Anti-personnel landmines (APLs): A socio-economic and humanitarian perspective

This paper aims to analyse the Socio-economic, Ecological and Humanitarian impacts of Anti-personnel landmines and holds that landmines are indiscriminate and have led to global humanitarian crisis especially in developing countries. It led physical and psychological trauma in victim's life and tear up social fabric of nation. APLs deny access to community resources, led to soil contamination, loss of productivity and threat to food security, loss biodiversity. They threat not only to present but also the future generation. Where there is fighting, one expects that people will be killed; however, in many parts of the world where fighting once took place and has since ceased people continue to be killed by discarded weapons of war. Anti-personnel mines which are described as buried terror and ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction in slow motion’ recognize no cease fire and after ‘they maim or kill the children and also grandchildren of the soldiers who laid them.’ Landmines, although typically not categorized with Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD), are believed to have killed more people than nuclear and chemical weapons combined. In strictly military terms, landmines are cheap weapons. But a mine that originally costs US$3, can require between US$300 and US$1000 to clear, and adds to enormous cost in humanitarian and environmental damage.