Survivor Assistance

Landmine survivors

• Recently casualties started to fall and Landmine Monitor 2007 identified 5,751 casualties from mines, ERW and Victim activated IEDs in 2006. However this number refers only to known casualties, therefore the actual total number of victims is certainly higher. Landmine Monitor has identifed at least 473,000 survivors as of August 2007.
• The situation differs from one country to another but it is still fair to say that the vast majority of landmine survivors are civilians, many of these children. Only 24% of reported casualties in 2006 were identified as military personnel.
• It is not just mine-affected countries that suffer casualties - each year nationals from one country are killed or injured while working or travelling in another country.
• Countries at peace are as likely to suffer mine casualties as those at war. Landmine Monitor Report 2005 found that 33 out of 58 countries and areas that suffered new mine casualities in 2004-05 had not experienced any active armed conflict in this period.
  

  Rohafza in Kabul, Afghanistan, 2002. Credit: John Rodsted.
  

• However, these statistics don't tell the full human story or even describe the challenges faced by survivors.
• Meet Rohafza, on the right, now a physiotherapist treating landmine survivors and other patients at a Red Cross clinic in Kabul. It's been a struggle since her accident many years ago. Still, with support, it is possible to overcome these challenges as Rohafza's story shows.
• Survivors have been key advocates within the ban movement since it started and today two of the ICBL's three ambassadors are landmine survivors. It is important that, as the people most affected by the landmine scourge, survivors continue to play an important role, including through involvement in meetings related to the Mine Ban Treaty. Many ICBL members work directly on victim assistance programmes and are members of our Working Group on Victim Assistance.
• Support for survivors is one of the starting points of the Mine Ban Treaty. The preamble notes a wish by member states to: "do their utmost in providing for the care and rehabilitation, including the social and economic reintegration of mine victims".

Assistance for survivors

• Assistance is needed to help a landmine victim cope with the immediate aftermath of an injury and, in the medium- and long-term, to enable landmine survivors to function fully and contribute to their community.
• A priority is to establish and strengthen emergency health services: without urgent attention a mine casualty is likely to die from blood loss or shock.
• Afterwards, it is important that all survivors, even those in remote rural areas, have access to rehabilitation programmes, including psychological and trauma counselling.
• Assistance should be viewed as part of the public health and social services system providing for the rights and needs of all people with a disability, including landmine survivors.
• Another key component are schemes to ensure complete socio-economic reintegration of mine survivors into their communities e.g. vocational training, micro-credit and changes to employment practices.
• Victim assistance is an obligation for those that joined the Mine Ban Treaty and lasts the length of each survivor’s lifetime.
• Assistance is often difficult in countries whose health and other infrastructure was devastated by war, however it remains essential and it falls to other treaty member states to support mine-affected countries in their victim assistance efforts.