Landmines in Cambodia: Past, Present, and Future By Wade C. Rober ...

day of life. When individuals experience an ordnance-related incident, their lives—and the lives of their families—are forever impacted.

Critical distinctions exist between landmines and UXO. Landmines are designed to maim and are strategically positioned beneath the earth’s surface in locations critical during war efforts. Ordnance parcels, on the other hand, are designed to kill and wreak havoc. Residual UXO in Cambodia (also referred to as ordnance parcels in this report) primarily entails unexploded ordnance parcels dropped from airplanes during the Vietnam era. Landmines and UXO are not only distinct in their design but also in their locations within Cambodia. The distinction between these two types of ordnance is complicated due to a language oversight in the Cambodian tongue. Krop mean, referring to a mine, is a term often used collectively for all types of ordnance. As Cambodians gain more experience with ordnance, however, language is slowly adapting to distinguish between landmines and residual ordnance contamination. Specifically, the term krop mean includes a classifying term, min pteu, meaning “without explosion,” to refer to UXO. This distinction, however, is not universally made.

Landmines and UXO in Cambodia are distinct from one another with regard to where they are, how they injure people, and in how they are discovered. In light of these factors, this book examines landmines and UXO in both separate and aggregated measures in an effort to test for statistical distinctions for specific ordnance types.

The objective of this book is to examine the relationship between the frequency of civilian landmine/UXO incidents and socioeconomic, agriculturally specific, and economic conditions over the 1980 to 2007 period in Cambodia. I estimate statistically how poverty, demographic conditions, agricultural fluctuations, and the price of scrap metal affect the prevalence of both landmine and UXO incident rates. Landmine/UXO incidents are disaggregated into accidents and tampering incidents throughout each analysis. Findings of this exercise are expected to inform current attempts of the landmine/UXO governmental and nongovernmental organizations currently working on ameliorating the impact of ordnance.

The remainder of this chapter is organized as follows: Section 1.2 explains the methodology that will be used in the book. Section 1.3