send e-mail, I mean it," as she nearly wrote the address on the auditorium's screen when she mistook it for a chalkboard.

Williams is more unassuming than a great many people who haven't changed the world or won a Nobel Peace Prize. She credits timing as much as her hard work for the treaty signed in Oslo in September 1997, which banned land mines for those 122 nations that signed on and guaranteed funding to help land mine victims and remove already-buried mines.

"They call them 'the eternal soldier,'"ˆ" Williams said of land mines. "They need no food, no uniform, no orders ... and they can last in the ground at least 100 years. Land mines don't care. A soldier could lay a land mine, go home after the war, and kill his own grandchild 100 years down the road."

One type of land mine is designed to bounce up when activated, so it explodes at about the height of the abdomen, eviscerating the victim, although most are designed to maim, not kill, she said.

Fifty million land mines dating back to World War II remain undetonated in the North African desert. Another 4 million are buried in Angola. Up to 6 million lie in wait in Cambodia. Altogether, eternal soldiers wait in 80 of the world's 191 countries.

The campaign by International Campaign to Ban Landmines, for which Williams is coordinator, sprang from early efforts by two nongovernmental agencies, with the United States as the lead country.

Williams said the Cold War was over and removing land mines was a pet cause of U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, her home state. Some initial legislation passed after Leahy sponsored it, which gave ICBL something to take to other nations when encouraging them to step up to the plate on the land mine issue.

But that's when the United States backed down.

"Unfortunately, (then-President Bill) Clinton believed in the eventual elimination of land mines. We believed in the elimination of land mines," Williams said. "That's the point that split us."

Williams said Clinton wanted high-tech "smart land mines" exempt from the ban, claiming they would automatically disable after time if not detonated.

U.S. absence aside, she said, the treaty is considered one of the most successful and rapid campaigns of its kind in the '90s. The unprecedented cooperative effort among governments, United Nations bodies and other NGOs made history.

But it's her I-can-do-it mindset that keeps Williams on the lecture circuit. She said her battle proves great causes require hard work, but social justice is attainable.

"People ask me, 'Why don't you stay home? You're old," Williams said. "... If every fourth time I speak, someone is touched and goes on and does something greater than me, great. That someone might be you." blog comments powered by Disqus