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Something else I am concerned about: Landmines. Antipersonnel landmines are still being laid today. These - and mines from previous conflicts - continue to claim victims in every corner of the globe each day. The situation has improved in recent years, but a global mine crisis remains and there is still a lot to be done before we live in a mine-free world. Please sign the Mine Ban Treaty at: http://www.icbl.org/treaty/people
Indiscriminate: Antipersonnel mines cannot be aimed: they do not distinguish between the footfall of a soldier or a child. They lie dormant until a person or animal triggers their detonating mechanism. Then, landmines kill or injure civilians, soldiers, peacekeepers and aid workers alike.
Inhumane: When triggered, a landmine unleashes unspeakable destruction.A landmine blast causes injuries like blindness, burns, destroyed limbs and shrapnel wounds. Sometimes the victim dies from the blast, due to loss of blood or because they don’t get to medical care in time. Those who survive and receive medical treatment often require amputations, long hospital stays and extensive rehabilitation.
The injuries are no accident, since landmines are designed to maim rather than kill their victims.
Stolen lives, limbs and livelihoods. Mine deaths and injuries over the past decades now total in the hundreds of thousands. It is estimated that there are between 15,000 and 20,000 new casualties caused by landmines and unexploded ordnance each year. That means there are some 1,500 new casualties each month, more than 40 new casualties a day, at least two new casualties per hour. Most of the casualties are civilians and most live in countries that are now at peace. In Cambodia, for example there are over 45,000 landmine survivors recorded between 1979 and 2005. Some 20,000 people were killed in this period. More than 75 % of the total casualties were civilians. (Source: Landmine Monitor Report 2005)
Development disaster: Landmines deprive people in some of the poorest countries of land and infrastructure.
Once there is peace most soldiers will be demobilized and give in their guns, mines however don't recognize a cease-fire. They hold up the repatriation of refugees and displaced people. They also hamper reconstruction and the delivery of aid. Assistance to landmine survivors can be an enormous strain on resources. Landmine casualties deprive communities and families of breadwinners. Mines also kill livestock and wild animals and wreak environmental havoc.
Landmines are everywhere: Every region in the world is mine-affected. More than 80 countries are affected to some degree by landmines and/or unexploded ordnance. Nobody knows how many mines are in the ground. But the actual number is less important than their impact: it can take only two or three mines or the mere suspicion of their presence to render a patch of land.
Some of the most contaminated places are Afghanistan, Angola, Burundi, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Cambodia, Chechnya, Colombia, Iraq, Nepal and Sri Lanka . Some countries with a mine problem don’t provide much public information about the extent of the problem such as Myanmar (Burma), India or Pakistan.
Still work to be done: Sadly, antipersonnel landmines are still being planted today and minefields dating back decades continue to lie in wait of innocent victims. Vast stockpiles of landmines remain in warehouses around the world and a handful of countries still produce the weapon. For information about a country or region's mine problem see the country pages: www.icbl.org/country and the annual Landmine Monitor report: www.icbl.org/lm
"I would like you to give a message. Please do your best to tell the world what is happening to us, the children. So that other children don't have to pass through this violence." The 15-year-old girl who ended an interview to Amnesty International with this plea was forcibly abducted at night from her home by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), an armed opposition movement fighting the Ugandan Government. She was made to kill a boy who tried to escape. She saw another boy being hacked to death for not raising the alarm when a friend ran away. She was beaten when she dropped a water container and ran for cover under gunfire. She received 35 days of military training and was sent to fight the government army.
The use of children as soldiers has been universally condemned as abhorrent and unacceptable. Yet over the last ten years hundreds of thousands of children have fought and died in conflicts around the world.
Children involved in armed conflict are frequently killed or injured during combat or while carrying out other tasks. They are forced to engage in hazardous activities such as laying mines or explosives, as well as using weapons. Child soldiers are usually forced to live under harsh conditions with insufficient food and little or no access to healthcare. They are almost always treated brutally, subjected to beatings and humiliating treatment. Punishments for mistakes or desertion are often very severe.
Girl soldiers are particularly at risk of rape, sexual harassment and abuse as well as being involved in combat and other tasks. Please go to: http://www.child-soldiers.org/links for more information.
The threat to civilians from cluster munitions is two-fold:
1. First there is the immediate threat from bomblets or submunitions dispersed by the cluster munition that stray away from military targets and kill and injure civilians. Because of the very wide area nature of this weapon type and the difficulty of containing its effects, this is an unacceptable risk under the principles of International Humanitarian Law. Because cluster munitions strike an area wider then the individual target or targets of the weapon, when used in or near populated areas, cluster munitions guarantee civilian casualties.
The --- footprint --- or impact area of a cluster munition can reach over a square kilometre. When these weapons are being fired more and more frequently from land-based artillery with unguided rockets delivering hundreds of thousands of submunitions, sometimes at a distance of over 20 kilometres, it is easy to imagine the potential for inaccuracy and indiscriminate effects.
2. Secondly there is the post-conflict threat from bomblets or submunitions that fail to explode on impact. These relatively small explosive remnants of war are highly explosive, usually fragmentation weapons and sometimes very sensitive to contact. While all explosive remnants of war (ERW) threaten the lives and livelihoods of the people that live with them, cluster munitions generate a particularly dangerous type of ERW. The main reason for this is that their use in such high numbers (sometimes in the hundreds of thousands of bomblets or submunitions) means the contamination they produce is very dense.
Because of this, unexploded cluster munitions can deny land to civilians in the same way as landmines. However, unlike landmines, cluster munitions are designed to kill, and an explosion from a cluster munition bomblet or submunition can kill anyone within 50 metres. Cluster munitions also have a tendency to leave sub-surface contamination from ERW because of their small nature. This is exacerbated when they are used over soft terrain such as recently ploughed farmland. Another often reported property of cluster munitions that amplifies their threat is the small and often attractive aspect they present to children. For more information go to: http://www.stopclustermunitions.org