C.A.L.M.

    Fact Sheet

    20 February 1997

    • There are approxiamately 110 million uncleared anti-personnel landmines, most of them randomly laid, poorly or totally unchartered, in one of every three countries in the world. That's one for every fifty people.

    • These landmines kill approximately 800 and injure thousands each month - the majority of incidents occur in developing countries, such as Cambodia, Afghanistan and Angola,as shown on Feb 16 1997 on '60 Minutes' TV, by Princess Diana.

    • Mine victims require extensive medical treatment: costly antibiotics, blood transfusions, an average of two surgical operations, artifical limbs and rehabilitation.

    • In 1993, between two and five million landmines were laid while the international community allocated US$70 million to clear 100,000 landmines.

    • Each year, five to ten million landmines are produced by nearly 100 companies in 48 countries.

    • Anti-personnel landmines sell for as little as US$3 each, but the cost of clearance is between US$300 to US$1000 per mine.

    • If the proliferation of landmines were stopped in 1996, at current rates of clearance and funding it would take 1,100 years to rid the world of landmines in the ground at a cost of US$33 billion.

    1. Join CALM or one of our member organisations. Contact:

    John Head, CALM Convenor, 6 John Sims Drive, Broadmeadows, Wellington.
    Tel: 478 1828 or Fax: 384 2112 EMail: John Head - CALM Convenor

    2. For further information consult:

    • Landmines: A Deadly Legacy, Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights, October 1993(Available at the Defence and Victoria University Libraries).
    • Publications available at the NZ Red Cross (Tel: 472 3750) and Unicef (Tel: 473 0879).

    3. Support CALM's aims:

    • Develop New Zealanders' awareness and concern of the problems posed by landmines by supporting organisations raising funds for: mine clearance and mine awareness programmes provision for aid for amputees

    • Call for the Government to extend its provision of soldiers for humanitarian mine assistance programmes as it has done in Parkistan/Afghanistan, Cambodia and now Mozambique and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

    • Call on the government to make additional funding available for the United Nations "Voluntary Trust Fund for Assistance in Mine Clearance"

    • Call for the Government to raise the profile and status of the 'Inhumane Weapons Convention' by encouraging our neighbours in the Asia-Pacific region to sign and ratify this treaty, and to support a mine-free South Pacific

    Organisations involved in CALM, or who support CALM's objectives include:

    World Vision(NZ), Council for International Development, New Zealand Red Cross, National Consultive Committee on Disarmament, Amnesty International(NZ),Veterans for Peace, Save the Children Fund(NZ), Wellington Peace Forum Network, United Nations Assosciation(NZ), The Cambodia Trust(NZ), Oxfam(NZ), UNICEF(NZ), International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War(NZ), UNESCO(NZ), Greenpeace(NZ). CALM also includes interested individuals and academics.

    For more information and literature on Landmines contact:
    N.Z. Nuclear-Free Peacemaking Assosciation,
    Box 18-541,
    Christchurch 9,
    New Zealand.
    PH: (0064) (3) 388-9816

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