Landmines
A GLOBAL ISSUE
Thesis
The use of landmines has caused many deaths and is a very dangerous weapon that is used to kill unwanted visitors. Unfortunately many children have been affected by these landmines because they are unaware of the danger of stepping on land mines will do to them. Land mines have been used since the 1940s by the military to use against other militaries. Even regular people have begun to use landmines because of the conflicted areas they live in. People feel as though landmines can be used a tools to protect themselves so the spread of landmines have increased causing them to be even more probable to take innocent lives. Although the latest ceasefires that have been signed between the state military and Karen National Union landmines are still not completely banned, and people could experience land mine explosions. There has also been involvement of NGO that are tackling the risk reduction of landmine to try and crack down on unfound land mines in certain areas. Local organizations have been working with local groups in order to create awareness concerning land mines. The NGO has considered land mines as a protective weapon. In Myanmar they have the largest casualty’s rate but they feel as though they are protecting their people by using land mines they have caused deaths. Many people of Myanmar use landmines to protect their land. In order for the use of landmines to be stopped the government of the leading stockpile holders will have to find other weapons that can be used as protection instead of continuing to use land mines.
Estimated Active Landmines
This chart displays the number of estimated active landmines in each listed country
Biggest Landmine Stockpile Countrie
This chart illustrates the biggest landmine stockpiles by country.
Landmine Stockpiles
This pie chart shows the countries with the largest percent of landmine stockpiles in the world.
LANDMINE USE PERSISTS DESPITE TREATY
Governments are doing far too little to clear up unexploded bombs and leftover landmines, while some even continue to manufacture and stockpile the weapon.
Six years after the entry into force of the Ottawa Convention banning anti-personnel mines, forgotten mines remain a serious problem across the world, according to an international report.
The study was produced by Landmine Action on Sunday, the British arm of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.
"Explosive remnants of war are costing civilian lives and livelihoods in 90 countries, many of them the world's poorest," said director Richard Lloyd.
Landmine Action said not only were children being killed and maimed as they unwittingly played with the brightly coloured unexploded bomblets from cluster bombs, but land and anti-tank mines were slowing post-war aid delivery.
More than 140 countries have ratified the Ottawa Convention that commits them to immediately stop production and use of landmines, destroy their stockpiles and clear their territories of them within a decade.
Most are way behind schedule. But more than 42 others - notably the US, Russia, India, Pakistan and China - have refused even to sign and still hold vast reserves of landmines.
Survey findings
Lloyd said his survey was the first to methodically take a country-by-country and weapon-by-weapon inventory of the problem and showed that the scale of it had been vastly underrated in the past.
"It is a massive problem that is simply not being adequately tackled by most countries," he said. "Many governments have to put far more resources than they currently are into dealing with this."
At least 20,000 people a year are killed or maimed by previously unexploded munitions - mostly men and children - and it is worst in Afghanistan, Angola, Bosnia, Cambodia, Eritrea, Iraq, Laos, Somalia, Sri Lanka and Sudan.
Landmines, in contrast to other munitions, are designed to maim and incapacitate rather than kill.
This is based on the understanding that while a dead person needs no further action, a maimed one involves many others in transport and caring and is a major drain on the resources of the enemy against whom they are directed.
QAEDA LAIN LANDMINES KILL 35 IN 10 DAYS IN SOUTH YEMEN
Landmines planted in Yemen’s southern province of Abyan by al-Qaeda militants before they were driven out from the area have killed at least 35 people in the past 10 days, officials said on Saturday.
Twenty-seven people have been killed only in the provincial capital of Zinjibar, while eight died on the outskirts of the town of Jaar, the officials said.
“Landmine explosions in Zinjibar have left 27 people dead” since the army, backed by local militiamen, drove out al-Qaeda militants from the capital of the province on June 13, said Zinjibar deputy mayor Ghassan Sheikh.
He said of the 27 people killed, nine died on June 14 while returning to Zinjibar from where they had fled after the militants seized it in May 2011, local official Mohsen Saleh said.
Sheikh said the Yemeni army has so far been unable to clear all the landmines planed by al-Qaeda, adding the explosives were sown in most streets of Zinjibar.
“Most of Zinjibar’s residents have been unable to return yet” from the main southern city of Aden to their town which has been totally destroyed by the fighting, he said.
Eight other civilians were killed in similar landmine blasts on the outskirts of the nearby town of Jaar which was a major stronghold of al-Qaeda since last year, rights activist Wahid Abdullah said.
Taking advantage of a weakening central government control by an Arab Spring-inspired uprising last year, the militants had overrun most of Abyan, capturing Zinjibar, Jaar, Shuqra and several other villages.
But on May 12, Yemen’s military launched an all-out offensive to recapture the lost province. The army and local militiamen have succeeded in taking over all of Abyan’s towns except for Mahfad.
On Friday, the new top army commander for the south, Major-General Naser al-Taheri, vowed to continue the fight against al-Qaeda.
He replaced General Salem Ali Qoton who was assassinated by an al-Qaeda suicide bomber on Monday.
Taheri vowed that his predecessor’s killing will only “make us more determined... to hunt these terrorist groups in their hideouts until the nation is cleansed from their evil,” state news agency Saba quoted him as saying.
Qoton, who had led the five-week-long offensive against the jihadists in Abyan and Shabwa provinces was killed along with two of his aides, when a Somali suicide bomber threw himself on his vehicle in the regional capital Aden.
U.S. officials have repeatedly described Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula as the most dangerous of the jihadist network’s worldwide affiliates.
South Sudan Struggles To Remove Landmines
Landmines kill an average of 12 civilians every day. This is a considerable improvement from 10 years ago, when mines claimed around 32 lives every day.
But despite the improvement, the weapons still pose a serious risk to many people around the world, with South Sudan having among the highest number of landmines in the world.
Al Jazeera's Anna Cavell reports from South Sudan.