What's the problem?

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.

Young campaigner adds shoe to pyramid showing lost lives and limbs. Handicap International demo, Paris, 1997. Credit: John Rodsted.

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.
• At the end of the 1990s it was estimated that there were between 15,000 and 20,000 new casualties caused by landmines and unexploded ordnance each year. Which means there were some 1,500 new casualties each month, more than 40 new casualties a day, at least two new casualties per hour. 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.
• Most of the casualties are civilians and most live in countries that are now at peace.
• In Cambodia, for example there are over 43,000 landmine survivors recorded between 1979 and 2007. Some 20,000 people were killed in this period. More than 75 % of the total casualties were civilians. (for more in depth information see: Landmine Monitor annual reports).

"Working Legs" - close-up of an Angolan farmers prosthetic leg. Leuna. Angola, 1997. Credit: Tim Grant

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 75 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.

More info

• For information about a country's mine problem or the status on the Mine Ban Treaty see our Country Database and the annual Landmine Monitor Report.