Good morning, Kasmira. Last month, government officials and demining experts from Pacific nations travelled several thousands of miles to Geneva last month to discuss a deadly legacy of 80-year-old bombs, shells and underwater munitions that still plague their region. They described how climate change is adding a renewed sense of urgency. |
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A munition discovered at Hells Point, in the Guadalcanal province of the Solomon Islands, by the explosive ordnance disposal team of the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force. The site was a major ammunition dump during WWII. (GICHD, October 2024)
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Palau is a tightly-clustered archipelago of hundreds of lush green islands, surrounded by vibrant coral reefs and white sandy beaches. But while a picture of paradise, the Micronesian nation and its Pacific Island neighbours are also home to an unknown quantity of explosive remnants of war.
Eighty years after World War II, munitions left by the United States and Japan still litter the beaches, jungles and surrounding waters. They’re also being found in people’s backyards, on farmland, and construction sites, posing a hidden but deadly threat. At its peak during WWII, an estimated 2,800 tonnes of ordnance was dropped or fired on Palau alone, according to the independent monitor Mine Action Review.
Now collective efforts are being ratcheted up across the Pacific region to find and safely destroy unexploded remnants of war which – if the fusing mechanism inside is intact – can still detonate, turning anything in its vicinity into smithereens.
“Now and again, someone will come and tell us they have found a weapon. A man recently came to inform us that he’d moved one because he was worried about his child playing with it,” says Teah Sengebau, an administrative assistant in Palau’s national safety office, who travelled to Geneva last month to attend a demining workshop for Pacific countries.
Though Palauans have grown up with the ever-present threat of bombs being found, “there’s not a lot of awareness” around the risks they pose, which has faded along with memories of war, and needs to be addressed through education and training, she tells Geneva Solutions.
Read the full story on Geneva Solutions.
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