Anti-personnel mines have killed 68 Yemeni civilians and injured 84 others, most of them children and women, in several governorates since the beginning of January 2022.
Seyaj Organization for Childhood Protection condemns the continued planting of anti-personnel mines and naval mines in many Yemeni governorates, which has resulted in the killing and injury of thousands of civilians and continues to threaten the lives and safety of millions more.
In the absence of precise statistics on the total number of victims since the conflict expanded in 2014, estimates indicate that more than eleven thousand civilians have been killed or injured on land and at sea.
Yemen is considered one of the world’s most contaminated countries in terms of landmines. Al Hudaydah is the most heavily affected governorate, followed by Taiz, Shabwa, Hajjah, Marib, Al Jawf, Al Bayda, and others. According to the Saudi Masam project, 129 operations have been carried out to destroy hundreds of thousands of mines and explosive devices.
According to experts, one of the most dangerous mines is the LT10, known as the “Khomeini” mine, a plastic landmine that is difficult for detection devices to identify. Some mines are reportedly manufactured locally using internationally prohibited phosphorus, highly explosive TNT, and other extremely dangerous materials.
Seyaj calls on the Houthi Ansar Allah group to stop immediately using these mines, to which they are uniquely linked, and to provide clear maps identifying the areas they have mined.
The organization also calls on the Yemeni government and non-governmental organizations to intensify and expand health, physical, psychosocial, and social rehabilitation services for all victims, while increasing awareness programs for displaced people and residents of contaminated areas from which the militia has been expelled.
Seyaj calls on the national judiciary to move quickly to open criminal cases and prosecute violators, both groups and individuals, as war criminals.
The use, planting, and transfer of mines is a flagrant violation of the 1997 Ottawa Treaty banning anti-personnel mines, as well as national laws and international agreements on the protection of civilians during armed conflict.
Millions of anti-personnel mines still threaten civilian lives, especially those returning to their villages after militias have been expelled. They also pose a deadly risk to millions on land and to tens of thousands of fishermen in the Red Sea in western and northwestern Yemen.
The continued and unprecedented expansion of Houthi mine use, together with the deliberate camouflage and indiscriminate methods employed in planting them, amounts to a war on both the present and the future. Mine experts expect that their harm and danger to civilians will continue for decades even after active hostilities cease.
Source: Yemeni Landmine Observatory. Issued by Seyaj Organization for Childhood Protection – Yemen, 30 January 2022.
