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 dozens of 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.
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Deadly weapon: a barely visible landmine in Cambodia. |
Did you know...?
- More than 70 states are believed to be affected by mines1
- At least 25 states are affected by uncleared submunitions1
- Explosions in poorly managed ammunition storage areas killed and injured many hundreds of people in 2007 and 2008, contaminating previously safe land1
- More than a third of central Vietnam is still contaminated by unexploded ordnance2
- Nearly 100,000 households in Burundi are thought to possess small arms and light weapons, increasing the risk of a return to conflict at a time of ongoing political insecurity3
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[Sources: 1Landmine Monitor; 2Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation (VVAF) and
the Vietnamese Ministry of Defense’s Technology Center for Bomb and
Mine Disposal (BOMICEN); 3Small 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 takes into account all small arms
and light weapons, and also grenades.]
Conflict Recovery: an introduction to MAG
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