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If you would like to know more about the landmine situation worldwide, you may like to visit the website of
International Campaign to Ban Landmines
Each year this situation is reviewed by a team of researchers. Their findings are published in Landmine Monitor. To view the latest edition,
click here.
For full text of the Ottawa Treaty, click here
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Ten facts you need to know about landmines
- Each year, up to 20,000 new casualties are caused by landmines and unexploded ordnance: around 1,500 a month and 40 a day.
- Landmine injuries include blindness, burns, destroyed limbs and shrapnel wounds. Often the victim dies from the blast because they don't get to medical care in time. Those who do survive often need amputations, long hospital stays and extensive rehabilitation.
- Eighty five per cent of all the injured children die before they reach hospital.
- Landmines are a developmental disaster: they deny people the use of land and infrastructure. Treating survivors drains the poorest countries of scarce resources.
- Eighty two countries are affected by landmines or unexploded ordnance. No-one knows how many mines there are in the ground but their impact is dramatic: it only takes two or three mines to render a piece of land unusable and just one wrong step to transform a life.
- The most affected territories include: Afghanistan, Angola, Bosnia, Cambodia, Eritrea, Iraq, Laos, Somalia, Sri Lanka and Sudan.
- In 2003, countries where mines were still used included: Burma, Burundi, Columbia, India, Iraq, Pakistan, Philippines,Russia (Chechnya), Somalia, Sudan and Nepal.
- Fifteen countries produce or reserve the right to produce anti-personnel mines. Of these, India and Pakistan are actively engaged in new production of anti-personnel mines.
- Somewhere between 190 million and 205 million anti-personnel mines are stockpiled by states not party to the Ottawa Treaty.
- States Parties to the Ottawa Treaty are obliged to clear all mines on their territory within ten years of ratifying the Treaty.
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ANTI-PERSONNEL MINES
The Ottawa Treaty defines these as "mines designed to be exploded by the present, proximity or contact of a person, and that will capacitate, injure or kill one or more persons."
EXPLOSIVE REMNANTS OF WAR
The term ERW encompassses two types of ordnance: ordnance that fails to explode because of malfunction; and abandoned ordnance.
Download a factsheet
CLUSTER MUNITIONS
These are a specific type of ERW, consisting of a container and a submunition, often called bomblets that explode and spread on impact.
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