Mines need to be located and removed before they produce more casualties - 19 PMA 2 mine found on a task in 2006 by the community survey team
Between 1999 and 2001 the UN managed a large clearance programme in Kosovo (under a Security Council resolution giving the UN governance of the province).
The implementing agencies for clearance, of which HALO was the largest with over 400 staff, destroyed over 50,000 landmines, cluster munitions and other items of UXO. Between 2002 and 2007 (during which time HALO had returned to Kosovo to resume work) a further 14,000 landmines, cluster munitions and other items of UXO were cleared.
Since 2002 a further 20,500 landmines, cluster munitions and other items of UXO have been cleared. HALO maintained demining and battle area clearance operations between 2004 and 2006, conducted a country-wide Community Liaison Survey in 2006 and 2007 and commenced a third phase of clearance operations in May 2008.
In addition to the 46 officially recognized sites, HALO’s Community Liaison Survey of 2006/7 identified 126 areas that were still impacted by mines or cluster munitions.
Minefields remain in rural areas in which impoverished communities rely on agriculture and woodcutting as their primary sources of income. Although human casualties due to mines are rare, many mine impacted communities have lost cattle and horses over the last few years, and there is the constant danger that expanding socio economic footprints around such communities will result in individual land users attempting to access some of the many hectares of land currently denied to them by landmines. The picturesque and unspoilt mountainous landscapes in Kosovo’s south and west have the potential for a lucrative tourist industry but these are the areas most affected by mines. Many hectares of the hills in western Kosovo were burnt in 2007 as firefighters were unable to access the area due to landmines detonating.
Cluster munitions remain in many areas both on the surface and buried. Since late 2007 three cluster munition accidents have caused the deaths of two people and severe injuries to a further five adults and children. Similarly to the threat posed by mines in Kosovo, cluster munitions impact most on the financially marginalised elements of society who rely on scrap collecting, woodcutting and cultivation for their livelihood. They also have an impact upon infrastructure projects and HALO has found and destroyed cluster munitions ahead of road widening projects. Occasionally clearance cannot keep up with development and at least one cluster munition was uncovered by road construction teams in 2010.
The World Bank`s Kosovo Poverty Assessment 2007 highlights that 45 per cent of Kosovo’s population is classified as “poor”, living on less than €1.42 per day, with a further 18 percent considered to be vulnerable to poverty. 15 per cent of the population is extremely poor, which is defined as “individuals who have difficulty meeting their basic nutritional needs.” Many of the poorest communities live in proximity to the remaining minefields and cluster strikes, with two thirds of Kosovo’s poor living in rural areas.