The landmine problem exists in Colombia for more than twenty years ago, but in the last four years, instead of decreasing, it has increased disproportionately. In fact, Colombia is the only country in Latin America and one of the few in the world where more and more mines appears every day. Thus, in the period between 1998 and 2004, there were more than 1,829 accidents, which mean an increase of 568% in the number of accidents per year. In the last ten years 2,185 accidents recorded, as a result which left 5,051 victims. Where 38% were soldiers, 62% were civilians. The ELN exceeded by more than 20% to the FARC in laying mines, although the size of the ELN was three to four times less than the FARC. This means that the ELN planted mines four times more weapons per combatant in the FARC until this …show more content…
Moreover, despite the recent relative decline in mine-laying by the ELN in the past three years with respect to the above, the ELN continues to use a higher proportion of mines in weapons fighter compared to its size, because in this period This guerrilla group has averaged eight times less than the FARC. Because of its low cost anti-personnel mines are a good alternative to these armed groups, for their massive manufacture, mines do not require a large infrastructure and materials to produce them. They are cheap and affordable to produce in huge amounts of mines known as "Chinese hat or quiebrapata and" In the case of the FARC, the mines used by the guerrillas are made of common materials (plastic jars and syringes). Some of the artisanal mines contain small amounts of metal, making it difficult to detect. The FARC mixed coffee with explosives in order to confuse