Effects on Children of Landmines

Children’s size and natural curiosity make them particularly vulnerable to antipersonnel mines. They are often too little to see mines that are clearly visible to adults. Children will stray off safe routes into minefields and they may not be able to recognise or read warning signs.

In heavily mined regions, simple tasks such as tending livestock, scavenging, gathering firewood and collecting water, become fraught with danger. It has also become common practice in some areas for small children to be paid a few pence to retrieve landmines for re-sale.

Even if arms manufacturers deny allegations that some landmines are designed to look like toys, they surely cannot be unaware of the appeal and attraction that their lethal products have for children.

Brightly colored, oddly shaped, easy to pick up or kick, children will seldom resist the temptation to play with these new “toys”.

In many heavily mined areas, children have now become so used to landmines, they forget that they are lethal weapons. In northern Iraq rural children use mines as wheels for toy trucks and in Cambodia they play boules with B40 antipersonnel mines. Even when children understand the dangers, the risk element can prove a fatal attraction - in Afghanistan a favorite game is to throw stones at ‘Butterfly’ mines, the winner being the one whose stone causes the mine to detonate.

For children who survive mine accidents, the physical injuries are usually far greater, the emotional trauma much deeper, and the economic prospects

significantly bleaker than for an adult victim. The majority of child mine victims have few prospects of going to school, of receiving counselling, of learning skills which could help them adapt to their new condition, or marrying when they grow up.

Economically, child victims are a drain on scarce resources, and the fact that they may be unable to contribute to the family, can have a profound psychological effect on the child and on the family as a whole. Poorer children seldom receive the long-term care they need.  Landmines can also have far-reaching effects on children when their parents are the victims. Loss of employment and the deprivation that can follow directly affect children. They may have to leave school to look after injured parents and supplement the family income.