Child victims of antipersonnel mines and unexploded ordnance in Colombia (2012-June 2020)

Abstract

This document aims to establish the behavior of Antipersonnel Mines and Unexploded Ordnance events, in which minors were victims, between 2012 and June 2020 in Colombia? For this purpose, we used databases of the Dirección para la Acción Integral contra Minas Antipersonal, which include: (i) APM (Antipersonnel Mines) and UXO (Unexploded Ordnance) events and (ii) APM and UXO victims. The methodology used is quantitative, non-experimental, longitudinal, descriptive, and explanatory. The selected period corresponds to the beginning of the negotiations with the FARC-EP in 2012. It is confirmed that between 2012 and June 2020, there were 281 underage victims. Most of them were children from rural areas who encountered an APM. The departments with the highest number of events were Putumayo, Cauca, Nariño, Antioquia, Norte de Santander, Chocó, Caquetá, Tolima, Valle del Cauca, Arauca, Vichada, Bolívar, Huila, Meta, Magdalena, Córdoba, Boyacá and La Guajira. Although most of the children survived, they suffered some of the following: visual or hearing damage; loss of eyes, hands, arms, legs, feet or fingers, burns, permanent psychological alteration, polytrauma, scars on the face derived from wounds caused by the shrapnel. Finally, from the Friedman test, we can conclude that there is no statistical evidence of a significant change from 2014 to 2016 (during the negotiation) and 2017 and 2019 (post-agreement) concerning the number of incidents of APL and UXO in Colombia.