Team:Edinburgh/mapxmlvietnam



Vietnam <![CDATA[Vietnam is heavily contaminated by explosive remnants of war (ERW), mainly unexploded ordnance (UXO), including (cluster) submunitions, which date back to the war with the United States in the 1960s and first half of the 1970s. Vietnam also has a lesser problem of mines, mostly left by conflicts in the 1970s with neighboring Cambodia and China. Almost all Vietnam’s provinces and cities are affected to some extent. The most affected provinces are Ha Tinh, Quang Binh, and Quang Tri in central Vietnam on either side of the former Demilitarized Zone that divided the north and south during the war. Many items of UXO are also found along the border with the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, a target of intensive bombing during the war.

Vietnamese officials estimated that by 2006 clearance operations had tackled only 9–12% of the area affected by mines and UXO, and about one-quarter of the contaminating ordnance. Much UXO contamination is still on the surface, but considerable quantities are found below the surface at depths of up to 5m and, in cases of heavy ordnance, at depths of up to 20m. Despite extensive surface clearance operations since the war, contamination at depths of 30cm or more remain “hardly investigated” and pose a significant threat.

UXO poses a greater threat to the civilian population than do mines, particularly BLU-26 and BLU-36 submunitions and M79 rifle grenades, which have together been responsible for most of the casualties since 1975. Although casualties have fallen sharply from the levels reported in the 1990s, an impact survey of three central provinces completed in 2005 recorded 529 casualties in the preceding five years, including 249 deaths. Contamination also imposes a heavy financial cost at a time of rapid economic modernization, limiting cultivation of affected agricultural areas and requiring major infrastructure and industrial development projects to provide for costly clearance operations.[

In 2007, Landmine Monitor identified at least 110 new mine/ERW casualties, including 48 killed and 62 injured in 62 incidents. All casualties were civilians: 56 men, 31 boys, eight women, and six girls. The gender of nine children was not recorded. For 40 casualties the device causing the incident was not recorded; submunitions caused 28 casualties, other ERW 30, and antipersonnel mines 12. Most casualties were involved in livelihood activities (50), collecting scrap metal (26), playing/tampering (23), and the remaining casualties were recorded as “other.”

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