Landmines pose threat to over a million people in Cambodia

More than one million people in Cambodia still live in fear and work in areas contaminated by mines and explosive remnants of war (ERWs), a senior official said here on Friday. Senior Minister Ly Thuch, first vice president of the Cambodian Mine Action and Victim Assistance Authority, said landmines and ERWs still continue to kill, injure and traumatize people, and severely impede social and economic recovery and sustainable development.

He said that since 1979, mines and ERWs have killed and injured nearly 65,000 people in the southeast Asian nation. “Positively, because of mine action efforts in clearance and explosive ordnance risk education, the number of annual casualties has been brought down from 4,320 in 1996 to 44 in 2021,” he said at a high-level dialogue on mine action.

“But still today, throughout Cambodia, more than 1 million people live in fear and work in areas contaminated by mines and ERWs,” he added. Cambodia is one of the countries worst affected by mines and ERWs. An estimated 4 million to 6 million landmines and other munitions have been left over from three decades of war and internal conflicts that ended in 1998.

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