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Contributions from
the Column
Monitor
Hong Kong: near failure
Strengthened individual, weakened state
Budget crisis averted
Fewer landmine victims
Health services:
passing by the poor
NGOs claim Iraq
is selling oil reserves
More people infected with HIV
French NGOs take stock
of government action
Millennium Goal still a long way off
01/2006
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Fewer landmine victims
The number of landmine victims registered worldwide decreased for the sixth year in a row in 2004, according to the Landmine Monitor report 2005 by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. The report states that, officially, 6,521 persons in 58 countries were maimed or killed by landmines in 2004. A year earlier, it had mentioned 8,065 persons in 66 countries. However, the campaign assumes there is a very high number of unrecorded cases and estimates the actual number of victims to be as high as 20,000. It is not regular forces but rather non-governmental armed groups who lay the most landmines today, primarily in Colombia, Burma and Nepal, according to the report. Myanmar (Burma), Nepal and Russia are said to be the only countries whose governments have laid mines in the past year. The number of countries that manufacture antipersonnel mines or reserve the right to do so has decreased from over 50 to only 13 in just a few years; registered trade with these weapons has practically come to a standstill. 135 square kilometres of land worldwide was cleared of mines in the past year, but more than 200,000 square kilometres are still contaminated. (ell)
On the internet:
Campaign to ban land mines:
http://www.icbl.org
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