What landmines do: an eloquent image

Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Good progress has been made in reducing the number of landmines throughout the world, but much more work remains to be done, with 70 countries still having mines or explosive remnants of war, concludes the Landmine Monitor Report 2009: Toward a Mine-Free World, an annual report published Thursday 12 November by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. This year’s report includes a 10-year summary since the reports began in 1999. The group is the research and monitoring programme of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Ban Landmines.

Eighty percent of the world’s countries are party to the treaty but the report notes that “Thirty-nine countries—including China, India, Pakistan, Russia, and the United States—have yet to join the treaty, but most are in de facto compliance with many of the treaty’s key provisions. In recent years, Myanmar and Russia are the only states using antipersonnel mines. Use by non-state armed groups decreased from a high of 19 countries in 2001 to seven countries in 2008.”

In the past decade:

• states that have signed the treaty have destroyed 44 million stockpiled antipersonnel mines. Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Kuwait completed stockpile destruction in 2008–2009
• 3,200km2 of land has been cleared of mines and explosive remnants of war
• new casualties each year declined significantly to 5,197 recorded casualties in 2008

But from 1999–2008 Landmine Monitor identified 73,576 casualties in 119 countries/areas, a number that remains too high, says the group.

Links to other sites: upcoming Cartagena summit on demining, Landmine Monitor Report 2009

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