Team:Edinburgh/mapxmjordan



Jordan <![CDATA[Jordan is contaminated by antipersonnel and antivehicle mines as well as explosive remnants of war (ERW). The contamination results from the 1948 partition of Palestine, the 1967–1969 Arab-Israeli conflict, the 1970 civil war, and the 1975 confrontation with Syria. A Landmine Retrofit Survey (LRS) completed in September 2007 concluded that 10.5km2 of suspected mined areas remained, an increase from the 2007 estimate of 9km2 based on Royal Engineers Corps (REC) records. By April 2008, the remaining mine contamination was concentrated in well-defined and mapped military minefields along the border between Jordan and Syria. The LRS found that 34 communities with a total population of 63,000 claimed to be affected by mines, 17 of them in northern Mafraq governorate. Six communities were in the Jordan Valley, which has since been cleared of mines. Mined areas exacerbated already acute shortages of land and denied access to agricultural land and pasture. Access to water was also blocked, especially in the northeast. The LRS revealed that most incidents were due to mines that had migrated out of the marked areas, but some casualties resulted from people entering minefields deliberately because they needed agricultural and grazing land and water. Smugglers also passed through the minefields. Jordan has also had to deal with ERW that entered from Iraq through the scrap metal trade. Under a plan drawn up by the NCDR and various government ministries and departments, army engineers have been positioned at the border to check scrap metal entering the country for unexploded ordnance (UXO), and ex-military personnel have been contracted to work at factories inspecting the scrap metal. The Jordanian government has a plan to establish a central market for all scrap metal, which can then be regulated. In 2007, the NCDR recorded at least 10 new mine/ERW casualties, including four people killed and six injured. One of the casualties was a deminer and the others were civilian. Half of the casualties were children (four boys and one girl, all under 16), three were men, and two were women. The main casualty groups are men of working age, often the sole income-earners for the family, and boys. Although activities at the time of the incident were not systematically recorded, Jordan reported that incidents involving civilians usually happened during livelihood activities, such as farming or tending animals.

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