Although citizens of the United States are not threatened by anti-personnel (AP) landmines on U.S. soil, citizens living in land mine contaminated countries are maimed or killed every 22 minutes.
The International Committee of the Red Cross says more than 800 people, most of them innocent civilians, are killed every month by landmines, which had original purpose of restricting enemy movement during military conflicts.
Yet, unexploded landmines pollute fields, farms, and communities, holding people hostage and preventing economic prosperity. Once laid, these explosive devices are engineered to be lethal for decades, even up to 50 years, according to the United Nations.
Typical injuries from a land mine's primary blast include serious damage to limbs as well as potential damage to hollow and fluid-filled organs, such as the lungs, bowels, eyes and bladder, which can rupture as a result of pressure from the blast wave. Secondary blast injuries, such as burns, fractures, lacerations and penetrations, result from heat and propelled steel fragments.
The Chinese 72A land mine, the size a bagel, contains just enough explosives to blow off an adult's foot. The Soviet Union OZM-4 bounding fragmentation land mine kills those in close proximity and injures those nearby with propelled fragments. The German-made, Bouncing Betty bounces to waist-level when activated and propels steel fragments through a victim's groin.
The Dragon's Tooth BLU-43 land mine, deployed by U.S. troops during the Vietnam conflict, was designed with two wings, which resembled a toy bird and; consequently, had the tendency to attract curious children.
In just one district of Viet Nam, 300 children died, 42 lost one or more limbs, and 16 were blinded from the landmines, according to a report presented by Graca Machel, former first lady of Mozambique and UN Secretary-General's Expert on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Children. Ironically, the U.S. deployed landmines in Viet Nam were also responsible for 25 percent of all U.S. casualties.
Right now, there are approximately 33 million unexploded landmines scattered throughout the Middle East, 31 million in Africa, 7 million in Asia, 200,000 in South and Central America, and zero in the United States. Countries with high concentrations of uncleared landmines include Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Angola, China, Afghanistan, Vietnam and Zimbabwe.
The 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, known as the Ottawa Treaty, gained commitments from more than 140 states, agreeing to discontinue the use, development, stockpiling, and transferring of AP landmines. The treaty, which was balked at by the Bush administration, requires states to destroy all AP mines, except for a few to be used only for mine-clearance and detection training.
The United Nations continues to call for a major international commitment to large-scale mine clearance and for the development of child-oriented programs for land mine awareness and physical rehabilitation. The UN says greater attention should be assigned to training local mine clearance teams.
Methods of detecting landmines include metal detectors, mine-clearing vehicles, advanced sensors and robots, small animals trained to smell explosives, and genetically engineered flowers that bloom in a distinctive color around an explosive.
Jerry White, Co-founder and Executive Director of Landmine Survivors Network in Washington D.C., criticized Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton last year for their failures to support the Mine Ban Treaty. "All our NATO allies now ban the use, manufacture, stockpiling and export of all types of antipersonnel mines," noted White, who lost his right foot in 1983 in Golan Heights from injuries suffered after he stepped on a Soviet-supplied landmine that had been left behind by Syrian soldiers 16 years earlier, during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.
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