Landmine accidents declining

One hundred people have been killed in landmine incidents over the last four years, the United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) said on Tuesday. According to statistics released by UNMEE's Mine Action Coordination Centre (MACC), some 274 people have also been injured in such incidents since the UN force arrived in the region. However, Phil Lewis, who heads the MACC team, told IRIN that the real casualty figures were far higher, because the team was "not getting the full picture" from all areas. "One of the problems is that those figures are in fact a very small percentage of the real carnage going on out there because not all incidents are reported to us," Lewis said. "People get blown up in their fields, the villagers bury them and nothing else gets said." Lewis added that the casualty figures were "on a par" with other heavily mined countries around the world, such as Afghanistan and Cambodia, which were suffering the same rate of accidents. His 56-strong team clears mines in the 25-km wide Temporary Security Zone (TSZ) that is patrolled by the UN force to keep the armed forces of Ethiopia and Eritrea apart. The MACC's statistics, which record mine accidents occurring from late 2000 to date, show a gradual decline incidences, but on average, two people a month are still being killed. Casualties reached a high in 2001 when 42 people were killed and 154 injured – many of them young shepherd boys. Lewis explained that the high figures for 2001 were attributable to the fact that at the time families were returning to their homes after the bloody two year border war when mine-risk education had not yet been launched. "The Mine Action Programme, the Mine Risk Education kicked in at around that time, and in response to those huge causalities," he said. "I think it’s a true reflection of the lowering of those figures subsequent to 2001 that demonstrates the effectiveness of the Mine Action Programme in the TSZ after that period." The mine-clearance team was responsible for "force protection" by ensuring that the UN peacekeepers could travel safely during their patrolling duties along the border, Lewis said. It also cleared mines in high-risk areas around villages so as to enable local communities to resume their livelihoods, he added. The team is also helping to prepare the ground for an eventual demarcation of the 1,000-km frontier, after which the UN peacekeepers will leave Ethiopia and Eritrea. "We have to be ready, and cannot allow mines to stop the work of contractors and surveyors working on the border when their time comes," Lewis said. After demarcation, responsibility for the mine-clearance operations being conducted by UNMEE would be handed over to the two countries, he added. Ethiopia and Eritrea are among the world's most heavily mined countries – a legacy of successive conflicts that have ravaged the Horn of Africa for the past 70 years. Ethiopia remains contaminated with around 2 million mines, while in Eritrea there are between 1.5 million and 1.65 million mines and some 300,000 units of unexploded ordnance (UXOs). Aid agencies have warned that landmines and UXOs are hampering attempts to move families who fled during the war between the two countries back to their homes.