The Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May be Deemed to be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects, of 10 October 1980, established the legal framework not only to ban certain particularly cruel weapons, but also and above all to restrict their use. The article retraces the history of this treaty and its development since 1980, especially the adoption of a new protocol on blinding laser weapons and a strengthening of the provisions of Protocol II (on landmines). But after the Ottawa Treaty’s total prohibition of anti-personnel landmines in 1997, is the approach chosen by the 1980 Convention, namely to restrict the use of landmines, still justifiable? The author considers that it is.