Surveying Eighty-Year-Old Battlefields in Solomon Islands

Authors

Simon Conway, The HALO TrustFollow

Abstract

Surveying battlefield sites and abandoned ammunition depots eighty years after a conflict presents a challenge. There are few living witnesses, and the land has often changed beyond recognition. In Solomon Islands, the situation is exacerbated by a combination of familiarity and lack of information. Civilians have grown accustomed to the presence of ordnance and concluded that the problem is intractable. At the same time, it is not known how many people have died or been injured because of unexploded ordnance (UXO) and abandoned (AXO) ordnance. Nor is it known where the accidents occurred or what the victims were doing at the time of the accident. This lack of accident data has made it difficult for Solomon Islands to draw attention to the scale of the problem and request help through the assistance clauses of treaties including the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons and the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention. It makes it nearly impossible to write a national casualty reduction strategy built on solid data.

Recommended Citation

Conway, Simon (2024) "Surveying Eighty-Year-Old Battlefields in Solomon Islands," The Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction: Vol. 28 : Iss. 1 , Article 4.
Available at: https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/cisr-journal/vol28/iss1/4