Motivations

- There are more than 100 million anti-personnel or anti-tank mines in more than 70 countries at this moment.
- It has been estimated that more than 26,000 people are killed or maimed by mines every year, which is one victim every 20 minutes. Some countries have severe mine casualties, and most of the victims are children.
- The cost to buy and lay a typical antipersonnel mine is between $3 and $30, while the cost to remove a mine is between $300 and $1,000. The European Commission and the United States have invested 138 million dollars for mine actions for the last two years, but this is just the tip of the iceberg considering the present clearance rate.
- As current mines do not have metallic material as much as older types, it is difficult to detect mines by the current employed technology, the metal detector (MD). Also, MD has been reported making too many false alarms in the former battlefield due to small fragments of munitions. Manual detection, called probing, works well for all kinds of mines, but the cost of labor and slow speed are encouraging the development of other techniques.
- Years of war have left millions of scattered and unrecorded landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXO) in scores of countries. The current nature of war and terrorism places the threat of landmines squarely on the doorstep of civilians. Civilian men, women and especially children, who often mistake mines and UXO for toys, make up the bulk of all mine accident victims in peacetime.
- Casualty Demographics As in previous years, in 2006 civilians accounted for three quarters of recorded casualties and children were 34 percent of civilian casualties, nearly all boys. In some severely affected countries/areas children were the majority of casualties (Afghanistan: 59 percent, Nepal: 53, Somaliland: 66) and boys between five and 14 years were a particularly high risk group. Males were 89 percent of all casualties where gender details were known; the gender and/or age of 1,454 people (25 percent of all casualties) were unknown. Some 24 percent of casualties were military; this increase from 2005 (19 percent) is due to one country, Colombia, which accounts for 57 percent of all military casualties. Excluding Colombia, 12 percent of casualties would be military.Other factors leading to recording of a higher military casualty rate are increased conflict (Pakistan) and extensive media reporting focused on foreign troops (Afghanistan and Iraq) at the expense of national civilian casualties.
• 1,205 casualties in 19 countries/areas in Sub-Saharan Africa, up from 1,122 casualties in 21 countries/areas in 2005.
• 2,510 casualties in 13 countries in the Asia-Pacific region, down from 3,031 in 16 countries/areas in 2005.
• 165 casualties in eight countries/areas in Europe, down from 335 in 10 countries/areas in 2005.
• 205 casualties in 11 countries/areas in the Commonwealth of Independent States, down from 228 in 11 countries/areas in 2005.
• 539 casualties in 13 countries/areas in the Middle East-North Africa, down from 990 in 12 countries/areas in 2005.
• 1,127 casualties in four countries in the Americas, down from 1,167 in eight countries in 2005.
• 14 countries/areas where casualties had occurred in 2005 had no casualties in 2006.
• Four countries with no casualties in 2005 had new casualties recorded in 2006: ???Republic of Congo (one), Hungary (one), Indonesia (five) and Tunisia (one)??
-Contributions by mine-affected countries/areas reported in this year’s Landmine Monitor country
reports include the following:
• Albania provided $233,000, in addition to funding of rehabilitation projects and unvalued in-kind contributions.
• Angola allocated $2.5 million for mine clearance in 2006, compared to $3 million in 2005.
• Azerbaijan provided $1.2 million in 2006, compared to roughly $750,000 in 2005 and $250,000 in 2004.
• Bosnia and Herzegovina contributed BAM20, 070,706 ($12.5 million) from central and local authorities, an increase from BAM17, 753,131 ($11.3 million) in 2005 (about 45 percent of the mine action budget in both years).
• Cambodia provided $1.2 million for mine action administration and programming.
• Chad contributed CFA165 million (some $300,000) to complement funding by UNDP.
• Chile provided $1.4 million, compared to approximately $1 million in government and armed forces contributions in 2005.
• Colombia provided COP2.562 billion ($1.1 million) for July 2006-June 2007, a large increase from $213,000 in July 2005-June 2006.
• Croatia provided HRK246, 757,250 ($42.3 million) or 82 percent of mine action funding from state budgets and state and local bodies, compared with HRK192, 769,625 ($32.4 million) or 57 percent in 2005.

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