After two decades of steadily diminishing casualty numbers, people being killed or injured by explosive hazards has leapt to a reported high of 8600 per year.
As the world marked the International Mine Awareness Day on Wednesday, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged governments to provide political and financial support to keep up the vital work of mine action wherever it is needed. In June 2014, over 1,000 state and non-governmental representatives of the international community gathered in Maputo, Mozambique, and set, through the “Maputo+15 Declaration,” a target of a landmine-free world by 2025.
In a video message for the annual April 4 observance, the UN chief spoke about how mines prevent works of peace and development.
“An unprecedented volume of landmines and unexploded weapons contaminates rural and urban war zones, maiming and killing innocent civilians long after conflict has ended,” Guterres said.
On December 8, 2005, the UN General Assembly designated April 4 each year as the International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action.
The theme for this year’s observance is “Advancing Protection, Peace and Development.”
Noting that that roads cleared of explosive devices enable peacekeepers to patrol and protect civilians, Guterres stressed that mine action is vital. He said that when “fields are cleared and schools and hospitals are made safe normal life can resume.” In 2018, according to the annual Landmine Monitor, nearly 7,000 people globally were killed or injured by landmines, over half of which were children. But the harms of unexploded ordnance are far more expansive than that statistic represents.
Though insufficient data prevents an estimate of the total area contaminated by landmines and unexploded ordnance globally, the number is unquestionably thousands of square miles. At least 11 countries are deemed to have “massive contamination” – that is, contaminated territory totaling more than 100 km2. In these contaminated areas, civilians cannot live, farm, work, or otherwise inhabit – displacing previous residents and hindering economic development. Thousands of square miles of potentially rich farmland are rendered inaccessible, undermining food security and livelihoods. Moreover, because the exact location of landmines is not always known, great masses of land are inaccessible despite likely being landmine-free. For example, the Ethiopian government has declared a total of 1,056 square kilometers contaminated, but reports that it expects only about two percent of this area to actually contain mines.
Angola – one of the world’s most heavily mined nations – also illustrates this dilemma. Despite having an “abundance of fertile soils, biodiversity, vast water resources, aquatic biological and natural resources all over the country,” according to the Food and Agriculture Organization, Angola imports an estimated 80 percent of its food, and food insecurity is acute for many of its citizens. Mine contamination is a key contributor to its agricultural underproduction. The Angolan government has reported that roughly 1,000 mine-contaminated areas remain in the country. Of these, over half (571) cause agricultural blockages, 118 cause road blockages, 105 create infrastructure blockages, and 88 disrupt water access. These blockages undermine agricultural expansion, rural market development, and food security, with a particular impact on small, local farmers.
Landmines also plague millions of refugees and internally displaced people around the world. While escalating combat often drives them away from their homes, it is landmines that often keeps them away, or threatens them upon their return.
Landmine contamination disrupts economies, exacerbates food insecurity, displaces communities, and challenges access to transportation, water, and other infrastructure. For 60 million people around the world, mines impose on nearly every aspect of life, presenting a constant risk.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) particularly appealed for Syria on the International Mine Awareness Day saying mine clearance there is a matter of urgency.
They said more than 8 million people in Syria, including over 3 million children, are exposed to explosive hazards.
British actor Daniel Craig, known for his role as James Bond, who is the UN Global Advocate for the Elimination of Mines and other Explosive Hazards, stated that landmines, grenades, missiles and other explosive weapons are a “deadly legacy” of conflict in places such as Cambodia, Somalia, Iraq and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
He noted that “after two decades of steadily diminishing casualty numbers, people being killed or injured by explosive hazards has leapt to a reported high of 8600 per year.” He regarded this “an unimaginable figure and almost certainly an undercount”.
Craig said that on International Mine Awareness Day, the world remembers and pays tribute to the thousands of teachers providing risk education, and the deminers around the globe who devote their lives to making the world a safer place — not just for now but for generations to come.
According to the UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS), mine action, including clearance, risk education and assistance to victims is critical for advancing protection, peace and development.
According to the UN Secretary-General, “In our turbulent world, mine action is a concrete step towards peace.” Myanmar is the only government whose security forces deployed landmines in the last year, according to a new report that flags “exceptionally high” global casualty numbers from mines and other explosives despite a widely adopted ban on the weapons.
The Landmine Monitor report, tallied nearly 6,900 casualties from landmines and other explosives in 2018, largely driven by conflicts in Afghanistan, Mali, Myanmar, Nigeria, Syria, and Ukraine. Sri Lanka has cleared most of its landmines.
The report – an accounting of casualties and global stockpiles, as well as on progress towards mine removal and victim assistance – is released annually by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. The coalition of NGOs spearheaded the anti-mine movement, leading to the 1997 treaty that banned the weapon’s use.
The coalition says 164 countries have signed on to the treaty. But 33 others have not, including some of the world’s largest stockpilers of landmines: the United States, Russia, China, Pakistan, and India. From mid-2018 to October 2019, government security forces deployed mines in only one country, Myanmar, underscoring the ongoing conflicts raging on multiple fronts in the Southeast Asian nation. The Landmine Monitor report says there’s evidence of landmine casualties in previously uncontaminated areas.
Ongoing conflicts in parts of Kachin and northern Shan States also continue to trap civilians, and a surge in landmine use is also fuelling a migrant exodus in some areas.
Anti-government groups in Afghanistan, India, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Yemen also used the weapons. Researchers said they were unable to confirm allegations of landmine use in Cameroon, Colombia, Libya, Mali, the Philippines, Somalia, and Tunisia.
Afghanistan, where the civilian toll continues to hover near record highs as its conflict intensifies, topped the list of landmine casualties in 2018.
Even though most countries have signed on to the landmine ban, there’s still a large global stockpile among treaty signatories, which are allowed to retain mines “for training and research”. Still, these totals are just a fraction of the stockpiles held by countries who haven’t signed on: Russia’s cache of anti-personnel mines is estimated to be at least 26.5 million.
The UN has called for continued efforts by States, with the assistance of the United Nations and relevant organizations, to foster the establishment and development of national mine-action capacities in countries where mines and explosive remnants of war constitute a serious threat to the safety, health and lives of the civilian population, or an impediment to social and economic development at the national and local levels.
For over 20 years, the work of the United Nations Mine Action Service has been driven by the needs of affected people and tailored to the threat of explosive hazards faced by civilians, peacekeepers and humanitarians.
UNMAS works to save lives, to facilitate deployment of UN missions and the delivery of humanitarian assistance, to protect civilians, to support the voluntary return of the internally displaced and refugees, to enable humanitarian and recovery activities and to advocate for international humanitarian and human rights law.
The United Nations advocates for the universalization of existing legal frameworks and encourages Member States to expand those regimes and develop new international instruments to protect civilians from the scourges of landmines and explosive remnants of war. It undertakes this work in collaboration with interested states, civil society, mine action and international organizations.
Since the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction, commonly known as the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention opened for signature in 1997, 164 countries have ratified or acceded to it.
In addition to anti-personnel mines, challenges remain with respect to all other explosive remnants of war. On 12 November 2006, the Secretary-General welcomed the entry into force of Protocol V on explosive remnants of war from the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons and reiterated his call for its universalization and implementation. In December 2008, the Secretary-General welcomed the opening for signature of the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which was joined by 108 states.
In 2018 UNMAS convened, coordinated and led the drafting of the United Nations Mine Action Strategy 2019-2023. Two of the most significant aspects of the Strategy are that it represents an accountability framework for the United Nations system and introduces a Theory of Change for the United Nations engagement in mine action.
In April 2015, the UN Secretary-General designated the renowned actor Daniel Craig as the first UN Global Advocate for the Elimination of Mines and Explosive Hazards.
As the Global Advocate, Craig supports the UN Secretary-General by engaging in public advocacy to promote the vision of the United Nations to achieve a world free of the threat of mines and explosive hazards and to assist in mobilizing resources for the UN Trust Fund for Assistance in Mine Action
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