Author(s):
Simona Beltrami <simona@campagnamine.org> .
Tuesday 08 March 2005
A woman carries her child to a UXO Community Awareness meeting. CA teams work in many remote villages and spend up to one week living with villagers as part of the information process.UNICEF Lao PDR.
On International Women's Day, we take a look at the threats faced by women and girls in mine-affected countries and celebrate the courage of those fighting to eliminate the scourge of landmines.
On a day like any other, Wibonraat was working in the field near her home in Thailand, cutting bamboo cane. Then a landmine went off and Wibonraat’s world was turned upside down. Suddenly, she became a statistic: one of the 15 to 20.000 people who become victims to landmines every year, and one of almost 3-400.000 survivors around the world. In the accident, Wibonraat lost one leg – but she lost a lot more than that: her husband decided to leave her because of her disability.
Dramatic though it is, this case is by no means unique. In many societies, disabled women are perceived as “worthless”. They stand very little chances of getting married (an article in the Washington Post in 2003 was poignantly titled “Landmine Make Spinsters of Young Afghan Girls”), have virtually no prospect of finding a job (the unemployment rate for disabled women in developing countries is almost 100%) and end up being a burden for their families or facing a life of begging, if not worse. Moreover, in many countries, women and girls are less likely to receive medical assistance, prostheses and rehabilitation than boys and men. They just are not a priority, where resources are few.
The numbers
According to statistics provided by the International Committee of the Red Cross, women account for 10 to 15% of the total number of landmine victims. Percentages, however, vary greatly from country to country, depending on the role women play in society and on whether their daily routine is more likely to expose them to danger. In countries where women work more outside the house, farming the land or fetching water or firewood, the number of female victims is likely to increase. This is the case with Angola, where the national percentage is approximately 20%. Bosnia provides an interesting example also, showing how the number of women involved in landmine accidents shot up immediately after the war as they were forced to take up traditionally “male” roles and tasks as their husbands and fathers had been killed or wounded in the conflict.
Injury and disability, in fact, are not the only way landmines can affect women’s lives. It is usually women and girls who are in charge of taking care of injured relatives and in many cases they have to take up the burden of supporting the family economically. As reported in one study carried out by the International Labour Organization in 1998, “Evidence from Cambodia illustrates the gender dimension of disability, as disabled men relied on their wives for support, while disabled women were abandoned by their partners or had difficulty in finding one”.
Women and mine action
Awareness of the plight of women living in mined areas has led to growing requests for a gender perspective to be included in all aspects of mine action, in keeping also with the UN Security Council resolution on Women, Peace and Security voted on 8 March 2000. Concretely, this means ensuring that women’s special needs and perspectives are taken into account in the setting of priorities for demining; guaranteeing equal access to emergency medical care and longer term support and socio-economic reintegration; and targeting and designing mine risk education campaigns to reach specifically the female population, including through using women’s organizations to convey messages.
Not just victims
Women living in mined areas, however, are not just “victims”. Throughout the world, they have shown that they can be a powerful force for change. Women like Anela, from Kosovo, or Chan Sovarraron, from Cambodia, who -- defying prejudice and traditional stereotypes – decided to enter a typically “male” profession and become deminers to contribute to the safety of their communities. Women like Song Kosal, again from Cambodia, and Margaret, from Uganda, who survived a mine accident and turned campaigners to spread the mine ban message and promote the rights of survivors, and the countless others who work daily to give their communities a better, mine-free future.
Read more:
UN Gender perspectives on landmines
UNIFEM Issue Brief on Landmines
The Effects of Landmines on Women in the Middle East (Journal of Mine Action)
International Committee of the Red Cross – Mine/UXO awareness programmes and women