WASHINGTON – They are indiscriminate weapons that cannot distinguish between a soldier and a civilian. They litter the countryside of many nations, a reminder of past conflicts and the devastating consequences of war.
Landmines, unexploded cluster munitions and explosive remnants of war continue to pose a serious threat to civilians in active- and post-conflict areas. Since the 1960’s, more than110 million landmines have been spread in as many as 70 countries, according to the UN.
Landmines are cheap and deadly, making them go-to weapons in dozens of wars and conflicts around the globe. Since the cost of removing these devices is so high, many aid programs focus on education. But education only goes so far; to be truly effective it needs to be coupled with removal efforts.
“There is no one size fits all solution, so the response needs to be highly localized,” said Mark Hiznay, a senior researcher who focuses on landmine policy and practices at the Human Rights Watch. “Education works when it’s used in conjunction with clearance programs and it works when the people who are at highest risk receive the education.”
Landmines are designed to explode upon contact, typically striking those that who are least suspecting. An encounter with a landmine can be fatal or cause severe injuries, with the victim often losing multiple limbs.
Statistically, the majority of landmine casualties are civilians.
Groups like CARE and UNICEF provide education programs in high-risk areas such an Angola and Cambodia. But experts like Hiznay say that education only works if it targets the people most affected by these unexploded devices. That often means going back into a country with new education programs that take into account generational differences.
“It’s going to depend on what the risk behavior is and who you need to focus on, if it’s adult women, young girls, young boys,” Hiznay said in an interview. “The constant need to reinforce the messages and to make it appropriate to the type of threat that they are facing.”
But many programs that focus on education lack another important component – removal.
For one, clearing the land can be quite complicated. In the summer of 2006., the Israeli Defense Forces dropped an estimated 4 million submunitions in south Lebanon. Those submunitions were falling on mines and unexploded bombs from earlier conflicts.
“It becomes quite an archeology program to being clearing all the contamination,” Hiznay said.
Removing landmines and other unexploded devises is a relatively technical process that requires training and sufficient monetary resources to undertake.
“Tragically, landmine clearance is an incredibly expensive and laborious undertaking,” Erika Keaveney, executive director of Lotus Outreach, a program that clears mines in Cambodia, told the Huffington Post. “It is estimated that a single landmine — which costs just $3 to manufacture — will cost upwards of $1,000 to identify and safely remove. Even the most optimistic estimates suggest Cambodia won’t meet its landmine clearance goals for another five years.”
Most armed forces of the world used a form of antipersonnel landmines until the late nineties. Then in 1997, the Mine Ban Treaty, which comprehensively bans the use, production, stockpiling, and transport of mines, stopped these activities in some areas. Still only 162 states have ratified the treaty. The United States, China, Israel, Russia and Lebanon are among the countries that have not joined.
“The biggest issue is that they keep killing,” Hiznay said. “Landmines from conflicts that are over 30 to 50 years old are still capable of killing just as well as a landmine that was put in the ground today.”
