Casualties

Casualty Overview

No new casualties from mines or new explosive remnants of war (ERW) were identified in the Republic of Belarus in 2013. However, casualties continued in 2014 with two people injured in an incident involving tampering with an unexploded World War II grenade.[1]

In 2012, two ERW casualties were identified. In April of that year, a father and son were killed in a tampering incident caused by an unexploded grenade.[2] No landmine casualties have been reported in Belarus since 2004.

There were at least 6,191 mine/ERW casualties (2,675 killed; 3,516 injured) in Belarus from 1945 to the end of 2013.[3]

Victim Assistance

Most mine/ERW survivors in Belarus were injured by ERW left over from World War II or during military service in Afghanistan in the 1980s. The total number of mine/ERW survivors in Belarus is unknown, and it has not been reported how many of the 3,513 registered survivors are still alive.

There is no specific victim assistance coordination or planning in Belarus. The Ministry of Labor and Social Protection is the main government agency responsible for protecting the rights of persons with disabilities.[4] The Ministry of Health and several other agencies also had a “State Programme on Disability Prevention and Rehabilitation of Disabled Persons” for the period from 2011 to 2015.[5]

As of 1 September 2014, Belarus had not signed the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).