Marking Universal Children's Day, 20 November, the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor Victim Assistance Team releases a fact sheet on ‘The Impact of Mines/ERW on Children’.

The factsheet, The Impact of Mines/ERW on Children, produced annually since 2009, provides an update on casualty data and assistance to child survivors in 2013.

Child casualties

In 2013, there were 1,112 child casualties in 39 states and three other areas from landmines, victim-activated improvised explosive devices (IEDs), cluster munition remnants, and other explosive remnants of war (ERW)—henceforth “mines/ERW.” Of this total, 333 children were killed and 779 were injured.

Mine/ERW casualties by age in 2013

Children accounted for almost half (46%, 1,112 of 2,403) of all civilian casualties for whom the age was known in 2013 (Figure 1). This represented an increase from the 39% recorded for 2012 and was also the second highest percentage of child casualties—after 49% in 2007—since specific data became available in 2005. The average annual rate of child casualties since 2005 is 43% of civilian casualties.6 In some of the states with the greatest numbers of casualties, the percentage of child casualties in 2013 was much higher than the global average of 46%. Children constituted 90% of all civilian casualties in Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), 82% in Yemen, and 75% in South Sudan.