Ethiopia

Casualties

Last updated: 26 July 2017

Casualties Overview

All known casualties by end 2016

16,849 (9,431 killed; 7,401 injured; 17 unknown)

 

No mine/explosive remnants of war (ERW) casualties were reported in 2016.[1] The extent of contamination in the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia suggests that casualties were likely in 2016, but have gone unreported.

The last identified (mine) casualties were in 2010, when two deminers were injured.[2]

There were at least 16,849 casualties (9,431 killed; 7,401 injured; and 17 for whom the outcome was unknown) through the end of 2013. Between 2004 and the end of 2014, the Monitor identified 233 casualties (90 killed; 126 injured; 17 unknown).[3] The most complete single data source remains the Landmine Impact Survey (LIS) completed in 2004, which recorded 16,616 mine/ERW casualties (9,341 killed; 7,275 injured).[4]

Cluster munition casualties

At least 272 casualties occurred during the use of cluster munitions in Mekele and Adigrat, Ethiopia, in 1998.[5] No unexploded submunition casualties were recorded.



[1] Response to Landmine Monitor Questionnaire, Meried Mengesha Berhe, Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (MOLSA), 10 April 2017.

[2] Information provided to the Monitor in writing by the Ethiopian Mine Action Office (EMAO), Addis Ababa, 15 March 2011. In March 2011, EMAO was reported as saying that deminers had been injured during clearance, but that there were no known reports of civilian casualties. Henry Guyer, “The remnants of war: Ethiopia’s buried killers,” The Ethiopian Reporter, 26 March 2011.

[3] See previous editions of the Monitor available on the Monitor website.

[5] Handicap International (HI), Circle of Impact: The Fatal Footprint of Cluster Munitions on People and Communities (Brussels: HI, May 2007), p. 52.