Guinea-Bissau

Last updated: 21 October 2018

 

Casualties

All known casualties (between 1963 and 2017)

1,575 mine/unexploded remnants of war (ERW) casualties

 

No mine/ERW casualties were reported in 2017 in the Republic of Guinea-Bissau.[1] One casualty was reported in 2016 when a boy was killed by ERW in Bissora, Oio region.[2] Although no new casualties were recorded in 2015, 41 casualties were recorded in 2014,[3] more than four-times the number of mine/ERW casualties that occurred in 2013, when 10 mine/ERW casualties were recorded—all within the region of Oio.[4]

Total casualties—details

There were a total of 1,574 casualties from mines/ERW reported from 1963 to December 2016.[5] However, this was not believed to be a comprehensive figure.[6] An estimated 80% of all casualties were male, the majority of whom were farmers.[7] No information was available on whether the figure included both military and civilian casualties.

Cluster munition casualties

While the total number of casualties from cluster munitions is not known in Guinea-Bissau, there were 11 casualties in 1998 during an attack on a weapons depot; the explosion that caused the casualties involved cluster munitions.[8]



[1] Email from Joao Kennedy de Pina Araujo, Director, Center for Physical Rehabilitation (Centro de Reabilitação Motora, CRM), 15 May 2018.

[2] Ibid.; and 17 June 2016.

[3] This casualty figure is a revised total that includes new information on 12 additional casualties in four mine/ERW incidents in 2014. Casualty data provided in email from Joao Kennedy de Pina Araujo, CRM, 17 June 2016. Previously the Monitor had recorded 29 casualties in Guinea-Bissau in 2014 in a single incident.

[4] The casualties were recorded by HUMAID, a demining organization, and provided to the Monitor via an email from Kennedy de Pina Araujo, CRM, 14 March 2014.

[5] Monitor analysis of statement of Guinea-Bissau, Mine Ban Treaty Thirteenth Meeting of States Parties, Geneva, 4 December 2013; and emails from Joao Kennedy de Pina Araujo, CRM, 17 June 2016; and from César de Carvalho, General Director, National Mine Action Coordination Center (Centro Nacional de Coordenação da Accão Anti-Minas, CAAMI), 12 March 2014.

[6] Statement of Guinea-Bissau, Mine Ban Treaty Thirteenth Meeting of States Parties, Geneva, 4 December 2013.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Handicap International (HI), Circle of Impact: The Fatal Footprint of Cluster Munitions on People and Communities (Brussels: HI, May 2007), Annex 2, p. 145.