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| A Wounded Country: Landmines in Cambodia |
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Thirty years of civil war have left Cambodia a wounded country. In the country side more than a million landmines remain to be discovered – while the Khmer Rouge murdered many of the country’s doctors, decimating the countries infrastructure, leaving it poorly resourced to cope with such terrible injuries. Cambodian refugees returning home have been unable to cultivate their fields as they discover them littered with antipersonnel mines. Despite efforts by NGOs and the Cambodian Government to clear the mine fields, the countries which supplied the landmines – including China, the USA and former Soviet Union – have made little provision for clearance. As few soldiers recorded where they laid mines, a walk in the countryside has become a terrible lottery for thousands of Cambodians. Many of the forty thousand landmine victims are young children who discover recently unearthed mines as they play near their villages. |
 A villager who lost a limb to a landmine watches as a Cambodian team clear landmines close to his village. The human, economic and social cost of landmines is devastating for a country trying to come to terms with the legacy of the Khmer Rouge genocide and thirty years of civil war – leaving Cambodia with the highest rate of physical disability of any country in the world. |
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