Casualties Overview

The Monitor identified at least 2,104 mine/ERW casualties reported for the Republic of Yemen for 2016. Although the ongoing conflict prevented the operation of an adequate national casualty surveillance mechanism, the Monitor recorded the details of 161 casualties, of which 67 were killed, 79 injured, and the outcome for 15 was unknown. These casualties were identified from the following sources: Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch (HRW), ICRC, Mwatana for Human Rights, the Geneva Center for Humanitarian Demining (GICHD), and various media sources. Several other organizations reported that they had provided assistance to mine/ERW survivors, but either did not record or share causality data details.

The ICRC reported the largest number of casualties in 2016 of any source for Yemen, with 2,037 people injured by mines/ERW admitted into 46 ICRC-supported hospitals.[1] However, no demographic details were available for casualties in ICRC-reported statistics for persons wounded in Yemen.

Among the 161 casualties with additional details recorded by the Monitor (67 killed, 79 injured, and 15 of unknown outcome), 63 were male, 13 female, and 85 of unknown gender. Seventy-two were adults, 41 were children, and 48 were unknown (51 men, eight women, 12 boys, five girls, and 85 unknown).

The majority, 103, were caused by antivehicle mines, 26 by antipersonnel mines, five by improvised mines, nine by unspecified mines. Eighteen were caused by unexploded submunitions. However, this data is not necessarily representative of the type of devices that caused the most casualties, as different sources had different areas of focus (Amnesty International reported specifically on cluster munitions, and GICHD reported specifically on antivehicle mines).

Among the five casualties that were reported to have resulted from improvised mines, some were described as having been constructed from manufactured mines. These included antivehicle mines adapted to detonate as antipersonnel devices and multiple interconnected mines, or so-called daisy-chained IEDs.

Ninety-three of the identified casualties were civilians, while 21 were military. Seven demining casualties were identified. The civil status of 40 casualties was unknown.

Several sources noted that many hundreds, or some thousands, of casualties resulting from mine/ERW incidents occurred in Yemen in 2016.

HRW reported that mines appeared to have killed and injured hundreds of civilians.[2] In February 2017, the health ministry of Yemen based in Aden, told HRW that, following an end to hostilities within the city in mid-2015, Aden’s hospitals were receiving about seven to eight landmine casualties weekly, and continued to receive landmine casualties.[3] From late April to June 2016, a hospital in Taizz was reported to have treated 50 people who had one or more limbs amputated, all believed to have been caused by landmines.[4]

During 2016 and early 2017, the Yemen Mine Action Center’s (YEMAC) office in Sana’a registered 1,020 casualties, but as the Information Management System for Mine Action (IMSMA) had not been functioning since the beginning of 2016, YEMAC was unable to provide details for these casualties.[5] The YEMAC office in Aden registered 566 casualties up to March 2017. Of these, 528 were men, 36 were women, and two were children.[6] Of the 566 casualties, 101 people had lost one or more limbs.[7]

UNICEF’s Country Task Force on Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism on grave child rights violations collects information about mine/ERW survivors, but as of June 2017 no information was available.[8]

The Yemen Association for Landmine Survivors (YALS) reported that 26 survivors requested assistance in 2016, but it was not reported whether these survivors were all injured as a result of mine/ERW incidents that occurred in 2016. Fourteen were men, seven were boys, one was a woman, and four were girls.[9]

The 2016 total of 2,037 mine/ERW casualties is more than double the 988 reported for 2015, including the ICRC-reported statistic of 812 persons wounded by mines/ERW admitted to healthcare facilities in 2015.[10] Those casualties were reported to have occurred during 2015, and thus were included in the Monitors’ annual global total of persons injured for that year.[11] In 2014, the Monitor identified 24 casualties from mines/ERW from YEMAC casualty data and other sources. The ICRC reported that five mine/ERW casualties received treatment in 2014.[12] However, there was likely significant underreporting due to the challenges facing data collection caused by the intensified armed conflict.[13] Prior to 2015, the casualty total for 2012 of 263 casualties was the highest annual number recorded by the Monitor for Yemen since research began in 1999, and was due to the conflict and increased population movement in that year.[14]

Through the end of 2016, there were at least 8,958 mine/ERW casualties identified in Yemen.[15] A Landmine Impact Survey (LIS) identified 4,904 casualties through July 2000, of which 2,560 people were killed and 2,344 were injured.[16] In 2010, it was reported in the media that there had been 35,000 mine/ERW casualties in Yemen since 1995.[17]

Cluster munition casualties

In 2016, 38 casualties of cluster munitions were reported in Yemen.[18]

Of this total, 20 were casualties of cluster munition attacks: at least 10 people were killed in attacks (one man, one boy, five children of unknown gender, and three of unknown age and gender), and 10 were injured (one man, one child of unknown gender, and eight of unknown age and gender).

Unexploded submunitions resulted in 18 casualties. Eight people were killed by submunitions (three men, two boys, one child of unknown gender, and two of unknown age and gender) and 10 people were injured (two men, four boys, one child of unknown gender, and three casualties of unknown age and gender).

Of the total cluster munition casualties reported in 2016, 84% (32) were civilians, three were deminers, and three were of unknown civil status. Cluster munition casualties were reported in Hajjan, Sa’ada, and Sana’a provinces.

The 38 cluster munition casualties reported in 2016 represented a decrease in the 104 reported in 2015. The number of casualties reported as a result of cluster munition attacks reduced from 94 to 20. However, the number of unexploded submunition casualties increased from 10 in 2015 to 18 in 2016.

Prior to the 2015 new use of cluster munitions, a cluster munition attack in Yemen in December 2009 was reported to have killed 55 people, including 14 women and 21 children.[19] In 2013, it was reported that unexploded submunitions remaining from the 2009 attack had killed four civilians and injured 13 in two incidents, one in December 2009 a few days after the attack and the other in January 2012.[20]