Crystal Dike
The United Nations has raised alarm that thousands of displaced Nigerians forced to leave overcrowded camps are returning to communities contaminated with landmines and other deadly explosive remnants of war.
Speaking on the sidelines of a key international meeting on mine action at the UN headquarters in Geneva on Wednesday, UN experts warned that dwindling resources in both Nigeria and Afghanistan are exposing civilians to unexploded ordnance.
They stressed that mine-action programmes, often seen as long-term recovery efforts, are in fact life-saving emergency humanitarian interventions.
Chief of the UN Mine Action Programme in Nigeria (UNMAS), Mr Edwin Faigmane, said returnees were facing grave danger as they move back into unsafe areas.
“Eighty per cent of all civilian casualties have occurred in 11 of the 15 areas of return,” Faigmane said in a statement.
To address the threat, UNMAS has trained Nigerian security forces, police and civil defence personnel on explosive-risk education, particularly in unstable and hard-to-reach communities.
The initiative, he said, is already yielding results.
“We are beginning to receive reports from the police and community members that suspicious items have been found and reported to village authorities, who then alert the security agencies for action,” Faigmane explained.
The meeting also examined the severe threat posed by explosive remnants of war in Afghanistan, where children are the worst affected.
According to the UN-partnered Landmine Monitor 2024 report, 77 per cent of all recorded casualties in Afghanistan in 2024 were children. An average of 54 people are killed every month by explosive remnants of war, giving the country the third-highest explosive ordnance casualty rate globally.
“It is mostly boys herding sheep and goats in the hills who pick up strange objects to play with or throw stones at them, often with fatal consequences,” said Nick Pond, who heads mine-action operations at the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.
Despite the growing danger, a severe funding shortfall has drastically reduced demining operations.
“In 2011, we had about 15,000 people working in demining. Now, we have only about 1,300, and the number keeps dropping,” Pond said.
Since 1999, total recorded child casualties in Afghanistan have reached 30,154, according to Christelle Loupforest, UNMAS Representative in Geneva.
She said while mine-clearance efforts in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Sudan have recently received better support, funding for operations in Nigeria, Afghanistan and Ethiopia is critically low.
“Without new donor commitments, several programmes are at risk of suspension,” Loupforest warned.