Hidden Killers: The Problem of Landmines and Unexploded Ordinance

Abstract

Landmines and unexploded ordinance (LM/UXO) are lethal and lasting legacies of modern conflict. Though designed to kill combatants or destroy combat equipment during conflict, LM/UXO often remain unexploded, contaminating the ground long after a conflict and posing an indiscriminant threat to civilians as well as peacekeeping and humanitarian staff. The threat of landmines is widespread as they are relatively inexpensive and easily deployed, amounting to more than 100 million mines in more than 60 countries, where they remain active for years or even decades after war (Beardsley 1997). As indiscriminate weapons, landmines kill or injure more than 15,000 people each year, mostly civilians (Strada 1996). Though mines laid and mapped by well-trained armies may be lifted after conflict, many times they are not. In many contemporary conflicts, inexperienced or untrained combatants conduct mining, with no thought of mapping the devices for postconflict clearance. A similar threat, unexploded ordinance, includes a wide range of fired but undetonated weapons, especially grenades, artillery shells, and air-to-surface munitions. Especially pernicious are cluster bombs, designed to open over a battlefield and release many smaller bomblets, each of which explodes firing ball bearings or other body-tearing fragments across a wider area than can be reached by a single large shell.