Imagine if, somewhere outside your front door, there is a powerful explosive weapon waiting patiently for you, or a member of your family, to disturb it. Because it’s hidden from view, avoiding it is a constant game of chance.
There could be one of them. There could be 100. You don’t know how many there are and neither does anyone else.
Every day millions of people live with this fear. And every day people die or suffer horrific injuries from abandoned weapons left behind after conflict.
Landmines, grenades, missiles and cluster bombs do not discriminate between soldiers and civilians, between adults and children.
Did you know?
• A total of 66 states and seven other areas are thought to be affected by landmines1.
• Seventy per cent of casualties from landmines and explosive remnants of war are civilians1.
• At least 23 states and three other areas are believed to be currently contaminated with cluster munition remnants2.
• More than a third of central Vietnam is still contaminated by unexploded ordnance (UXO) 3.
• Approximately 25 per cent of villages in Lao PDR are contaminated with UXO4.
• Nearly 100,000 households in Burundi were thought to possess small arms and light weapons in 2007, with some households possessing more than one weapon5.
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Sources:
1 Landmine Monitor 2010 [external link]
2 Cluster Munition Monitor 2010 [external link]
3 Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation (VVAF) and the Vietnamese Ministry of Defense’s Technology Center for Bomb and Mine Disposal (BOMICEN)
4 National Regulatory Authority for UXO/Mine Action in Lao PDR [external link]
5 Small Arms in Burundi, Disarming the Civilian Population in Peacetime, A Study by the Small Arms Survey and the Ligue Iteka with support from the UNDP-Burundi and Oxfam-NOVIB, Stéphanie Pézard and Nicolas Florquin, August 2007. This estimate took into account all small arms and light weapons, and also grenades.
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