Humanitarian Mine Action IRIN in Depth

IRIN
WEB SPECIAL
Documentary - November 2004
IRIN Web Special on Humanitarian Mine Action (with special focus on the 2004 Nairobi Summit of a Mine Free World)
Laying Landmines to Rest?
In times of crisis or disaster, humanitarian workers and governments need an accurate account of events and situations on the ground. An information service that focuses on a daily basis on humanitarian issues in Africa, Central Asia and Iraq, IRIN seeks to satisfy that need. Our aim is to bridge the information gap between decision makers, humanitarian workers and the people they are trying to help. For more information on our services visit our website at: www.IRINnews.org
IRIN
2
inside this issue
1. Overview - Humanitarian Mine Action and the historic Nairobi Summit............................................................................................3 2. Features covering the 5 core elements of the Web Special - Humanitarian mine clearance, and the growth of the mine action sector .......................................................................5 - Mine Victim Assistance: the scale of the needs, the players, the challenges for medical care and rehabilitation / reintegration....................................................................................................................................................................8 - The Destruction of Anti-Personnel Mines Stockpiles: wiping out caches saves lives and prevents injury........................12 - The demonization of mines and the Ottawa Treaty: The remarkable movement of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.....................................................................................................................................................................13 - The Nairobi Summit: A breakdown of the issues, the personalities and the issues .........................................................16 3. Special reports and articles - Afghanistan: Demining dogs responsible for half of all cleared land..............................................................................18 - Afghanistan: A quarter of a million landmine victims struggle to make a life................................................................19 - Afghanistan: Mine awareness reducing victims significantly.........................................................................................20 - Iraq: Demining spreading south in post-Saddam era.....................................................................................................21 - Iraq: Insecurity adds to huge southern demining task ...................................................................................................23 - Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan: Demining around Uzbek enclaves brings hope to impoverished villagers ................................24 - Pakistan: Landmine and UXOs continue to endanger life in isolated tribal belt .............................................................26 - Pakistan: Mine education for tribal women ...................................................................................................................28 - Africa: Well-known and invisible killer littered throughout Africa..................................................................................29 - Angola: Amputee soccer stars shine ..............................................................................................................................30 - Angola: Self esteem key to building mine-wrecked lives...............................................................................................32 - Angola: Biggest ever campaign against landmines launched........................................................................................33 - Chad: Extreme geographical and climactic challenges to demining ..............................................................................34 - Kenya: Treaty signatory and host to the 2004 Summit...................................................................................................35 - Rwanda: Funding shortage retards mine action efforts.................................................................................................37 - Senegal: Senseless deaths in Casamance.......................................................................................................................38 - South Sudan: Big challenges in the south......................................................................................................................40 - Uganda: A need to address the landmine question........................................................................................................42 4. Interviews - Interview with Afghan deputy minister of foreign affairs and chairman of the national demining consultative group, Mohammad Haidar Reza ...............................................................................................................................................43 - Interview with Rae McGrath, Co-laureate of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize.......................................................................45 - Interview with Margaret Arach Orech, Ugandan landmine survivor ..............................................................................47 - Interview with Ambassador Wolfgang Petritsch............................................................................................................50 - Interview with Martin Barber, Director of the UN Mine Action Service ..........................................................................52 5. History - History of landmines .....................................................................................................................................................55 6. How to contact IRIN ......................................................................................................................................................57
WEB SPECIAL
IRIN Web Special on Humanitarian Mine Action, November 2004 - Page 2
IRIN
3
1. Overview
Humanitarian Mine Action and the Nairobi Summit
At just 32 years old, Jose Brinco should be in the prime of his life. Instead, he is a victim of Angolas most horrifying legacy of war - landmines. In 1994, a young Brinco and his wife were working hard in their maize fields. When he stepped on the anti-personnel mine, it was inevitable that his wife should try to help him. She didnt make it. She set off another mine and was killed instantly. I cant think too much about what has happened to me, otherwise my head goes crazy, he told IRIN. Partially sighted and without his lower left leg after treading on the mine, Brinco, his clothes caked in dirt, is reduced to begging on the streets for a living. At night, on those same streets, he makes his bed. Meanwhile, at the other end of the African continent, preparations are being made for an international, high-level conference that aims to assist mine victims like Brinco, and to rid the world of mines for future generations. Nairobi will host a major summit on landmines from 29 November to 3 December 2004, and 600 delegates from over 140 national governments and international organisations are expected to attend. This will be the first Review Conference of the Mine Ban Treaty of 1997 and a historic occasion as it marks the halfway point between the treatys establishment under international law in 1999, and the deadline in 2009 for most signatories to fulfil their treaty commitments. It will also be a time to take stock of the progress of a relatively new sector of humanitarian intervention and the remarkable efforts to address the devastation caused by anti-personnel landmines. We really are on the way to altogether ban and eliminate one kind of vicious weapon from the earth, the president-designate of the Summit on a Mine Free World, Austrias Ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Wolfgang Petritsch, told IRIN.
The world is uniting to end suffering of this kind: Mine Victim in Cambodia. Credit: MAG/Sean Sutton
WEB SPECIAL
paigning throughout the world, a convention was drawn up and signed in Ottawa in 1997. This turned the tide of history on these weapons and, according to the chief of the UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS), Martin Barber, consigned the anti-personnel landmine to the dustbin of history. As a new humanitarian sector, humanitarian mine action (HMA) underwent unusually rapid growth in terms of activities and geographical spread. By international standards, the success of the Mine Ban Treaty is outstanding. The conventions widespread implementation and the zeal of many national signatories to ensure its commitments are met shows just how remarkable the convention and the mine ban movement is and explains why the Nairobi Summit on a Mine Free World deserves special attention. Campaigners predict that new countries may use the opportunity of the summit to sign the treaty and raise the current number of 143 states already party to the Mine Ban Treaty. The participants at the summit are also expected to adopt an ambitious action programme to finish the task of ridding the world of mines, whether in warehoused stockpiles or laid in the ground.
The new action plan for 2005-2009

This event will be a platform for commitments and a spring board for action, summit chair and Austrian Ambassador Wolfgang Petritsch claimed. I expect high-level leaders to renew political and resource commitments, Petritsch in Bosnia with Nobel Laureate Jody further seize the responWilliams 2004. sibility to clear mined Credit: Kerry Brinkert GICHD areas and assist victims and establish a concrete action plan, he said. Petritsch told IRIN he was confident that all the seventy points of the proposed action plan discussed at the conference would be adopted. The summit also has the support of United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan who has said the AntiPersonnel Mine Ban Convention has made remarkable progress and he has urged governments to participate at the highest possible level. In the early 1990s emerged a new awareness and urgency concerning the millions of landmines that plagued so many countries and caused so much suffering. When the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan and the civil war began the population was overwhelmed with landmines. Cambodia and northern Iraq were then highlighted as areas littered with landmines. By the middle of the 1990s the Balkans, Angola and Mozambique were added to the list of severely landmine-affected countries and the
The fast track to Ottawa 1997

Largely as a result of increased media attention, by the early 1990s the world had begun to wake up to the human misery caused by anti-personnel landmines in war-ravaged countries from Asia to Africa. Two or three international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) started conducting limited clearance, while other NGOs and UN agencies were still wondering if the problem of mines was a humanitarian issue, or better left to the military. Then, after a surge of cam-
IRIN
4
numbers of landmine victims soared. Today, the Landmines Monitor - an annual compendium produced as an initiative of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) - claim 82 countries are in some way affected by landmines and/or unexploded ordnance (UXOs). improbability of the international community establishing a mine free world in the near future. Yet, in Kosovo, mine clearance efforts were fully funded and it took only two and a half years before the state was considered mine-safe. Although a lot of money was put in and it was expensive ... it was possible to finish it relatively quickly because the scope was small and the size of the mine problem immediately apparent, said Barber of UNMAS. For McGrath the reason for slow progress is the low level of funding. He told IRIN, Clearance will always be a problem because it relies on state funding. Until the polluter pays [where belligerents in a conflict have to pay for post-conflict clearance] principle is recognised, most governments, including those party to the treaty, are far more willing to invest money in weaponry than in saving lives.
WEB SPECIAL
Many communities remain affected by landmines

Although a coalition of civil society groups and governments has successfully managed to stigmatise and outlaw landmines, the pace of clearance and assistance to mine victims continues to cause concern for many field operators. They point to thousands of mine-affected communities around the world who they say have not seen any benefits from the good intentions and millions of dollars poured into humanitarian mine action. Rae McGrath, founder of the Mines Advisory Group, a British NGO, told IRIN he felt current funding levels of mine clearance were nowhere near enough and that, there is no way that by 2009 mine clearance will be finished, or even remotely close ... in some countries they have hardly started. The year 2009 has been the year set as the treaty target for countries to work together to remove mines from affected countries worldwide. Although there are possibilities to extend the deadline, Nairobi conference organisers hope this will be a last resort. Ambassador Petritsch told IRIN he did not consider the deadline unrealistic but a challenge.
The neglected mine victims

The situation for mine victims remains bleak. Unlike stockpile destruction and mine clearance, no consideration was made when designing the treaty for the assistance of the hundreds of thousands of mine victims throughout the world. Frankly, its very difficult to measure the extent to which governments are meeting their obligations to assist victims. Since there is no deadline it is not something that has attracted a lot of attention or focus, Barber told IRIN. Most of the estimated 300,000 mine victims who have survived mine accidents live in the poorest countries of the world where surgical, medical and rehabilitation facilities are rare and even basic health care is in disarray, under-funded or non-existent. Despite the emergence in the last decade of various agencies and international organisations trying to help mine victims, their needs vastly overwhelm the resources and facilities available. A mine blast survivor with one arm or one leg missing has become a common sight in many mine-affected communities but their needs are far greater than just a prosthetic limb replacement. Continued medical support and psychosocial assistance to enable mine victims to reintegrate into their communities are both needed. Employment and job training is central to mine victims long-term needs, which many say have been seriously neglected by the treaty and its signatories. The ICBL repeatedly draws attention to this neglect in its annual Landmine Monitor Report. Ambassador Petritsch assured IRIN that the issue of mine victim assistance is one of the core issues to be discussed at the Nairobi summit, which shows that it is at the center of our concerns. But for Rae McGrath this is not enough. The world has done nothing about victims, he told IRIN and he said he feels that whatever has been provided is limited
Slow and dangerous work

Mine clearance is notoriously painstaking, expensive and dangerous work. Teams typically consist of men with metal detectors and prodders with occaCredit: MAG/Sean Sutton sional assistance from sniffer dogs and mechanical devices. Often working in punishing climates and in overgrown and remote terrain, they progress metre by metre. In many cases they are forced to spend the same amount of time checking suspected minefields as they do tackling live minefields. Ordered and documented minefields are a very rare assignment for mine clearance teams - most work in a data-free environment with only rough estimations of the number and location of mines. Teams must spend a great deal of time clearing away years of overgrowth before they can check the ground for mines. In countries like Bosnia, Angola and Cambodia where mine clearance is considered most dangerous to civilians and most widespread, relatively limited progress has been made in reducing the total estimated area of threat despite the best efforts of the mine action community. Studies show the number of communities at risk from mines is far outweighed by the amount of land still requiring clearance and illustrates the
IRIN
5
and not related to the scale of the problem. To be blunt, the best they can hope for are some prostheses, but more commonly they merely become subjects of endless surveys and have become the subjects of popular international voyeurism, he said to IRIN. The need for redoubling of efforts to assist landmine victims was echoed by mine victim Margaret Arach Orech who lost her leg when the bus she was travelling in hit a mine in northern Uganda. The major challenges concerning mine victims assistance are, firstly, holding governments responsible to their commitment in the Mine Ban Treaty to mine victims, she told IRIN. Orech is an active campaigner for victims assistance. Despite problems with assistance for victims, the humanitarian mine action sector is still remarkable in terms of how quickly it organised, international standards were established and global systems of information and coordination formed. Donors have also developed a deep engagement with the issues and work closely with NGOs, UNMAS and other institutions to coordinate and prioritise funding, which now comes from regular budget allocations rather than adhoc emergency donations, which was the case during the 1990s. political ramifications. Above all, the scourge of landmines has succeeded in uniting over 1,400 civil society organisations with more than 150 governments, all in agreement that the threat these mines pose to civilians and mankind is far greater than the strategic and military use they may have. This agreement has sown a mine action sector vigorously addressing a massive global problem armed with an effective Mine Ban Treaty seeking to ensure future generations will be free from the violence of mines. The Nairobi summit is all about creating a platform for governments to redouble their treaty obligations and commitments. Martin Barber sees the conference like a vitamin-boost, a re-launch of energy for the next five years and to accelerate the current momentum of mine action. For Ambassador Petritsch the treaty is the result of a convention that works through agreed objectives between governments and civil society. He told IRIN that the reason the combined assault on landmines was working was because, Basically the issue of landmines is about people, real people and about how we can work together to avoid future mine victims. The vast number of senior diplomats, world leaders and civil society representatives that will gather at the Nairobi summit indicates the level of importance this meeting has for the participants; but for those working with mine victims and clearing mines the real evidence will be the increased resources made available to mine action in the next five years and beyond.
WEB SPECIAL
Unprecedented unity of civil society and governments

Governments, United Nations agencies and civil society are all working together in the knowledge that mine clearance is important at different levels of conflict resolution, post-conflict recovery and reconstruction, peace-building and human security. Anti-personnel landmines not only exact an unacceptable toll in terms of death and injury but also have important socio-economic, psychological and
2. Features covering the 5 core elements of the Web Special Humanitarian mine clearance, and the growth of the mine action sector
Fourteen years ago humanitarian mine clearance was just a vague concept and still not operational anywhere in the world; at the same time there were the highest number of mines in the ground than at any other time in history. Although data was unreliable, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) estimated that throughout the early 1990s approximately 26,000 people were being maimed or killed by anti-personnel mines every year. The shocking reality of the millions of abandoned mines demanded action but the problem seemed overwhelming. Today a different form of organised mine clearance is underway. Sniffer dogs and mechanical devices are used but mostly the work is done manually by teams of trained men and women working in many of the 63 mine-affected countries. Some countries have recently declared themselves mine-free after years of clearance work but in others the job has barely begun and commentators are worried that by 2009, the target for a mine-free world set by the Ottawa Treaty for the majority of affected countries, thousands of mine-affected communities will be no better off. There have been many changes in recent years but theres no way clearance will be complete by 2009, said Rae McGrath, a co-laureate of the Nobel Prize
10-year-old Andrevski survived the war in Kosovo but was blown up by a landmine when playing with friends on a hillside just days after the peace agreement was signed. Both of his legs had to be amputated. Credit: MAG/Sean Sutton
IRIN
6
awarded to key members of the campaign to ban landmines. hesitantly at first, in an area they conventionally saw as the preserve of the military. It was an entirely new area of work.
WEB SPECIAL
The scope of the problem

The problem of landmine contamination is closely linked to the presence of unexploded ordnance (UXO) in many countries. The list of affected countries today goes far beyond the number of countries that gave landmines such high notoriety status in the early 1990s. Initially Cambodia, Angola, Afghanistan, the Balkans, Mozambique and northern Iraq dominated news stories either during conflict or immediately following peace accords. The devastation that over 340 different kinds of landmines were causing in these countries shocked the world into action as the numbers of men, women and children killed or maimed every year soared. In 2003 the Landmine Monitor - an annual publication monitoring the progress of the mine action world and the implementation of the Ottawa Treaty - identified 82 mine-affected countries worldwide. The United Nations initially estimated that up to 120 million landmines awaited identification and clearance but as the emerging mine action sector developed these global estimates are no longer used with any confidence. The emphasis has shifted from the numbers of mines to the area of land affected and the number of communities that continue to live at risk from mines. Mines were left over in their millions from independence wars, civil wars, and rebel insurgencies, forgotten international conflicts of the cold war era and from the great world wars. Effectively, the scope of the global landmine problem maps the conflicts of the world for the last 60 years. Examples include Egypt, with an estimated 17 million landmines mostly laid during the Second World War, and Laos where hundreds of millions of anti-personnel bombies were dropped by US bombers in the 1970s. Tens of millions of mines were left planted in the ground from the IranIraq war in the 1980s. The myriad of smaller conflicts half-forgotten by the world in countries such as Chad, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Eritrea, Uganda, Senegal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka also left a deadly legacy of mines and with them dead and injured civilians. According to Martin Barber, Chief of the UN Mine Action Service, In the early to mid-nineties the consequences of the widespread use of anti-personnel mines in internal conflicts had become horrifyingly apparent. Those working in mine-affected countries started to see large numbers of injured civilians at hospitals and emergency clinics. In more isolated areas those unable to reach hospital in time died of blood loss, if they survived the initial blast. Huge areas of land and major road arteries were out-of-bounds restricting livelihoods and preventing rehabilitation, refugee return and peace building. Health facilities, schools, local markets and water sources as well as vast tracts of arable land and pasture were too dangerous to access. The international humanitarian community responded, somewhat
Responding to the crisis

The main responses to the horrors of landmines were three-fold: providing surgical and medical emergency support in the most mine-affected countries; initiating an international campaign to ban landmines; and the organising of mine clearance teams in the hardest hit areas. First, some key medical agencies started developing clinics to deal with the many thousands of amputations and the fitting of prostheses for the rehabilitation of mine victims. Always a small core group of committed agencies led by groups like the ICRC, Handicap International and Veterans International, they struggle to meet the medical needs of mine victims as well as survivors needs for rehabilitation and reintegration. The second response was an expression of the outrage felt by many seeing so many non-combatants maimed and killed by mines. This was the foundation of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL - www.icbl.org) A few individuals and agencies that decided to take on the armies and governments of the world and force through legislation that would ban the manufacture, sale and use of mines for all time started this campaign. The campaign captured the imagination and harnessed the moral outrage felt globally against landmines and was as utopian as it was ambitious. What was started by half a dozen zealous agencies in 1993 gathered colossal momentum as hundreds of non-governmental organisations, UN bodies and governments supported the movement. This resulted in the 1997 Ottawa Treaty. The Nairobi Summit is the first review conference after five years of entry into force of this treaty. The third main response of the international community was the emergence of mine clearance and mine risk education, perhaps the most relevant to communities living with the threat of mines. Initially, very few humanitarian mine clearance teams worked in the most extreme and most publicised mine-affected countries: The long road to a mine free world? Are these Cambodia, northern Angolan mine victims walking towards brighter Iraq, and Afghanistan. future? Credit: MAG/Sean Sutton Angola, Mozambique, Laos and Bosnia-Herzegovina soon followed. Today, this list has grown to 63 countries where some form of mine clearance is taking place.
IRIN
7
Gradually the NGOs involved in mine clearance grew and expanded their operations. This was an entirely new sector that combined military know-how with the humanitarian aims of community development. It was slow work conducted almost entirely by local deminers using metal detectors and prodders. Their slow progress in the first years only exposed how urgently the sector needed to grow in size and efficiency. By the mid-1990s nations began to coordinate a global response as donors began to develop structures to finance what was to be a long-term commitment to rid the world of mines. Some governments started to use their own military to clear mines while others created national mine action departments and centres supported by the UN. In October 1997, the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) was formed to serve as the UN focal point for humanitarian mine action. At the global level, it is responsible for coordinating all aspects of mine action within the UN system and ensures an effective and proactive response to landmine contamination. At the field level, UNMAS is responsible for providing mine action assistance during humanitarian emergencies and peacekeeping operations (www.mineaction.org). In 2003, the UN Development Programme and the UN Mine Action Service supported 25 national Mine Action Centres worldwide showing their commitment to develop indigenous capacities to deal with the long-term problem of mines and UXO. In recognition that the bourgeoning sector needed a headquarters and research centre, a group of countries decided Switzerland would be an appropriate base. In 1998, the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian De-mining (GICHD) opened to support the mine action efforts of the international community and United Nations. The GICHD is an independent organisation supported by Austria, Belgium, Cambodia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Norway, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and the Republic and Canton of Geneva. (www.gichd.ch). The mine action sector has spent much of the last decade perfecting operating procedures for every aspect of mine clearance. Mine risk education has become one of the most regularised and coordinated sectors of humanitarian assistance. The clearance of Kosovo after the withdrawal of the Yugoslavian forces was a remarkable in terms of speed and coordination. The UN Mine Action Centre for Kosovo tightly coordinated both donors and operators to complete systematic clearance in less than three years. But Kosovo was expensive. It was a small land mass and had the attention of most western donors; few other countries have benefited from the same level of international resolve to solve their mines problems so fast.
WEB SPECIAL
The continual challenge of mine clearance

Despite the advances made in the sector, the scale of landmine contamination far outstrips the capacity to clear them. The additional assistance of mine detection dogs and mechanical devices speeds up the work but the majority of teams are men with detectors and prodders conducting what one field operator described as a cross between archaeology and gardening. Although there has been massive investment in research to detect mines more swiftly, a technical solution continues to elude designers and engineers. An area with some improvement, but not as much as people had hoped, is the development of technology [to assist mine clearance,] Martin Barber explained to IRIN as he outlined some new experiments using rats and bees to assist locating TNT underground. For McGrath and many field operators, who after a decade still use men with prodders to locate mines, most investments of this kind have been fruitless and a diversion of money. Continued diversion of funds that could be used for mine clearance - towards unrealistic and sometimes irrelevant research projects - should especially be stopped, he told IRIN. Signatories of the Ottawa Treaty banning anti-personnel mines have a particular responsibility to ensure mine clearance occurs at an urgent pace with 2009 as the official target date for a minefree world. Although this Deminers and subsistence farmers working close together. Demining is so slow that villagers have to deadline applies for the take grave risks to bring in a harvest. first 45 countries that Credit: MAG/Sean Sutton signed the treaty, the countries that acceded subsequently all have different deadlines. Afghanistan and Angola have a 2013 deadline for meeting this obligation, Barber told IRIN. Article 5 of the Mine Ban Treaty requires the destruction of all anti-personnel mines in mined areas ... The International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) and others use the term mine-free to express the central goal of eradicating mines. Now, as already 50 percent of the time period has passed, the ICBL and other
The need for data and international standards

During the 1990s mine action operated in a data-free environment; there was little reliable data on the numbers or locations of mine areas. No one knew how many accidents there really were every year or how many years it would take to clear the mines. For years agencies operated largely independently with little centralisation of information. Now, in addition to more clearance teams, commercial agencies and NGOs, there are also different international tools, which help evaluate mine-affected areas. Minefield surveys, socio-economic assessments of needs, data collection on mine victims and information management systems all have radically improved the situation from just a decade ago.
IRIN
8
observers are concerned that some signatories and affected countries are increasingly using terms such as mine-safe, risk-free or impact-free to describe their aspirations. The concern is a blurring of objectives as it becomes apparent that many countries will fail to meet the 2009 deadline. US $309 million, this total came from contributions of 23 or more donors. The clearance of mines and mine areas comes down to a numbers game: the more clearance teams there are in each country, the faster they will complete the work. For example, the high levels of donor interest and will and numerous operators on the ground made clearing Kosovo a fast operation. Ambassador Petritsch, president-designate of the Nairobi summit, is more optimistic about most countries meeting the summits 2009 clearance deadline and admits it will be a challenge, but feels the affected countries need to pull their weight too. Its very important for the affected countries to have national plans of action and to bring them to the conference and to use the conference as a spring-board for soliciting assistance ... it will be a clear indication of how seriously they take the matter in their own country, he told IRIN. One of the harsh truths the conference in Nairobi will have to face is that the number of those killed and injured each year by landmines will continue in exact inverse proportion to the speed of clearance. The speed of clearance is directly related to organisation and management of clearance teams and available technologies but predominantly, the ICBL and field operators agree, it is related to funding. For McGrath, It will be many years and many people will die and be maimed ... unless we learn to fund peace as readily as conflict.
WEB SPECIAL
Funding restrictions
Despite the considerable cost of mine clearance and the massive logistical and organisational challenges mine clearance presents, some feel the core issue is funding. McGrath, also the former founder of the British NGO, the Mines Advisory Group, told IRIN current funding contributions were nowhere near enough. Unexploded ordnance clearance and mines will always be a problem because it relies on state funding. If funding continues at present levels we will be nowhere near the treaty clearance target. A core group of committed commercial and non-governmental mine clearance agencies with increasing expertise have been operating for the last decade. According to mine action experts they could increase the level of their activities, which are currently limited by funding. McGrath told IRIN that donors need to expand their vision and use the ample manpower resources every mine-affected country has at their disposal through establishing a sustainable mine action indigenous capacity, supported by donors, adding that this must be central to any mine action response. After rapid growth in mine action funding in the 1990s, donors have essentially stabilised funding levels in recent years. This lack of growth means the 2009 target will be impossible for most countries to meet. Although the Landmine Monitor estimated in 2002 that global funding for mine action totalled
2. Features covering the 5 core elements of the Web Special The victims of landmines - lives blown apart
The problem of landmine victim assistance
The world faces a tremendous challenge in how to assist the survivors of landmines whose lives and often the lives of their families have been shattered with one explosion. Each year there are between 15 and 20,000, most innocent civilians, either killed or wounded by landmines. Casualties have been reported in more than 60 countries across the globe. The purpose of a landmine is to wound a person in a conflict situation rather than kill them so they become a burden to those who have to support them. In war this means a burden to an army or a militia, but in peace it means a burden on a family or a community, often for life. The difficulties start with receiving adequate emergency care, getting an ambulance to come and being able to receive a blood transfusion, medicine and doctors, said Sue Wixley Spokeswoman for the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL). One of the main topics slated for the Nairobi Summit on a Mine Free World is victim assistance, something that critics of the mine treaty say is sorely lacking. Organisers say that this will be the first disarmament
A current esimated 300,000 mine victims struggle to survive with minimal assistance from their communities,governments and the international community. A boy in Angola. Credit: MAG/Sean Sutton
IRIN
9
convention to look at the plight of the victim and his or her right for help, illustrating a new type of disarmament diplomacy. The issue of landmines is all about people, real people and about how we can work together to avoid future mine victims. What is remarkable is to see the changed level of behaviour worldwide as a result of the campaign and treaty, in relation to landmines the international behavioural norm has spread far beyond the 143 member states, said Ambassador Wolfgang Petritsch, chair of the Nairobi Summit. Even among non-signatories mines have become less acceptable and we see levels of use and production reducing dramatically worldwide. A real change in attitude has taken place - and this is remarkable. We are really on the way to altogether ban and eliminate one kind of vicious weapon from the earth, he said. More than 300,000 people live with mine-related injuries, according to the 2003 Annual Report of Landmine Survivors Network, an organisation created for and by landmine survivors. For many of these victims, whether they live in Afghanistan, Angola or Mozambique proper assistance does not exist. The 30 countries in the world with the most severe landmine and or unexploded ordnance (UXO) problems are also among the poorest in the world. Mine-affected countries suffering from conflict or going through post-conflict reconstruction face immense challenges in providing adequate assistance for their victims. With buildings looted or destroyed, no water, electricity and sewage systems, blocked supply lines and patient access, the difficulties can look insurmountable. Failing economies and weak governments are a weight on struggling healthcare systems. Security, too, is a major issue with aid workers in conflict areas sometimes targeted by violence. The needs for landmine victim assistance are immense. It is not at all sure whether we are going to succeed or not in our mission, Stan Brabant, head of the Mine Policy Unit, Handicap International Belgium told IRIN. The Landmine Monitor Report 2003 identified over 11,700 new landmine victims in 2002. Of this number at least 2,649 were children, a staggering 23 percent. More than 85 percent were innocent civilians. It is important to remember, however, that the 11,700 figure represents the reported casualties and does not take into account the many casualties that are believed to go unreported, as innocent civilians are killed or injured in remote areas away from any form of assistance or means of communication, said the report. Collecting accurate information on landmine/UXO victims can be difficult, especially in areas where conflict is taking place, remote areas or in countries where there are no means to monitor public health records. Organisations have to rely on government records, databases, hospital records, local media reports and more to identify new casualties, said the report.
WEB SPECIAL
What needs to be done?

Some experts say a major safety element for people is awareness. Minefields will not disappear tomorrow and people are forced to live and work around them. If they know where the mines and UXOs are and the danger they pose, then communities can carry on with life but armed with information to help them. UNICEFs mandate is about mine education, said UNICEF Sudan Project Officer Una McCauley. Mines are terrible things. If you know where they are and what they can do you can make a decision. There are several different ways to spread the word about mines and UXOs. One is directly through villagers. Another effective option is to work with the agencies that work with mines. If these people know about the risks then they can provide information on the ground. Often people in mine areas are illiterate and have no access to radios. Aid workers tend to be the best vehicle to get the word out.
The lucky few will receive appropriate limb replacement; even fewer have any chance of reha bilitation assistance. Credit: ICRC
We have been targeting the youth, said McCauley. We have to give them accurate information so they have a sense of value about their lives. The youth take unnecessary risks and at least we can tell them the risks are there. Youth skills are targeted at parents too so that families are educated about mines and UXOs. We want to say: dont be terrified but know whats out there, said McCauley. The International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) has worked to strengthen the Ottawa Treaty by creating guidelines for victim assistance and has offered recommendations for emergency medical care, physical rehabilitation, prosthetics, and psychological and social support. It also has looked at employment and economic integration for mine victims. The ICBL has also been pushing for further public awareness about mine victims and accessibility in public places for persons with disabilities. It says there are few funds or organizations willing to work on these areas. Many countries lack the psychological support that is needed for victims. The process of reintegration and
IRIN
10
trying to become a part of their community can be overwhelming for a victim. Often they find they are being rejected and dismissed by the prejudices of non-disabled people. Women have reported that they are no longer able to marry because they are rejected from their community. Some even have to become beggars to survive. If they are lucky they can become part of income generating programmes, said the ICBL spokeswoman. My friends took off. I was abandoned. Not all, but some in my village thought I have had bad luck and the accident was a punishment for something wrong that I did. Why me? To this day I have not yet seen some of my friends, she told IRIN. The types of victim assistance that is lacking the most is economic integration and socioeconomic support, so that landmine survivors may regain their position in society socially and economically as a way of improving their lives, she said. Orech points out that landmine victims are in great need of psychological support, and that it is just as important as physical rehabilitation but often not recognised.
Age is no barrier to the deadly harvest of landmines. In Cambodia two young boys fall victim but receive state of the art prosthetics from the ICRC. Credit: ICRC
WEB SPECIAL
Access to assistance
Mines cause the severest of injuries and it is important for a victim to receive immediate and appropriate attention. There are three patterns of mine injuries. If the mine is stepped on while buried, it can tear off the foot or the leg. A fragmentation mine that is detonated via a trip wire can cause multiple injuries on the body. Mines can also blow off fingers, hands or parts of the face when handled. Blindness and injuries to the chest or abdomen are also common. Often, even if assistance is available to a victim, access can be extremely limited. According to the Landmine Survivors Network, fewer than 10 percent of all the landmine victims have access to proper medical care and rehabilitation facilities. On top of this, a majority of care centres are located in urban areas, while victims tend to be in rural regions where most of the mines are laid. In Angola, victims sometimes have to walk between 100 and 200 km in order to get access to the closest centre with basic heath care. Many of them do not make it, and are left to die on the road, Brabant told IRIN. Experts say that one possible solution is to provide assistance on a provincial level, creating a balance between cities and more rural areas. The difficulties start with receiving adequate emergency care, getting an ambulance to come and being able to receive a blood transfusion, medicine and doctors, said the ICBL spokesperson. Afghanistan is one of those countries where victims have to be carried or spend hours of riding on a donkey to get to the health care facilities. After the operation (if one is performed), extensive ongoing rehabilitation is needed, they are in need of prosthetics, they have to pick up their pieces, and try to manage their life after the accident. Often they do not have the money for public transport to the clinics, she said. Margaret Arach Orech knows all about the problems facing landmine victims. She was severely wounded in an ambush by the Lords Resistance Army in Uganda in 1998 when the bus she was travelling hit a mine. She lost her right leg. My family gave me all the support after the accident.
Afghanistan has one of the worlds highest number of landmine victims and the country has hardly reintegrated its hundreds of thousands of disabled war victims. More than a million people are living with disabilities in Afghanistan, and of that figure at least 250,000 people are victims of landmines and UXOs. This number is still rising, at least 40 people fall victim each month, as people return to their villages, some which were on frontlines. Several years ago that number was as high as 300 to 400 a month during wartime. Landmine victims face a lifetime of difficulties. Even if they are lucky enough to have had surgery or prosthesis they then have to move back into a society that might not accept them. Often they have difficulty in finding work - the unemployment rate for survivors can be anywhere from 40 to 60 percent. Again, effective and accurate data collection is necessary in order to efficiently utilise scant resources. Even if a country has facilities sometimes it is unclear whether victims have access to them or if they are sufficient for victims needs.
Who has responsibility?

Currently 143 countries have acceded to the 1997 Ottawa Treaty and by doing so have sworn to never use, develop, produce, otherwise acquire, stockpile, retain or transfer anti-personnel mines. Two deadlines are imposed on signatories, the first is to destroy their stockpiles four years after they acceded to the treaty and the second, to clear mines in their territory within 10 years after it was ratified. In addition, there are particular obligations that signatories are responsible for: mine risk education and for victims health, including rehabilitation and reintegra-
IRIN
11
tion into their communities. Because the number of landmine victims increases every day, and their needs are long lasting, there is no deadline for victim assistance. Signatories also undertake to prevent any activities that are in contravention of the treaty and to adopt implementation measures (such as national legislation) in order to ensure that the terms of the treaty are upheld in their territory. Significantly, states party to the treaty cannot allow non-signatories to keep landmine stocks on territory under their jurisdiction or control. The Ottawa Treaty, which states that the signatory parties are to do their utmost to provide assistance for the care and rehabilitation, including the social and economic reintegration, of mine victims. However, advocates for landmine victims say since the treaty was signed, the signatory governments have dropped their responsibility concerning victims. They say landmine survivors are not a priority as compared to victims of HIV/AIDS and Malaria. Countries in Africa are beginning to take responsibility, but the needs of the victims are overwhelming and structures need to be developed. The treaty provides a mechanism for victim assistance, but it cannot respond to all needs, Brabant told IRIN. In the absence of national governments providing assistance, the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention states that assistance may also be provided through the United Nations system, international, regional or national organisations or through non-governmental organisations. Between 1999 and 2003 artificial limbs were distributed to 48,000 hospitals supported by the ICRC. Through heir Special Fund for the Disabled, centres were able to assist thousands more mine-injured people with prosthesis and more than 4,000 people could receive first-aid services in conflict zones. The Landmine Survivors Network is an umbrella organization that collaborates with non-governmental organisations involving victim assistance. They work to improve the health of mine victims, increase their opportunities in life and strengthen their rights.
WEB SPECIAL
Funds for assisting the victims

Funding for victims assistance comes from an array of donors. National governments, the European Union, the World Bank, various corporations and aid organisations all contribute. Funding either is paid through the UN system or through aid groups working directly with the victims. The funding has risen but it is still not enough and in many cases we are facing bureaucracy that disables the funding to be channelled to the target group the victims, said Brabant. Often there is not enough funding to follow-through with a patient. Emergency funding runs out leaving the victim short-changed as needs still remain. Two years after my first prosthetic limb could no longer fit and I needed a replacement. I was unable to get this as the only functioning orthopaedic centre located in northern Uganda had run out of funding. I waited after it got funding to resume work, Margaret Arach Orech told IRIN. To try to solve this problem the ICRC began the Special Fund for the Disabled in 1983. The fund is intended to carry on helping victims even after the organisation ends operations in mine-affected countries. In 2003, the Special Fund for the Disabled assisted 35 projects in 16 countries and delivered more than 6,500 prostheses to amputees.
Who helps the victims?

The United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS), established in 1997/8, is responsible for the coordination of all mine action service within the UN system. In addition to UNMAS, a number of UN agencies work assisting victims. Among them, the United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF) focuses on the rehabilitation of survivors. There are a variety of organisations that actively contribute to providing assistance for landmine victims. Handicap International, specifically their French and Belgian divisions, have assisted landmine victims for 24 years, developing and advocating appropriate technology and a policy for public health covering a whole spectrum of disabilities. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) provides surgical and physical rehabilitation programmes for landmine victims. The ICRC supports hospitals that provide artificial limbs to survivors, first aid services and material, training and financial support to increase a victims chances of surviving until arrival at a hospital. The ICRC also provides mine action programmes.
Organisers of the Nairobi summit recognise that there has not been sufficient assistance directed to mine victims in recent years. Martin Barber, the senior director of UNMAS, admitted that there had been little focus on mine victims in the past but that this would change. He told IRIN, There is going to be a big focus on mine victims at Nairobi. Theres going to be a survivors summit the morning of the 28th November where 50 to 60 landmine survivors will meet some key senior political officials from a
For many victims the situation is as hopeless in 2004 as it was 10 years before. Mine victims need more help. Credit: MAG/Sean Sutton
IRIN
12
dozen countries and have a dialogue. Some critics are less forgiving of the treatment of mine victims. Rae McGrath, co-laureate of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize claims, The world has done nothing for mine victims. Go to any affected community and ask them how excited they are about what has happened since the 1997 treaty - they would look at you blankly. Organisers and delegates alike are clearly expecting a lot from the Nairobi summit, where approximately 600 representatives will converge in Kenya at the end of November. How they address the issue of mine victims is high on the agenda and mine victim agencies around the world will be looking forward to concrete commitments for future support.
WEB SPECIAL
2. Features covering the 5 core elements of the Web Special

All over the world governments are instructing their armies to destroy their landmines - not landmines laid in the ground, but huge quantities of anti-personnel landmines stockpiled as part of their military arsenals. Millions of mines are being pulverised, dismantled, blown up, incinerated, laser-cut or melted in compliance with Article 4 of the Mine Ban Treaty of 1997.
The destruction of anti-personnel mines stockpiles: wiping out caches saves lives and prevents injury lenge by transporting the weapons to remote areas for large scale controlled explosions while others use the opportunity to bring in the press and diplomats to witness symbolic demonstrations of APM destruction, emphasising publicly their commitment to their obligations under the treaty.
Stockpiles and the global reach of the Treaty

The problem of the remaining mine stockpiles is closely linked to the universalisation of the treaty because most of the mines are still held by certain key countries that continue to refuse to sign up. Approximately 190 million mines are held by nonsignatory countries, with an estimated 110 million in Chinas hands alone. Russia still stockpiles an estimated 50 million mines despite its claim in 2003 to have voluntarily destroyed over 16 million mines. The United States admits to stockpiling over 10 million mines while Pakistan and India have about 11 million between them. Despite the failure of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) in persuading these important nations to get on board, it is upbeat about the compliance record of states party to the treaty. It is confident that the Landmines Monitor figures are an accurate estimation of the current situation and that governments are providing accurate information about their stockpiles. The role and activities of the USA are of interest because while it refuses to join the Mine Ban Treaty it is committed to humanitarian mine action and is smartening up its mines stocks by converting or destroying its dumb mines. According to the State Department, in June 1998 the United States completed destruction of over 3.3 million of its non-self-destructing, or dumb, anti-personnel landmines, retaining only those necessary for training, research, and the defence of South Korea. Smart mines are more sophisticated devices with a limited lifespan, their specific characteristics allow them to self-destruct in contrast to dumb
The destruction of millions of unwanted mines is a huge logistical and financial commitment for any country. Credit: MAG/Sean Sutton
Stockpiled anti-personnel landmines far outnumber those actually laid in the ground, but under the obligations to the treaty and with the global stigmatisation of mines, the 143 states party to the international legislation have been busy destroying their stocks. According to the agreements, governments are required to destroy their stockpiles within 4 years after their accession to the treaty. Quite remarkably, so far, every country that has come up to their deadline has met it, so there have been no failures at all in terms of meeting the first key deadline of stockpile destruction, Martin Barber, Chief of the United Nations Mine Action Service told IRIN. He said he considers the success of stockpile destruction to date as a remarkable achievement. The numbers of mines involved are huge and the effort and cost of destroying the mine stocks in a relatively short period of time are equally impressive. According to the Landmines Monitor publication, which tracks and monitors the progress of the treaty, in 1999 the global stockpiles of anti-personnel mines (APM) were more than 250 million in 108 countries worldwide. Today, less than 200 million remain in stockpiles with over 50 million having been destroyed in the last five years. Many countries are quietly dealing with the chal-
IRIN
13
mines, which remain live. Critics of smart mines say that their high failure rate means many become de facto APM and are no different from the cruder dumb mines, which cause most of the havoc around the world today. According to the Landmines Monitor 2003 Report, An important milestone in the implementation of the Mine Ban Treaty was reached on 1st March 2003: the four year deadline for destruction of stockpiled antipersonnel mines for all countries that were party to the treaty when it first entered into force on 1st March 1999. It said that all signatories met the deadline in 2003, which ICBL cites as an important test of the health and viability of the treaty. In terms of teeth and official enforcement, neither the treaty, the ICBL nor any other body has the power to impose signatories compliance of different parts of the treaty. Some writers and activists have warned that the verification-free nature of the treaty could allow governments to cheat or sign the treaty without an intention to comply but, to date, the ICBL claims that compliance with stockpile destruction has been a huge success. refusing to destroy and retain for training purposes. The treaty allows for signatories to retain a minimum number of mines deemed absolutely necessary for military training purposes but some countries appear to holding back far more than would seem reasonable. Landmines Monitor 2003 said Tajikistan retained almost 70,000 anti-personnel mines for training and Sweden, Brazil, Algeria and Bangladesh are also singled out as signatories that currently retain 15,000 mines or more for training purposes. The ICBL continues to publicly question the need for live mines for training and calls on signatories to evaluate why they really need to keep these mines. While the ICBL and others point to the successful destruction of over 30 million mines by treaty signatories in the last 5 years, critics stress that six or seven times this number are still held by non-signatories. If these countries continue to refuse to sign the treaty these massive stockpiles will still be in place in 2009 - the target date for signatories to have cleared their mines. Stockpile destruction, however, has a shorter time period of four years following Minefields in Sri Lanka: Destroying stockpiles is about future generations not having to face accession to the treaty. The Nairobi summit in late November 2004 marks the halfway point between entry into force of the treaty and the 2009 deadline. The summit is expected to attract over 600 international delegates, including various heads of state and the UN Secretary-General. High on the agenda will be the universalisation of the Mine Ban Treaty and the issue of stockpile destruction.
these scenes. Credit: MAG/Sean Sutton
WEB SPECIAL
Changing the international norm

Any form of coercion is unnecessary, said Wolfgang Petritsch, president-designate of the Nairobi Summit for a Mine Free World. He said so far countries have adhered to their treaty obligations, an indication, that APMs have been so heartily denounced. He told IRIN that, What is remarkable is to see the changed level of behaviour worldwide as a result of the campaign and treaty ... in relation to landmines the international behavioural norm has spread far beyond the 143-member states [party to the treaty]. This was echoed by many others interviewed by IRIN who saw the decline in production, sale, use and stockpiles of APM as clear evidence that the treaty is not only working but is voluntarily adhered to. However, campaigners are keen that complacency does not dominate the Nairobi conference. There still remains much work to be done. One area of concern for the ICBL is the number of mines some countries are
2. Features covering the 5 core elements of the Web Special
The demonisation of mines and the Ottawa Treaty: The remarkable movement of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines Described by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan as a landmark step in the history of disarmament, the Ottawa Treaty has marked the turning of the tide against landmines. Many like Martin Barber, Chief of the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS), see the widespread implementation of the treaty as consigning landmines to the dustbin of history. The Nairobi Summit for a Mine Free World, 29 November to 3 December 2004, is the first review conference of the treaty and is considered an important platform for the states party to the treaty to renew commitments to the convention, also known as the Mine Ban Treaty. We are really on the way altogether to
In so many post-conflict situiations children are left to play in the debris of war: with lethal consequences. Credit: MAG/Sean Sutton
IRIN
14
ban and eliminate one kind of vicious weapon from the earth, president-designate of the Nairobi summit, Ambassador Wolfgang Petritsch told IRIN. In the history of disarmament campaigns and civil society movements, the meteoric speed at which the movement to ban landmines has affected international law is unprecedented. Studies, doctorate dissertations and books are being written to explain the phenomenon. For Ambassador Petritsch the treaty is a success story with immediate humanitarian and disarmament aspects combined. He told IRIN that the movement led by the International Committee to Ban Landmines (ICBL) signifies a new kind of diplomacy - a unique partnership of civil society and governments driven by a single desire to rid the world of these weapons. In the early 1990s, however, this partnership was not so apparent as a small group of idealists forged new ground and fought to create and enact landmine legislation. ernments to take action to ban landmines. Hundreds of civil society groups flooded to join the movement including major international agencies such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and different UN agencies. Martin Barber described the campaign as extremely effective, including the use of people as Princess Diana to bring the matter into peoples living rooms and on their TV screen - to such an extent that governments began to think: yes, why dont we ban landmines. To the surprise of the campaign, in March 1995, Belgium suddenly announced that it was the first country to pass domestic laws banning the use or production of landmines as well as their export. But without direct governmental support, the movement found it difficult to elevate the issue to the international legislative level. This was to come from Canada. In what became known as the Ottawa Process, the Canadian government took the initiative in October 1996 by holding a conference where 50 governments signed a declaration recognising the urgent need to ban anti-personnel landmines. One last element was perhaps the commitment of the Canadian government and Lloyd Axworthy [the former Canadian Foreign Minister] to push this through. This was very influential. He basically challenged himself and everyone else to come back a year later with an agreed international convention, and he did, Barber explained to IRIN in a recent interview.
WEB SPECIAL
The path towards new international law

In the early- to mid-nineties the consequences of the widespread use of anti-personnel mines had become horrifyingly apparent, according to Barber. A small number of individuals and agencies started to publicise the issue and in 1991 Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights published the first detailed study of how landmines were actually being used in The Cowards War: Landmines in Cambodia. ICBL was founded in 1992 by a half dozen concerned non-governmental organisations (NGOs) with the hope to ban the use, stockpiling, production and transfer of landmines. Within 4 years the movement had swelled to over 1,400 religious, humanitarian and development NGOs and organisations. Now it enjoys the support and endorsement of senior world statesmen, numerous senior military commanders and religious leaders worldwide. The six NGOs that formed the initial steering committee of the ICBL were Mines and Unexploded Ordnance are littered Handicap International, together in dozens of post-conflict countries: both a lethal hazard to thousands of communities: Human Rights Watch, North Iraq. Medico International, Credit: MAG/Sean Sutton Mines Advisory Group, Physicians for Human Rights, and the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation. A decade later these agencies remain the leaders in the fight against landmines and their effects. They organised fast and used public meetings and the media creatively and extensively to publicise the horrors of mines while petitioning politicians and gov-
Arriving at the Mine Ban Treaty

The speed and momentum of the movement was unprecedented, culminating in December 1997 with the Ottawa Convention where 122 nations signed the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production, and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and On their Destruction. The ICBL, as well as key individuals were rewarded with the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize. This Ottawa Convention was the first ever to prohibit, under international humanitarian law, a weapon in widespread use. As of October 2004, 143 states had acceded to the treaty while 9 additional states continue to be signatories and follow the treaty without ratifying it. Ethiopia is one of the nine signatories that the ICBL hopes will use the Nairobi summit to fully ratify the treaty. A strong characteristic of the ICBL has been its proactive approach to all aspects of mine action. By providing an action-oriented, scheduled, legal framework for international co-operation on mine action, the Mine Ban Treaty represents a breakthrough in the struggle against landmines, said the 1999 Landmine Monitor publication. The ICBL told IRIN the Landmine Monitor is a unique civil society monitoring mechanism to police the adherence and implementation of the treaty. Con-
IRIN
15
sidered the bible of the mine action community, the first report was published in 1998 and continues to be a comprehensive country-by-country analysis on all mine action issues, specific statistical data, and legal issues pertaining of the treaty. The campaign pressed hard for the convention to legally bind signatories to act in positive ways in not only ending the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of mines but also to remove mines, promote mine awareness and assist victims of landmines. The ICBL told IRIN it considers its campaign has a continuing challenge to monitor and extend the number of party states joining the treaty. reports, the number of anti-personnel mines being cleared and destroyed outweighs the number of those in global use. The global production of anti-personnel mines has also plummeted since the cold war era. The number of anti-personnel mine producers has fallen from 54 countries to 15, and of the 15 with production capability most have not manufactured mines for years. The nations that are most affected by mines are normally non-producers, the global export and transfer of mines has been identified as a key issue. Evidence shows now that the global trade in anti-personnel mines has also massively fallen since 1997. Finally, global stockpiles of anti-personnel mines have been reduced by 20 percent since 1997 and the remaining non-signatories to the Mine Ban Treaty hold all 200 million stockpiled landmines.
WEB SPECIAL
The challenge of universalisation

The United States is the only industrialised democracy that has not signed or acceded to the treaty. But other countries such as China, Cousins Altin, aged 9, and Adem, 13, were playing in a field when one of them tripped a trip-wire Pakistan, Russia, and activated fragmentation mine. They each lost both India - all producers, of their legs. Kosovo, July 1999. Credit: MAG/Sean Sutton and in some cases users of landmines - continue to refuse to join the treaty. Organisers of the Nairobi summit do not want to overstate the importance of the treatys widespread success, but Rae McGrath, a co-laureate of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize, feels the absence of the US in particular is a considerable weakness. The problem with major countries such as the US not participating in the treaty is that it allows other non-signatories to point to the US and justify their own non-participation, he told IRIN. Instead of joining the Mine Ban Treaty, the US is promoting the Convention on Conventional Weapons, a competing process of international legislation dealing with landmines. For McGrath this is, potentially much more damaging [to final success of the Ban Mine Treaty] and ... in the case of the US they are merely looking for a way to avoid the stricter definitions and restrictions contained in the Ottawa Treaty. The ICBL agrees that getting all countries on board is a continuing goal but Sue Wixley, spokesperson for the ICBL, told IRIN its approach was more characterised by a policy of seduction rather than confrontation in relation to those countries outside the process. Most mine action experts and organisers of the summit point to the considerable achievements of the treaty in reducing the production, transfer and use of mines in the last five years. In terms of the treaty causing a significant turning of the tide, the facts speak for themselves. According to analyses of mine action experts worldwide, as well as documentation from successive Landmine Monitor
Outstanding concerns
The growing global outrage against the use of mines and the emerging international anti-mine opinion following the treaty has successfully turned the tide against mines. McGrath agrees these considerable changes have occurred but told IRIN he cautions against triumphalism as long as the campaign has not addressed the needs of thousands of affected communities. The failure of the mine action community to fully address the needs of the mine-affected communities is a major concern for the ICBL and mine action organisations and will dominate discussions at the Nairobi summit. The proposed action plan at the conference contains motions for states party to the treaty to redouble their energies and efforts to clear landmines and support mine victims.
The campaign has benefited from important patronage by initially Princess Diana and now Queen Noor. Here she is shown a mine demonstration in Dushanbe, 2004. Credit: GICHD
All over the world there are thousands of mineaffected communities that are still waiting for mine clearance teams to assist them. Despite the amount of work achieved by clearance agencies, the speed of clearance is notoriously slow. Of the estimated 300,000 mine victims worldwide very few have any sustainable medical or rehabilitation support and their numbers are boosted annually by the continued toll of 15,000 to 20,000 mine casualties. Sue Wixley of the ICBL told IRIN they were worried that some of the countries were watering down their commitments to the treaty. She said the area of mine victim assistance in particular had huge gaps and needed a far broader and deeper commitment if mine victims were to receive realistic support. The evolution and development of the global movement to ban mines is still unfolding and the Nairobi
IRIN
16
summit is a crucial platform to re-energise the treaty and ensure affected communities are assisted. Demining needs to be pushed forward both financially and politically. Also victim assistance and stockpile destruction of mines as an important preventative measure needed to save future lives, said the summits President, Ambassador Petritsch. Commenting on the success of the campaign in the last decade and the death of the landmine as a weapon, key activist Rae McGrath told IRIN that, The greatest victory was to demonise landmines but they are not yet consigned to the dustbin of history.
WEB SPECIAL
2. Features covering the 5 core elements of the Web Special The Nairobi summit: keeping up the pressure
A star-studded line-up of senior world diplomats and leaders, with hundreds of United Nations and civil society representatives are expected to meet in Nairobi Ten-year-old Andrevski survived the war in Kosovo but was blown up by a landmine 10 days after the from 29 November to 3 peace agreement was signed. He was playing on December 2004 for the a hillside with friends when he activated an antipersonnel mine. Both legs had to be amputated, First Review Conference one above the knee and the other below. of the Convention on the Credit: MAG/Sean Sutton Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-personnel Mines and on their Destruction. This historic disarmament instrument of international law is also known as the Mine Ban Treaty (MBT) and came into force in March 1999. The Nairobi summit, hosted by the Kenyan government, is taking place five years after this date as required under Article 12 of the MBT and will be convened by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan. Ambassador-designate for the summit, Austrian Ambassador Wolfgang Petritsch will preside over the high-level discussion aimed at adopting an action plan for the next five years. The plan is intended to show continued commitment for a mine-free world by the signatories of the treaty. There is of course always a danger that meetings at this level can become diplomatic talk-shops, but not in this case, Petritsch said while outlining to IRIN the 70 specific points of a plan for signatories to adopt during the conference. We expect a very substantive action plan will result from this conference, he said. The Mines Ban Treaty is the extraordinary culmination of five short years of intense global campaigning by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL). The treaty was first opened for signature in December 1997 and after the pre-requisite number of countries joined (40), it came into force in 1999. The world gave the campaign, along with key activists, the highest tribute by awarding the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997, but the movement did not slow down and rest on its laurels. The ICBL has kept the landmines issue and treaty obligations high on the international agenda. It says that without universal compliance and the commitment of signatories in meeting their obligations, the treaty would become meaningless. Through continued pressure on governments and the monitoring of progress, the ICBL has played a major role in ensuring the MBT has been effective. The need to maintain pressure is crucial because the MBT is not just about banning landmines but it also specifically addresses the global needs in assisting mine victims, the clearing of all landmines and the destruction of stockpiled unused mines held by signatory countries. It is also about universalising the treaty and encouraging every country to get on board. Interestingly the control the civil society has exerted through this partnership has been more effective than any coercive approach, Petritsch told IRIN. He also detailed how this treaty signals a new kind of diplomacy; Unless all efforts are re-doubled communities public diplomacy repwill have to live with mines for many more years. In N.Irqa a group of women walk only on resented through this tarmac roads. private/public partnerCredit: ICRC ship. The ICBL has been closely involved in the preparatory meetings for the Nairobi Summit and have high expectations of the outcome. Nevertheless, in a statement issued in late August 2004 they outlined concern that the current action plan lacks concrete, time bound actions linked to the various points raised. Sue Wixley, spokeswoman for the ICBL, told IRIN they were worried that some countries were watering down their commitment to the treaty. As soon as people stop thinking about their obligations then we are in trouble, she said. For the ICBL, the Nairobi Summit is an important venue to persuade non-member states to join the treaty. We want new countries to join, said Wixley. Overall the conference is a rallying point for new countries to join and a planning conference for the
IRIN
17
next five years where states party to the treaty ensure they deliver promises. According to Ambassador Petritsch, signatories were keen to have the review conference in a region of the world affected by mines and consequently Kenya was selected. A number of countries in Europe and the Americas hoped to host this prestigious meeting. Despite the notoriety of individual countries such as Afghanistan and Cambodia, Africa is, as a region, the most mine-infested region globally, Petritsch told IRIN. While hosted by the Kenyan government through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the summit has been organised by both the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian De-mining and the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS). Royalty, heads of state, senior diplomats, numerous UN and civil society staff Will Nairobi make concrete steps towards a world will ensure the summit free of mines and relief for those still living with the impact of mines? will gain wide media Credit: MAG/Sean Sutton exposure. The Pope is expected to send a message to the participants through video link-up. Martin Barber, chief of UNMAS, said this historic summit would be like a vitamin-boost, a re-launch of energy for the next five years. He said he was fully optimistic that landmines had already been relegated to the dustbin of history. The ICBL are more cautious about this claim, realising much needs to be done still to assist the victims of landmines and ensure mine clearance gets all the political and financial support it needs. The summit will be a success if it produces a bold, practical action plan, plus financial pledges and political commitments to make this happen, said ICBL coordinator Liz Bernstein in a recent statement. With our goal of a mine-free world now within reach, states needs to show some staying power! she added. Some Summit highlights: For more details of the summit, its agenda and objectives and how to attend please visit the following links: Nairobi Summit Official Site International Campaign to Ban Landmines: Nairobi Summit Key Draft Documents to be discussed at the Nairobi Summit: Draft review of the operation and the status of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction: 1999-2004. Ending the Suffering Caused by Anti-Personnel Mines: Draft Nairobi Action Plan 2005-2009. Towards a Mine-Free World: The 2004 Nairobi Declaration. Draft programme of meetings and related matters to facilitate implementation, 2005-2009. Preparatory Meetings: Second Preparatory Meeting held 28-29 June in Geneva. Related Documents. First Preparatory Meeting held 13 February in Geneva. Related Documents.
WEB SPECIAL
28 Nov: Summit opening by President Mwai Kibaki of Kenya. 29 Nov: Opening address by Jody Williams, joint 1997 Nobel Peace Prize winner with the ICBL. 1 Dec: Nobel laureate panel discussion, including the 2003 Iranian winner, Shirin Ebadi. 2 & 3 Dec: addresses by heads of state, cabinet ministers and other dignitaries with closing ceremony led by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
IRIN
18
3. Special reports and articles AFGHANISTAN: Demining dogs responsible for half of all cleared land
Sniffing the dry soil of a mined road in Bakhshikhail village, Suzi, a demining dog, sat and immediately looked back, indicating that she had detected explosives under her feet just two metres from her handler, Shahzada. Its a landmine, the 35-year-old shouted. It takes a day to clear just two square metres by manual detection but just minutes by mine dog, Shahzada, team leader of the Mine Detection Dog Centre (MDDC) NGO, told IRIN on a minefield in the city of Charikaar, around 90 km north of the capital Kabul. Dogs such as Suzi are in the vanguard of Afghanistans efforts to rid itself of landmines - the legacy of decades of conflict.
Mines dogs have added spectacular speed to some aspects of mine clearance in Afghanistan. Credit: IRIN
WEB SPECIAL
involving manual detection teams, Ayubi added. According to Shah Zaman, a dog trainer at the school, it takes the agency nearly two years to train a puppy before it is deployed to the field. We have two kind of dogs: those that we produce here in our breeding centre and those that we import from Thailand, Germany or other countries, Zaman told IRIN. One imported puppy costs the agency US $4,500 while a local dog costs only $1,500. We produce 60 puppies a year and these dogs can work for nearly 10 years before they are too old. The demining dogs have an impressive record, responsible for around half the entire area demined in Afghanistan to date. From 1994 until now, our mine dog groups have cleared 120 sq km which is 50 percent of all the area cleared by demining operations in Afghanistan. According to the United Nations Mine Action Centre for Afghanistan (UNMACA), so far 2.8 million explosive devices, including mines and unexploded ordnance The Afghan trainers have to build up a close (UXOs), have been relationship with their dogs if clearance is to be cleared from 320 sq km effective and safe. Credit: IRIN of land. But around 800 million sq m of land must still be cleared to ensure the safe return of hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people (IDPs). The UNMACA strategy is implemented by 15 national and international organisations. Afghanistan is expected to be clear of mines in 10 years as required by the Ottawa treaty, but thats only if the campaign can secure funding of around $60 million per year to continue the programme.
A German Shepherd, Afghan-born Suzi is one of 250 dogs involved in the clearance of landmines throughout the country. While several thousand Afghans are working as mine-clearance operatives, mine dogs are proving more effective in this, one of the most heavily mined countries in the world. Most of the millions of landmines that litter Afghanistan were laid between 1980 and 1992 during the Soviet occupation and subsequent communist regime. Landmines were also used extensively in fighting between armed factions after 1992, particularly in Kabul and its outskirts. The problem was exacerbated by mines and booby traps reportedly used by the Northern Alliance, Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters, and by unexploded cluster munitions and ammunition scattered from storage depots hit by air strikes following the late 2001 US-led battles to unseat the Taliban from power. Demining these huge areas is complicated by the fact that many of the mines are plastic and cannot be detected by manual means. We train these dogs to sense explosives no matter if it is in a metallic or plastic container. They are very efficient and cost effective, Shah Wali Ayubi, MDDC operations manager, told IRIN. We have some areas where dogs are very suitable for demining. For example, dogs are very efficient at clearing roads. Most of the major highway rehabilitation projects, including the Kabul-Kandahar highway, have been cleared by mine dogs. The safety record of the dog teams speaks for itself. Since the beginning of our operation in 1989, we have only had 30 incidents that killed 10 [dog] handlers while there have been several hundred incidents
IRIN
19
3. Special reports and articles AFGHANISTAN: A quarter of a million landmine victims struggle to make a life
Despite having one of the worlds highest number of landmine victims, Afghanistan has been slow to reintegrate its hundreds of thousands of disabled war victims. The figures are staggering. The country has more than a million people living with disabilities, according to the Afghan Ministry of Sakhi Muhammad is able to earn a living for his family with ICRC micro-credit support. Martyrs and Disabled Credit: IRIN (MOMD) and a quarter of them - at least 250,000 - are victims of landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXOs). The number is rising, with at least 40 people still falling victim to mines each month, as people return to villages that used to be on front lines. But this figure has now fallen considerably compared to the last few years when 300-400 people were victims of UXOs and mines every month. In the capital Kabul, the crowded office of Nafisa Sultani, a landmine victim and head of Afghanistans Disabled Womens Association, has many tragic stories. These are all landmine victims who have no place at home and in society, so they come to our association to help them reintegrate, she told IRIN, as she looked over application forms from women disabled by landmines, seeking assistance. Surgical and prosthesis support is the first and the last [official] assistance a landmine victim gets in this country. There is nothing going on to help the reintegration of these most vulnerable people into normal life. While there are several national and international organisations and a government ministry with mandates to assist the disabled, Sultani believes there is little happening to help them reintegrate. Despite hundreds of millions of dollars of international aid for Afghanistan, the disabled community has not been addressed. As Afghanistan already has a high rate of unemployment, finding jobs for mine victims is very difficult. Even though the government has passed a decree that every ministrys staff must comprise five percent disabled people, that has not been implemented, Sultani said. Ahmad Fawad lost both his legs above the knee in a mine explosion. He was refused a security guards job with an aid agency even after he passed the interview, when the employer was told about Fawads disability. I obtained a months training course on the security guard profession, but I still cant find a job because some people think that when you lose part of your body your mind is also deficient, he told IRIN bitterly. The government is paying 300 afghanis (about US $7) disability pension monthly. Some distribution of land for shelter or monthly food items through aid agencies for disabled families also takes place. But Zarina, an UXO victim, said often disabled excombatants are prioritised over civilians. Just recently there was land distribution for the disabled, but we were told this is for ex-officers and soldiers, not civilian victims, the 20-year- old victim who lost her left leg due to a mortar bomb explosion, told IRIN. She added that literacy training was essential for every disabled person to make them more employable. Meanwhile handicraft training and other vocational training will also be very helpful to help them become self-sufficient. The International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC) is running the largest orthopaedic centres in major Afghan cities providing limb prostheses and physiotherapy. According to Alberto Cairo, head of ICRC orthopaedic projects in Afghanistan, the committee is running vocational training, a back-to-school programme, micro-credit schemes and a job centre to promote reintegration. Disabled people need a lot more than a plastic leg, or to learn to walk. They have to get back into society, find a role, and find dignity, Cairo told IRIN. Cairo said, in Afghanistan, where life was hard for everyone, the disabled needed more help. What kind of help? Schooling and work to give them a job. Or a loan to start up a small business - difficult, but possible. Meanwhile, under what he called positive discrimination, most of his employees were disabled and hundreds of others found jobs through the ICRC disabled job centre. But despite what the ICRC and others are doing, Mohammad Razi, a programme officer for the leading UN agency supporting disability programmes, said there was very little happening to help the disabled and mine victims reintegrate. Funding problems, no interest from the donors, no attention by the Afghan government, security problems in the country and lack of technical personnel in the field of disability are the main reasons, Razi told IRIN.
The limb replacement and rehabilitation services are overwhelmed by the numbers of mine victims. Credit: IRIN
WEB SPECIAL
IRIN
20
Afghan society still has a long way to go in accepting mine victims, Haji Ahmad Shah Azimy, a member of the Afghanistan Disabled Association who lost both hands in a mine accident while working as a shepherd north of Kabul, said. Neither in the public services nor in the private sector can you find a facility for the disabled, the father-of-six added. than innocent victims who need public support and understanding. Victim support is part of the Ottawa convention, which the Afghan government signed up to in 2002. I wouldnt agree that we are not assisting them. The government is well aware of the scale of the problem and is trying to assist victims as much as possible, Mohammad Haidar Reza, Afghan deputy foreign minister and chairperson of demining activities in Afghanistan, told IRIN. But because of the limited resources that the government has, it cannot take care of all of their [the disabled] needs, he maintained.
WEB SPECIAL
One idea, used by MAG in Cambodia, is to employ mine victims as deminers. Here a group of deminers take a break from clearance work and give their stumps some hard-earned relief. Mines victims are rarely without pain long after their wounds have healed. Credit: MAG/Sean Sutton
Azimy said there were no special services for people with wheelchairs, for example. A disabled guy cannot use public transport, nor is there a facility for us to cross the road. Disabled access to public buildings, including the relevant ministry, was non-existent and things were even worse outside the capital, he said. The prevalent attitude among Afghans is that those maimed by mines are unworthy ex-fighters responsible for all the destruction in Kabul, rather
3. Special reports and articles AFGHANISTAN: Mine awareness reducing victims significantly
Mine incidents have declined to less than a hundred per month due to a successful mine clearance and awareness campaigns addressing several million people Mine awareness training by OMAR in Afghanistan. throughout the country, Credit:IRIN according to the Organization for Mine Clearance and Afghan Rehabilitation (OMAR). As a result of successful mine awareness campaigns by OMAR and other agencies, mine victims have declined from several hundreds per month in the past years to around 60 incidents per month now, which is a big success this year, Alhaj Fazel Karim Fazel director of OMAR and a member of the Afghan Campaign to Ban Landmines (ACBL) told IRIN in the capital Kabul. OMAR, which is running the biggest mine awareness programme in the world, claims to have educated over ten million Afghans on the risks of mines over the last ten years. Course take place wherever and whenever needed and focus on giving people the skills to identify and avoid the dozens of different types of land mines lying in Afghan soil. Over the past 24 years of conflict, millions of land mines and unexploded ordnance (UXOs) have been scattered all over Afghanistan. The country is one of the most heavily mined and UXO strewn in the world. Unlike many other affected countries, almost 90 percent of the devices are lying on agricultural land, in irrigation systems, residential areas, roads and grazing grounds. So far, 2.8 million explosive devices, including mines and UXOs, have been cleared from 320 million sq metres of land. But 815 million sq metres of land still have to be cleared to ensure the safe return of hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people (IDPs) and refugees. Refugees whose return is facilitated by the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) repatriation programme have to go through mine awareness training before returning to their areas of origin. Rahmatgul, a 45-year-old returnee, told IRIN he was shocked at seeing too many mine fields and land mine warnings the whole way along his route as he returned to Afghanistan via Tourkham border to the capital Kabul. I did not know mines would still be an impediment but almost every kilometre I saw either mine fields or mine awareness messages, said the father of six who came to the country after several years of exile in refugee camps in neighbouring Pakistan. His home town of Shamali, just north of Kabul, was a battlefield for several years and he is not able to go back there until mines have been cleared. I have decided to settle in Kabul, because I was told Shamali
IRIN
21
is still heavily mined, he said. OMAR believes Afghanistan will continue to have mine incidents as long as there is moveWomen benefiting from mine awareness. ment by refugees and Credit: IRIN IDPs in the country. As far as we have large scale people movements in the country we will continue to have mine victims, Fazel said. Meanwhile he noted illiteracy and poverty as the main challenges towards mine risk reduction in the post conflict country. Because most of the beneficiaries are illiterate and requires more illustrations than just text information. Meanwhile, people are poor and they send their children to collect metal fragments which is often land mines or UXOs, he maintained.
WEB SPECIAL
3. Special reports and articles IRAQ: Demining spreading south in post-Saddam era
Arbil, For anybody familiar with Iraqi Kurdistan, the sight of a demining team at work seems as much part of the landscape as the stunted oaks scattered across the mountainsides. Arguably UXOs in Basra. Credit: IRIN the most contaminated part of a country that vies with Afghanistan, Angola and Cambodia for the dubious title of the worlds most heavily mined, there have been deminers here since 1992. To all appearances, their work carries on today unchanged. But appearances here are deceptive: since the fall of Saddam Husseins regime last spring, Iraqs mine action programme has undergone radical change. From 1996 to 2003 this was a UN-run project, financed with money from the Oil-for-Food Programme. Now funding comes almost entirely from the US State Department. International advisers work with Iraqis at the fledgling National Mine Action Authority (NMAA) to build up a locally-run administration. Previously confined to the Kurdish-controlled north, mine action now touches the whole country. The Baghdad-based NMAA is collaborating with suboffices in the southern city of Basra and the northern city of Arbil to build up a set of national, not regional, priorities. Few doubt that the restructuring has brought greater efficiency. But for the nine national and international demining organisations that have been working in the north since before last years war, there have been growing pains. Infinitely more experienced than their colleagues in central and southern Iraq, many Kurdish deminers have difficulty understanding why their programme should be subordinated to a central office in Baghdad. Others complain of a lack of clarity in the new funding process. And the expansion of mine action throughout Iraq has also required the transfer of all data to a new information system capable of prioritising tasks on a national level. But its on the ground that mine action has changed the most in the last 18 months. Confined to a narrow strip of the north between 1991 and 2003, the people of Iraqi Kurdistan had learned to live with the minefields left by decades of war and oppression. Within those 12 years, demining, increased awareness and a modicum of stability had reduced annual minerelated deaths in northern Iraq from 1,685 to just 172. By increasing freedom of movement following Saddams fall, liberation brought a return to carnage: 1,057 died in 2003. As thousands of families - mainly Kurds - began to return south to places they had been evicted from by the former Iraqi regime, demining organisations went with them, leaving many operations in Iraqi Kurdish areas pending. Their first task was to help disarm the vast weapons dumps left by the retreating Iraqi army in cities such as Kirkuk and Mosul, stockpiles that last April were injuring and killing up to 20 people a day in Kirkuk alone. Unexploded ordnance (UXOs) continue to kill people in northern Iraq. In October 2004, four children in Fayda, a town just south of the northeastern city of Dahuk, died when an unexploded BLU 97 cluster bomblet dropped last spring by the US airforce blew up in their hands. With the biggest of the ammunition dumps neutralised, though, work this year has concentrated on and around the Green Line, the unofficial frontier that after the 1991 Gulf War divided autonomous Kurdish areas from Baghdad-administered Iraq. Stretching from Kalar in the south as far as the Syrian
IRIN
22
border, the Green Line was a no-go area, a militarised zone set up to stop Iraqi Kurdish militiamen and smugglers coming south, and Arab Iraqis fleeing to the north. Just how heavily mined parts of it were is evident if you visit Qadir Karam, perched in hill country 20 miles east of Kirkuk. Once a town of over 1,000 families built around the shrine of a Kurdish Sufi saint, Qadir Karam was razed in 1987. The Iraqi army left only the imposing mosque standing, converted into an ammunition dump. Unaffected by the political controversies that are slowing the return of evicted families to Kirkuk, Qadir Karam is quickly returning to life. Dozens of families are hard at work building walls on the foundations of their old houses. The Kurdish authorities provide them with cash and cement, an international NGO with water cisterns. The town even has a new mayor. But the most crucial job here falls to Mine Action Group (MAG), a British NGO based in Iraqi Kurdistan since 1992. About 300,000 square metres of land in and around Qadir Karam, MAG officials estimate, is mined. through the middle of the Muzaffer minefield. Barbed wire marks the beginning, then a row of fragmentation mines, trip flares, and a double row of blast mines. The regularity of Iraqi minefields is far from absolute. In mountainous regions, mines can slip downhill, or be dislodged by snow and rain. By far the best source of information for mine teams pin-pointing the exact positions of minefields, shepherds also have a tendency to tamper with rows to create safe passages for their flocks. But the military logic behind many of Iraqs contaminated areas is the main reason why MAG teams often feel able to combine the painstaking process of manual search with visual reduction of ground. Untouched, a professionally laid minefield is a bit like a jigsaw without the picture on the box, Manning explained. You work hard cutting paths through a minefield, you work out what mines are where, and what the patterns are, and as long as there is no evidence of tampering, you can be pretty much certain which parts of the ground are untouched. In such circumstances, a mine action team downs metal detectors, forms a line, and walks over the ground to double-check it is safe. Manning pointed to the Dara Khurma minefield, just outside Qadir Karam, 250 metres wide and over 100 metres deep. Checking every inch with metal detectors would take you a year, he said. Thats time you could spend opening up a minefield in the middle of a destroyed village somewhere else. A part of international mine action standards, area reduction, as this technique is called, was used neither by UNOPS nor by other de-mining organisations currently working in Iraqi Kurdistan. MAG employees put that down to a lack of confidence. In Arbil, IKMACs Emmanuel Deisser sees it as the natural result of a national mine action programme still working out its own standards. Until NMAA and IKMAC create national standards, he said, there are few grounds for justifying one set of standards over another. What worries him far more than disagreements over de-mining technique is the question of future funding for the Iraqi programme. US financial commitment in mine action forecasts for 2005 are minimal and possibly for the centre and south sectors only, he said. The future of mine action in Iraq cannot be the responsibility of the Iraqi authorities alone, and the US government and the UN will not be enough to provide a solution on their own for 2005, he argued. Active participation from other parties, such as the World Bank and the European Union [EU], is the only way forward.
WEB SPECIAL
Mine victims in Basra. Credit: IRIN
Since work began in earnest here this February, MAG teams have removed over 2,500 mines and UXOs, plus the 1,076 anti-personnel mines they found inside the mosque. Around 800,000 sq m of land have been visually checked for contamination. Further north, its the same story. At Muzaffer, just five miles away, two more MAG teams pick their way through huge barrier minefields laid parallel to the Kirkuk-Sulaymaniyah highway. Clearance work is winding up in Karahenjir, another partially destroyed town on the main road itself. Before the war, MAG only had one international [staffer] still in Iraq, MAGs technical operations manager Mark Buswell told IRIN in Arbil. Now we have 10. Its been action stations since last March. Working for the largest and the oldest demining organisation in Iraq (MAG pre-dated UNOPs by four years), MAGs international staff attribute the rapidity of their work to two things: their experience and their Britishness. Working out the lay of minefields here is made easier by the fact that Iraqi soldiers had a British-style training, MAGs Sulaymaniyah advisor, Mark Manning, told IRIN in Qadir Karam. The rows are similar, and the patterns. Its not like in Angola, where the people putting down mines were basically kids who had been given a gun. To illustrate his point, he strode off down a path cut
IRIN
23
3. Special reports and articles IRAQ: Insecurity adds to huge southern demining task
Work on clearing mines and unexploded ordnance (UXOs) in southern Iraq is continuing at a slow pace due to insecurity, with international NGOs and other partners One idea, used by MAGIncreased insecurity in of the Regional Mine Iraq is severely limiting humanitarian assistance Action Centre (RMAC) including mine clearance. Credit: IRIN in the city of Basra just getting back to work after eight months of delays, a spokesman from RMAC told IRIN. Our plan is to develop a new training/operations centre based outside Basra, the spokesman said. The NGO has been targeted twice by explosive devices which killed a local aid worker and left another two badly injured. We are closing down physically in Basra, he added. A total of 9,574 items including UXOs and mines were recovered for demolition and a total of 9,660 items have already been destroyed this year. We are concerned with mainly three types of clearance; mines, unexploded ordnance and large quantities of unused ammunition from Iraqi stocks after the last war. But the border with Iran in the central and southern regions is one of the heavily mined [areas] from the Iraq-Iran war, the RMAC official said. He added that the UXOs are common throughout the whole region, most of them from the Gulf war in 1991 and some from the recent conflict to oust Saddam Hussein early last year. We have a number of programmes from the US Department of Defense to either eradicate those UXOs or decide what to do about them in the future, he added. The RMAC was established in November 2003 to advise and train local Iraqis to clear mines and UXOs. According to the RMAC official, it was very difficult to estimate the number of mines and UXOs remaining on the ground in southern Iraq. I cant say there is x thousand numbers of UXOs, but I can say there are a lot and they are widespread. Most of them are still in their original place and there are a lot of stocks people havent found yet. Very little is known about the impact of uncleared mines and UXOs on local communities, he explained. In one of the few surveys conducted on the problem in the country, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in 2001 identified cluster bombs and other UXOs as the main threat to communities living in southern Iraq. The Iraq Landmine Impact Survey (ILIS), another partner with RMAC, organised by the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation and funded by the US State Department, began a socio-economic impact survey in May 2004 on the whole country to gather information on the distribution of mines and UXOs and their impact on people. An aid worker from ILIS told IRIN that the programme started activities in Basra in August. Right now, we are in the process of visiting communities [mainly villages and small towns] in Basra. It is difficult to fully document the extent of the contamination in these districts because large swaths of the land are almost completely abandoned, he explained. RMAC is using the information from the survey to establish priorities to assist the most highly affected and engaged communities identified by the survey. The survey team is using different sources such as the Iraqi Red Crescent (IRC), the statistics directory, and the Basra governorate office in order to gather data and develop knowledge of contaminated villages. We ask officials in the villages about 170 questions to cover locations and other details about land mines or UXOs found. If there are any, we take digital pictures and then we use GPS [Global Positioning System] instruments to record the exact position [of the mines] so that teams can come later to destroy it or make it safe, the ILIS worker said. According to the survey team, the most heavily affected community identified by the survey so far is the village of Jurf Al-Malh, close to Shat Al-arab waterway near the Iranian border. A local leader in the village told IRIN that the area was on the front line of the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran war. People here are poor and they live on farming. They have to go to the fields because it is the only work they have but there are many incidents where people were killed or lost their legs because of the landmines, the Sheikh said.
WEB SPECIAL
German Shepherd Larry being trained to detect mines in the northern Iraqi governorate of Arbil. Credit: IRIN
In addition, there are reports that some people are digging for mines so they can sell them to earn a living, a highly dangerous job. A 21-year-old shepherd died a few weeks ago just days before the survey team arrived, the Sheikh said, adding that over the last year, around 120 people were either killed or injured by anti-personnel or anti-tank mines. According to the survey team, the majority of the mined areas are in open countryside. Other efforts to clear the area include those of the Iraqi National Guard (ING), who have carried out a number of ordnance disposal operations after being trained by the British army.
IRIN
24
Our battalion was formed nine months ago by the British army. We mainly work in Basra and through to the border with Iran to clear UXOs primarily in built up areas, Captain Firas AlTamimi, an ING spokesman, told IRIN. British experts estimated that the work could be done in 60 years, he added. But they too are finding it tough due to a lack of maps and detectors, the captain said. Right now, the ING battalion is working to clear an area of 110 km on the waterside in Al-Fao region south of Basra in order to clear the site for a project to build a new port.
WEB SPECIAL
Mines, unexploded ordnance and arms caches litter Iraq presenting demining groups with huge challenges if they are to protect civilians. Credit: MAG/Sean Sutton
There are around 750,000 mt of UXOs in and around Basra, mainly unused ammunition, bombs, rockets and mortars discarded by fleeing Iraqi troops last year. So far, around 400 mt have been cleared, according to Al-Tamimi.
3. Special reports and articles KYRGYZSTAN-UZBEKISTAN: Demining around Uzbek enclaves brings hope to impoverished villagers
Osh, Demining of the Kyrgyz-Uzbek border is bringing hope to parts of the local population, hope of a new life without fear, along with economic benefits that have been denied them since 1999, when the area was first mined. issues, told IRIN that the Uzbek military had almost cleared mines around the Shakhimardan enclave, while demining efforts around the Sokh enclave were expected to be completed by 1 December 2004. According to the Uzbek Defence Ministry, Tashkent began planting mines in 1999 in some mountainous parts of its Kyrgyz and Tajik borders which were difficult to control in an effort to stave off incursions by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and to prevent drug trafficking and weapons smuggling through the area. Since then, more then 10 people have been killed by mines with several others injured. Furthermore, mine blasts killed around 100 head of livestock. The officials of the Batken governorship estimated the cost of the damage at US $166,000. The Uzbek government announced its readiness to demine its Kyrgyz border earlier in June in Vienna at a session of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a move welcomed by Bishkek. The climate on the border with the beginning of demining has become warmer right away, Shadybek Bakybekov, Batkens deputy governor, told IRIN. Now people have more trust in the neighbouring country as well as in local government structures. It was the problem of mine fields which noticeably darkened our relations with the adjacent region of Uzbekistan. Now with our colleagues from Ferghana [province], the neighbouring region of Uzbekistan, we will be able to focus on other issues. Zulpukar Markaev, head of one of the local rural municipalities, pointed out the economic benefit which demining of the frontier belt was expected to bring. There is an opportunity to use hundreds of hectares of land for agriculture, on both sides of the border, which have not been cultivated for the past four or five years, Markaev told IRIN. It will remarkably improve the well-being of the local population. Arable
All over the world countries look forward to a time when the production of mine warning signs is no longer needed. Credit: MAG/Sean Sutton
It is good to walk on the ground without any fear, Nishanbai, a resident of Suu-Bashi village in the southern Kyrgyz province of Batken, bordering Uzbekistan, told IRIN, explaining the feelings of the local inhabitants. In fact, until now our people were afraid to make a step towards the border as they were scared of being blown up. At last, we will graze our cattle on meadows again; look how high the grass is, nobody has touched it, hay-making awaits us, Aidarbai Kasymbaev, an elderly local resident, echoed. Aidarbai is also happy to have the opportunity to visit his relatives living in the village of Sharqabad in neighbouring Uzbekistan via the shortest route, rather than wasting time to circumvent the mine fields. Most of all I am glad for our children, Salima Ergesheva, a mother of four, said. Now they can play and have fun as long as they like. Earlier in August, units of the Uzbek army started demining work around the Sokh and Shakhimardan enclaves located on the territory of Kyrgyzstan. Enclaves are islands of territory completely surrounded by land from a neighbouring country - a legacy of the Soviet era when borders were simply administrative. Valery Kolesov, an official at the Batken governors office responsible for law enforcement and defence
IRIN
25
land has a worth like gold here. There is a scarcity of arable land in Batken, amounting to only 0.1 hectares per capita in the province, while in other parts of the country that figure is much higher. More than 95 percent of Kyrgyzstans territory is mountainous and a lack of irrigated land and water is a real problem in Batken, the most underdeveloped part of the country. As for local NGOs working on the issue of border relations, civic groups note the importance of publicity and the transparency of mine clearance operations implemented by the Uzbek side. The mine clearing commission includes representative of the Kyrgyz border service. It would be good to have representatives of Kyrgyz local communities in it as The debris of war, lethal and ready toys for children, is a scourge many countries are working well, Robert Abazbekov, to abolish. head of the Batken office Credit: MAG/Sean Sutton of the local NGO For International Tolerance, told IRIN. It is important in terms of providing the local population with impartial information. It is expedient to hold a couple of demonstrations on the elimination of mines, having invited representatives of the border communities. But some people still have concerns that some of these deadly weapons can remain undetected, noting the need for a clear statement from the authorities on this point. Of course, guarantees are needed that there is no longer a danger, and these guarantees should be provided by the Uzbek authorities as well as by ourselves, Manas Shaidullaev, a farmer from the Kojo farm located in the border area, said. I lost my 13-year-old son to mines. I do not want this to happen to anybody else. Sharing that view, children of the late Ulukbek Tolebaev from Chon-Gara village, another landmine victim, said: Three years ago mines took away the life of our father. Grief and poverty came into our family. Neither our neighbours [in Uzbekistan] nor our authorities provided compensation for our losses. The pain is still there, but it is impossible to live with it constantly. We want to believe in tomorrow and in the common sense of the authorities. Karim Tashbaltaev, head of the Batken association of war and labour veterans, told IRIN that people on both sides of the border were hoping for new prospects reviving the cross-border trade. Why not open border markets and resume bus routes with Uzbekistan? Tashbaltaev asked. Local observers say border trade would contribute to boosting economic activities in the area and reducing poverty. Meanwhile, some Kyrgyz military analysts see the beginning of mine clearing of the Kyrgyz -Uzbek border as a step on the way to joining the Ottawa Convention - the 1997 convention on the prohibition of the use, stockpiling, production and transfer or antipersonnel mines and on their destruction. Until now, both Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan had a poor image in the eyes of the world community, maintaining anti-personnel mines for the protection of their borders, Colonel Leonid Bondarets, an analyst at the Bishkek-based International Centre for Strategic Research, told IRIN. The process of mine clearing of the borders can also be considered as a kind of gesture on demilitarisation of the Ferghana valley. The most important thing is that people will not be killed anymore. According to Bondarets, Central Asias densely populated Ferghana Valley shared by Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan was used excessively by the three countries military bodies following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and was full of weapons and munitions. The danger of accidental explosions remained, he maintained. A local scrap metal dealer was killed by UXO (unexploded ordnance) in Batken while loading an artillery shell on a truck to ship it to China as scrap metal. Our people have suffered enough to say No! to these deadly things, Altynbek Syrymbetov, a teacher in Batken, said firmly.
WEB SPECIAL
IRIN
26
3. Special reports and articles PAKISTAN: Landmine and UXOs continue to endanger life in isolated tribal belt
Landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXOs) continue to pose an immediate threat to the local population in Pakistans northwestern tribal belt bordering Afghanistan. It also impedes infrastructure development and agriculture production of the area, according to antilandmine activists. We identified 405 landmine victims, in our survey last year, only in the Parachinar area of Kurram agency with a death toll of 157, Faiz Muhammad Fayyaz, head of Community Motivation and Development Organisation (CMDO), the only organisation of its kind working in the mine action sector in Pakistan, told IRIN in Parachinar, capital of Kurram tribal agency. The long Afghan war has left a mass of unmapped landmines scattered in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Out of a total of seven tribal agencies under FATA, six have direct border links with Afghanistan. Mines were airdropped and laid close to Pakistani towns along the Afghan border by the Soviets to discourage the local population from participating in the war. More than 55 training camps and supply depots were set up across the tribal belt to support Afghans against the Soviets with some more in the districts of Chaman, Qilla Abdullah and Qillah Saifullah of Balochistan province, Fayyaz said. Landmines continue to be used as indiscriminate offensive weapons in the scores of tribal conflicts and incidents of sectarian violence in this unpoliced and remote region of Pakistan. John Ali, 55, was hit by a landmine seven months ago while working in his fields. He lost one leg below the knee while the second is paralysed. Ali was sole breadwinner for his family with 6 children and is dependent now on his young sons of 14 and 12 for his own movement. His family has not resources to provide him prosthetic support limbs. Local coordinator of CMDO in Parachinar, Riaz-ul-Haq said that Ali fell victim to Shia-Sunni sectarian violence. Powerful people still keep stocks of landmines and sometimes grenades in their homes, Haq added. There are six or seven fresh landmine/UXO incidents
Gulzar Hussain, aged 12, resident of Luqman Khel village, Parachnar Kurram agency, is seriously handicapped by the amputation of his legs and one arm. Credit: IRIN
WEB SPECIAL
each month in Kurram agency, and an estimated 2,300 mine victims are there at this time, Munir Khan, working with CMDO, told IRIN. The area is contaminated with various types of landmines including PMN, PMN2, PFM1, SB33, TM57, TC66 and UXOs.
Response to landmine problem

Landmine victims in Pakistans tribal area have been suffering in the absence of any appropriate response to address the problem and help survivors. Set aside the provision of physical and socio-economic rehabilitation, the authorities do not even find timely transport and first aid to stabilise the victims of mines and UXOs explosions, Fayyaz said. CMDO launched a multi sector project to deal with landmines/UXOs problem in the Kurram Agency last year. The agency, having a population of around 441,000 according to 1998 census, is bordered on the north and west by Afghanistan. The programme was jointly funded by Response International, UK (RI) and The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund, UK. The princess took a particular interest in the victims of landmines in her humanitarian and charity work. We started mine awareness and risk avoidance education to reduce the number of causalities and build safe behaviour, Fayyaz said. Some members of Afghan Mine Action Programme trained the CMDO staff to work as Mine Risk Education (MRE) trainers. CMDO has worked on mine awareness with around 40,000 locals in Parachinar, under the project. Trainers visit schools, mosques and public places in villages to disseminate the message, particularly in vulnerable communities. Fayyaz further explained that CMDO prioritised educating children, in order to employ them to carry the message to women, whom trainers often cannot access directly due to their seclusion on account of local traditions. First aid training is also being provided to volunteers during the MRE sessions, Fayyaz said.
Rehabilitation of mine victims

Beyond the immediate danger to life and limb, medical treatment and physical rehabilitation impose a heavy economic burden. Patients need to travel to Peshawar, provincial capital of North Western Frontier Province (NWFP), at some 4-5 hours drive from Parachinar, for any treatment.
IRIN
27
Every patient takes three weeks with a cost of about six to seven hundred dollars for single below knee imputation, a physiotherapist working in a agency hospital told IRIN. A mine victim Wajahat Hussain lost his legs in a mine blast in 1995, when he was just 15. His family managed the expenses of his immediate medical treatment and prosthetic limbs with the support of a local NGO.
WEB SPECIAL
Pakistans landmine policy

Pakistan is a non-signatory of the Ottawa Treaty, which prohibits the use, stockpiling, production, and transfer of antipersonnel landmines (APLs). Pakistans regional security environment and its military requirements, Masood Khan, Islamabads Foreign office (FO) spokesman, told IRIN, have constrained it from joining the Ottawa Convention. The country continues to adhere to a policy, including exports, which ensures that the mines in its inventory will never become a cause for civilian casualities anywhere, he said. Pakistan and India both mined their sides of the international common border during a tense military standoff in 2001-02. However, Pakistani authorities maintain there are no permanently laid mines - antitank or anti-personnel (APM)l - along the international border between India and Pakistan. And if any, these minefields are properly fenced and marked required by the Amended Protocol II, told IRIN in a written statement. Pakistan is among fifteen landmine-producing countries across the globe. The country has shifted to the production of detectable versions of APLs since 1997. In addition, Conversion of the existing stock of the APLs to detectable ones is in hand and progressing, said the policy statement. Pakistani authorities stress the need to enhance international cooperation to find viable alternatives to APLs, with no undue restrictions on the transfer of technology. This also applies to the expertise for the production of smart landmines [detectable and having an inbuilt mechanism neutralising them within a specified period], in which the developing countries are deficient, the spokesman said.
Although important, mine awareness is a very thin protection between civilians and the lethal blast of hidden mines. Credit: MAG/Sean Sutton
Hussain needs to replace her prosthesis once every three years. My family supported for replacement of prosthesis twice over last nine years, though it was difficult. But now its almost impossible for me to arrange a huge amount of 1200 dollars again. Ive four children and yet without any proper job, nor I know any skill so I could earn my living, Hussain told IRIN. The situation is no more different in other areas of FATA in Bajaur, Mohmand, South Waziristan, North Waziristan and Khyber agency. However, the response to the situation is almost nonexistent for various reasons. Political agents, as representative of the federal government, are responsible for all the administration and law and order in each agency. Pakistani law and regulations do not apply to tribal areas. FATA has its own set of regulations with no provision for any social welfare department or administration. Funding constraints combined with the absence of any social infrastructure to address the problems of local population is apparently the main reason for negligible response to the mine problem, Dr Farhat Rehman, head of the Association for Rehabilitation of Physically Disabled told IRIN from Peshawar. Rehman told some limited size rehabilitation programmes were operating in tribal areas for rehabilitation of mine victims. However, it needed a serious attention of authorities as well as civil society groups to help the vulnerable population and mine explosions survivors, she added.
IRIN
28
3. Special reports and articles PAKISTAN: Mine education for tribal women
In the back room of a community school in Parachinar, capital of Kurram tribal agency, one of Pakistans Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), Nagina All over the world agencies are trying to reach women with mine risk education to reduce deaths Khan stands before a and injuries. Here girls in Yemen get training from group of 50 students - all Red Crescent staff. Credit: CICR/BOUVIER, Marc women and girls. She is busy familiarising them with a variety of metal shapes. As a Mine Risk Education (MRE) trainer, she starts her lecture by giving general information about landmines, and then goes on to explain the features of each of them through models to avoid any potential threat in daily life. Women listen to our lectures carefully, they realise that it is useful for them because they frequently come across these mines and UXOs [unexploded ordnance] in their daily life. We also tell them about first aid techniques, so that they can utilise them in case of any unpleasant incident, Nagina Ali, an MRE trainer working with the mine action project of the Community Motivation and Development Organisation (CMDO), told IRIN. We identified 405 landmine victims in our survey last year, only in the Parachinar area of Kurram agency with a death toll of 157, Faiz Muhammad Fayyaz, head of CMDO, the only organisation working in the mine action sector, told IRIN in Parachinar. The long Afghan war has left hundreds of thousands of landmines scattered in Pakistans Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Out of a total seven tribal agencies under FATA, six have direct border links with Afghanistan. Mines were airdropped and laid in fields along the FATA side of the Afghan border by the Soviets to intimidate the local population against participating in the war in any manner. More than 55 training camps and supply depots were set up across the tribal belt to support Afghans against Soviets with some more in districts of Chaman, Qilla Abdullah and Qillah Saifullah of Balochistan province, Fayyaz said. Landmines remain a common weapon in the region for settling tribal disputes or family feuds and can be openly purchased in many village bazaars, where they are offered for sale alongside locally made and imported machine guns, pistols and even anti-aircraft weapons. Women are disproportionately threatened by land mines. In the tribal areas of Pakistan they are largely responsible for the provision of water for household use. This involves long treks through territory where unmarked mine fields are common, to lakes and springs. So many mines are scattered in the area, sometimes one can see them floating in the water. Women usually get killed or injured while washing clothes in the rivers and streams, as well as stepping on the buried mines, Huma Ali, another MRE trainer, told IRIN. We arrange lectures in schools, mosques and sometimes by gathering the women of an area or village at someones home, Ali said, adding: Sometimes, it becomes difficult because we need to convince male family members first that these women need to attend the session. A local woman, Khatoon Bibi, who attended the MRE session, underlined the danger. Four years ago my son lost his eyes and both hands in a mine blast. He was playing with his friend when they found a butterfly shaped piece of metal and both decided to divide it into two halves so that each could have one piece. When he tried to break it with a hammer, it suddenly exploded injuring him severely. Bibi told IRIN that now she recognises the shapes of mines and when she come across any of them in water or Women who do not have ready access to public life on the land she would and education as those in Pakistan and Afghanistan are in particular need of mine risk education. completely avoid them. Here given by the Red Crescent. But she was sad for her Credit: CICR/SOHLBERG, Johan child, We cant manage the expenses for his artificial hands. Someone has told me he can get back his eyes as well but we have not money for that. Rehabilitation and reintegration of female landmine victims is more critical. For reasons of tradition, injured women are usually not allowed to be examined by a male nurse or doctor, with many dying due to excessive loss of blood. Those who survive, often badly mutilated and in constant pain, are confined to the home. Most dont get married and because they are not educated or skilled they cannot earn a living. They spend a miserable life being dependent on family members, this cannot go on, Ali said.
WEB SPECIAL
IRIN
29
3. Special reports and articles AFRICA: Well-known and invisible killer littered throughout Africa
They threaten the peace, stability and development of the worlds poorest continent and kill or mutilate 12,000 people each year. This was the reason that AfriIn Angola, anti-tank mines are an added menace along with millions of unexploded ordnance. can governments agreed Credit: MAG/Sean Sutton recently to a landmark initiative aimed at eliminating an estimated 40 million landmines from the continent. At the African Union (AU) headquarters in Addis Ababa, a new common African position was unveiled on 17 September 2004. It aims to ensure that the continent becomes an anti-personnel mine (APM) free zone, with a framework largely centred on the 1997 Ottawa Convention. The initiative also stresses interAfrican cooperation as a vital issue in successful mine clearance and calls for more support for victims and greater transparency by governments. Among the innovations that were agreed on was a call by African nations to countries which have laid landmines throughout the continent during World War II to devote a reasonable percentage of their military budgets to clearing them. In Egypt, for example, some 17 million landmines remain buried in the desert, a deadly legacy of World War II. The new position was agreed ahead of the Nairobi Summit in November 2004 on a Mine-Free World that will look at the progress made in the last seven years since the Ottawa Convention was drafted. Under the convention, which came into force in 1999 and was signed by 143 countries, nations that are party to the treaty must not use, stockpile, produce or transfer APMs. Still, even though African governments had backed the common strategy and some 48 joined the Ottawa Convention, a number of nations have not yet ratified the treaty. These include Egypt, Ethiopia, Libya, Morocco and Somalia. Ethiopian officials told IRIN that ratification was in the pipeline and a draft was expected before their parliament meets in the coming months. They said delays in ratification had stemmed largely from security concerns along their borders due to conflicts against neighbouring countries like Eritrea in 1998 and Somalia in 1977. However, Egypt, whose country is infested with an estimated tenth of the worlds 200 million landmines, is still reluctant to agree to the convention. We do not believe in a total and free ban of landmines as long as many actors, including the major producers, are still out of the convention, an Egyptian diplomat told IRIN recently. There are three major shortcomings in the Ottawa Convention as far as we see it, the diplomat said on condition of anonymity. There should be a real obligation, not moral obligation, to demine. States should have the right to get assistance where their countries have been mined and we also need to differentiate between landmines for protection, for national security and those landmines used for other purposes like terrorism. You should be given the right to defend yourself. Some 30 countries in Africa report being affected by landmines and unexploded ordnance and 10, including Angola, Mozambique and Sudan, say they suffer a high level of casualties. Said Djinnit, head of the Peace and Security Council at the AU, described the devastating effects of landmines on the continent and their impact on development at the conference. We have seen innocent people, women and children amputated, lose their limbs and other vital parts of their bodies - and end up handicapped, he told delegates. We have also seen landmines destroy the healthy and productive part of our active population, destroy fertile land for agriculture, destroy transport networks and destroy important natural resources that support life. Djinnit also told the conference, attended by diplomats, landmine experts and other officials, that the AU had been at the forefront of the campaign to ban landmines. Nonetheless, he said ending the scourge of landmines on the continent had not been pursued with all the needed vigour and determination in Africa. Landmines continue to be the main impediment to post-conflict reconstruction and development in our countries, the AU official added. Ridding the continent of this invisible and indiscriminate weapon is crucial for creating conditions for peace, security, stability and development in Africa, as well as reconciling and healing societies from the trauma of conflict. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) told IRIN that the convention, seen as one of the most successful global treaties, could also be a template for other weapons legislation. The organisation believes a similar treaty could be designed around small or light arms proliferation, a major factor causing instability on the continent. The convention also contains the potential for enforcement. Under the Ottawa Convention, a system of verification
WEB SPECIAL
IRIN
30
exists, whereby countries believed to be using AMPs, could be subjected to international inspection. So far, said the ICRC, the verification system has never been triggered. psychologically the same. He also noted that non-military forces have laid some mines with no record of where they were placed. Medical facilities are also weak, Lewis added. However, he praised the significant progress made in mine clearance and stressed that the continent has a huge movement of people willing to help demine. Austrias ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Wolfgang Petritsch, said progress made in the fight against landmines meant total eradication could be achieved. This is doable, Petritsch, who is president designate of the Nairobi Summit, told IRIN. With the achievements we have made in the last five years, we can rid the world of landmines and make a significant difference.
WEB SPECIAL
The ICRC also stated that sanctions could be imposed on countries where major concerns of noncompliance exist. While significant progress has been made, UN landmine experts also noted caution. Phil Lewis, of the UNs Mine Action Service and also in charge of mine clearance for the UN peacekeepers monitoring the ceasefire between Ethiopia and Eritrea, spelled out key concerns that need to be addressed in adopting a common position. The geography, size and number of landmines pose tremendous problems, Lewis said. Within these huge distances, the actual number of mines laid may be few, but their effect is often disproportionate to these numbers, he said. The fear of entering areas affected by a few mines remains
13-year-old Candre Antonio stood on a landmine outside his house. Afraid for the families safety, the father had planted the mines himself. Kuito, Angola, August 1995. Credit: MAG/Sean Sutton
3. Special reports and articles ANGOLA: Amputee soccer stars shine

Luis Gabriel mustered all the strength in his arms as he swung back to use his one good leg to blast the ball towards the oppositions goal. His free kick landed with almost perfect precision a few metres in front of the goal and he yelled excitedly to his team-mates attacking from the right side. Still, luck was not favouring the Blues and the nimble Red defenders - their powerful arms propelling their crutches forward - got to the ball first and safely cleared it up the field. The sight of 14 men, all amputees and victims of landmine accidents, playing a fast and furious game of football had drawn a sizeable and vocal crowd, as it does every time. Football on crutches is the brainchild of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation (VVAF), an NGO that runs rehabilitation programmes for landmine survivors. It has taken Luena, capital of the eastern province of Moxico in Angola, by storm. Our three teams - the Blues, the Reds and the Yellows - practice on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, said Nelito, a team coach and assistant manager of the VVAF Sports for Life programme. We always get quite
Blues striker Luis Gabriel, first from the left. Credit: IRIN
a lot of spectators. Most members are former soldiers who suffered landmine injuries during Angolas brutal 27-year civil conflict. The field players are all leg amputees, while the two goalkeepers have each lost an arm. No one wears a prosthesis, which keeps the playing field level, regardless of whether the amputation is above or below the knee and if the ball touches the stump, it is considered a foul. VVAF also supports athletes, organises wheelchair basketball games and offers therapeutic sporting activities at its orthopaedic centre. The NGO believes sport can offer people with disabilities - whether natural or as a result of landmines - new hope and improved self-esteem, as well as helping them to re-integrate into home communities in a country where they typically receive little support. According to Graziella Lippolis, rehabilitation manager for VVAF in Luena, the footballers morale has improved since they started playing. When they first arrived, they were bad-tempered and aggressive - they would take their crutches and hit people, but sport has really improved their outlook, Lippolis said.
IRIN
31
Local heroes
The players themselves could not agree more. Sweaty, thirsty and a little forlorn - neither team had managed to score by the final whistle - Gabriel explained how he now has more hope and feels much happier about his life because of football. A driver and mechanic in the military police during Angolas civil war, Gabriel used to trace broken vehicles and assess the damage. While on a job, he stepped on a freshly laid landmine and lost his right foot. The accident left him angry, miserable and pessimistic about his future. Of course, after the accident and the amputation I was in shock, he said. I was thinking a lot of stuff about my life. I was reconsidering everything. Afterwards, it was difficult for me to interact with other people. But in the hospital, this organisation [VVAF] proposed that I start playing football. Now I am very happy I took the decision to play. One of the lucky ones, Gabriel still has an administrative post with the military police - Angolas sky-high unemployment Amputee soccer match Credit: IRIN rate keeps most of his team-mates are out of work and they stand little chance of getting a job. There is also scant support from the government and many depend on the generosity of their families to survive, but playing football has improved their selfesteem - they are often considered local celebrities. Here in Angola, some people admire us because they know that playing football on crutches is difficult - that makes us feel very proud about what we are doing, Gabriel said. Even those once deemed hopeless cases are finding some satisfaction and enjoyment in the game. One player, known as Sete-Sete or 77, wobbled on his crutches, slurring encouragement and derision at his team-mates on the pitch. Obviously drunk, his peers refused to let him into the line-up. Thats 77. This was our worst guy, said Nelito, pointing to 77 as he teetered on the touchline. I remember being scared of this guy as a kid. He was seen as dangerous - a troublemaker at the Moxico level. But now we are slowly helping him recover and we are realising that he is not so bad. Lippolis agreed that while 77 could sometimes be a handful, football had made a dramatic difference to his conduct and outlook. He was very demanding and still is, but to a lesser degree, she said. He is still drinking, but not so often, and he keeps coming to training or dropping by the centre to say hello. Football is a social activity for him and it benefits him to see others in the same situation, Lippolis continued. He knows if he wants to play he has to change his behaviour. In the beginning, he could not even stand on the field because he was so drunk. The game has changed their perspective. They do not complain about inadequate food or unemployment, but of a lack of decent opposition. Many have been playing each other three times a week since 1998-99 and need a change.
WEB SPECIAL
Extra funding needed

We are good, but we are just playing recreationally, Gabriel said. We would like to play other teams from other provinces and eventually go abroad. We need other teams in other provinces or countries to challenge us. For five years we have only played each other - no other team. The problem is funding. VVAF wants to expand the project, initially to the neighbouring provinces of Lunda Norte and Lunda Sul, but that would require an additional US $100,000 on top of the $150,000 needed for the Sports for Life project in 2005. I can understand why they are frustrated - they want a national competition, Lippolis said. Most of them have this ambition and that is good. It is a priority to try to make happen for them. If the NGO acquires adequate funding, part of VVAFs plan would be to work in collaboration with the Angolan Para-Olympic committee in the countrys capital, Luanda, to try to make football on crutches a national activity. Some people may question the need for the project when Angola is battling with other pressing problems, such as hunger and child mortality, but Lippolis believes that focusing on improving quality of life is a key part of Angolas development. When people really look at what these athletes are doing, and they start to see the benefits to the people, they realise we are working on the quality of life of the people, she said. I am part of their rehabilitation and I can see how they are improving each and every day.
IRIN
32
3. Special reports and articles ANGOLA: Self esteem key to building mine-wrecked lives
At just 32 years old, Jose Brinco should be in the prime of his life. Instead, he is a victim of Angolas most horrifying legacy of war - landmines. Partially sighted and without his lower left leg after treading on a mine 10 years ago, Brinco, his clothes caked in dirt, is reduced to begging on the streets for a living. At night, on those same streets, he makes his Mambo takes a break, playing with her doll after a morning of physiotherapy. I like Luanda and I like learning how to walk by doing all the exercises on the equipment, she said shyly. Afterwards, when I get my new leg, Ill be able to play more and dance and go back to school. Just 10 years old, Mambo has not yet developed the fear of stigma and is confident she faces a bright future. But a sense of fatalism among many victims, particularly older mine survivors, can create problems when it comes to reintegrating into society. Victims often think that all they can do after a landmine accident is to go onto the street and beg - they dont see any other way of earning money to live; lots of them come to the cities to beg, said Emmanuelle Rioufol, programme director for Handicap International France. Medical experts and aid workers believe there is a real shortage of both psychological skills to help deal with the trauma of losing a limb, as well as life training skills to help victims realise they still have a future. Physical rehabilitation is just one piece of the puzzle; assistance to landmine survivors is much more complex, explained Tracy Brown, country representative of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation (VVAF), an NGO that has been running rehabilitation programmes for landmine survivors in the eastern region of Angola since 1997. Most amputees with good rehabilitation dont have to be disabled and incapable of leading a normal life. However, there is very little in the way of other services that address psychological impact, post-trauma support and life skills training which helps integrate landmine victims, she said. VVAF runs Sports for Life programmes in Angolas war-affected eastern Moxico province, involving landmine survivors in team sports like soccer on crutches and wheelchair basketball. Brown says those who take part have seen a huge improvement in self-esteem and confidence. We think this type of programming is critical to social reintegration, being able to take advantage of any training opportunities, and eventually getting a job, Brown commented. But this kind of moral support scarce. In her 15 years at the at the Centro Neves Bendinha, physiotherapist Suzanette dos Santos has done her best to offer some psychological as well as physical help, but she too believes there is an urgent need for more holistic support.
WEB SPECIAL
Physiotherapist Suzanette dos Santos helps a patient at Luandas Centro Neves Bendinha. Credit: IRIN
bed. I cant think too much about what has happened to me, otherwise my head goes crazy, he said. In 1994, a young Brinco and his wife were working hard in their maize fields. When he stepped on the anti-personnel mine, it was inevitable that his wife should try to help him. She didnt make it. She set off another mine and was killed instantly. I survived but she died. I still feel bad about it, he said. Now, maimed and half blind from the flying shrapnel, homeless and unemployed, he has very little hope left for the future: She was all the family I had. Now I have no-one. An estimated six million mines laid during 27 years of civil war still litter Angolas countryside. They have left a trail of physical destruction - disabling one in every 415 Angolans - as well as psychological trauma. Apart from the effects on the individual, landmines also remain a serious impediment to Angolas social and economic reconstruction, blocking access to water points, hampering the recovery of the countrys agriculture sector and creating a climate of fear and tension. Every Angolan knows that somewhere there is a mine with his name on it. We are trying to postpone that meeting for as long as possible, one villager told the development agency, Handicap International. There is some good news. Physical rehabilitation is not in short supply for those living in the cities and major provincial centres, although those in the heart of the bush may be unaware of the services on offer, or be unable to get to the centres for treatment. Yet for those young enough and strong enough, the free prostheses and physiotherapy offered there can help them to physically lead a normal life. At the Centro Neves Bendinha in the capital, Luanda,
IRIN
33
Some patients suffer from mental trauma. They need someone or something to give them strength and courage, otherwise they will just end up on the streets with their hands out, she said. Physically they can drive, they can walk, they can work, but its a question of mentality. The centres director, Celestino Tenda Daniel, agrees and is hoping next year to bring in a psychologist and some form of social assistance for the patients. Its a significant deficiency because, although we offer the patients a chance to live normally and independently by giving them prostheses, sometimes they leave here without much confidence, he said. It is possible for them to walk, to work, to do anything a normal person can do, but often the problem is in their own head. For Brinco, hoping the occupants of the next car will give him 10 or 20 kwanzas (a few US cents), any form of help would do. I have a pain in my heart when I think of my old job, working in the fields. Ill never do that again, but I dont know what else I can do, he said. I have no money. I have no hope.
WEB SPECIAL
3. Special reports and articles ANGOLA: Biggest ever campaign against landmines launched
As the notoriously dangerous rainy season approaches, the Angolan government and UN Childrens Fund (UNICEF) have launched a national campaign to prevent landmine accidents on the countrys roads. las most-mined provinces - at bus and truck stops, and police roadblocks. In all, 30,000 drivers will be reached in the intensive first five days of the campaign, which will then run for six months using TV, radio and a network of organisations to ensure that Angolas rainy season is flooded with messages to deter drivers from taking risks, UNICEF said in a statement. Landmines have left one in every 415 Angolans disabled. They are a major obstacle to daily life and hinder both economic and social development by denying access to land for agriculture and safe water sources. The campaign is Angolas largest effort against landmines. Landmines pay no respect to peace accords and so, although Angolans are eagerly turning to the business of nation building, they continue to feel the ferocious force of war, said UNICEFs Representative in Angola, Mario Ferrari.
A deminer in Angola. After flailing the ground for mines manual teams spend hours checking an arera before declaring it safe. Credit: CICR/GRABHORN, Paul
An estimated six million landmines remain scattered across Angola - devastating weapons used during its 27-year civil war that still wreak havoc after more than two years of peace. So far this year, there has been a mine incident every four days. The campaign, with the slogan We Stay on the Right Path, is aimed at drivers and their passengers, seen as particularly at risk because roads are rebuilt and trade and travel routes have been re-opened. It will urge motorists to avoid going off road to dodge the potholes and churned up mud that inevitably appear during the wet season, a time when landmines also shift in the soil. Drivers have a responsibility to themselves and their passengers, said Gen Santana Andre Pitra Petroff, director of Angolas National Commission for Demining and Humanitarian Assistance (CNIDAH). The campaign will enlist 540 mobilisers - trainers, the national police, the army, motorist groups, the boy scouts and various NGOs - to teach drivers about the dangers of landmines on the roads and encourage passengers to speak out if their transport operator tries to take his own route. The mobilisers will be stationed at strategic entry and exit points of major towns and cities in seven of Ango-
IRIN
34
3. Special reports and articles CHAD: Extreme geographical and climactic challenges to demining
Chad is a vast, landlocked and arid central African country which harbours a largely nomadic population of 8.6 million on a territory twice the size of France. national territory is extremely wide. Of Chads 1.28 million square km, about 3 percent is arable land. Nomadic herding prevails as a major source of livelihood with 11.5 million counted head of livestock. The frequent movements that are needed to find proper pasture and water for the cattle in the northern Sahelian areas, exposes the Chadian pastoralists to constant mine and UXO accidents, as the northern region is the most mine-polluted in the country. Although nomadic communities develop an essential group memory, which allows them to avoid some mine-polluted zones, the risk of accidents increases when they leave familiar areas in search of pastures. According to the SAC report, over one fifth of mine casualties were reported by victims who were engaged in herding at the time of the incident. When asked about the nature of the threat, more than half of Chads communities are concerned by this continuous threat. As Destemberg noted, the effort of raising awareness about the dangers of mines is often helped by bushtelegraph and social structures of the pastoralists themselves. They have representatives and elders who spread the awareness messages we disseminate in traditional stopovers such as oases, or towns with schools, he said. The Chadian climate and geography make demining operations a difficult task. Large parts of the country, mainly around lake Chad and in the north, are covered in moving sand dunes. This causes mine-contaminated areas to be regularly covered or uncovered by shifting sands, making mine location extremely difficult and quickly outdated. A significant proportion of Chads scarce water resources come from wadis, intermittent streams that flow during the occasional rains. Another problem special to Chad is when mines and UXOs are displaced by irregular flash floods, quietly shifting the menace to uncharted locations. We cordon off mined areas with barbed wire, but after rains, we have sometimes found mines 100 meters beyond the perimeter, said Destemberg. Generally, the clay soils in Chad make the surfaces turn to sloppy mud in the wet season, which hardens to a rock-like surface in the sun of the dry season. Both extremes make demining difficult and extremely slow. The climate also works to make mine clearance difficult. Temperatures often reach 50 degrees (Celsius) by mid-day, making for a short workday and forcing
WEB SPECIAL
It is also a desperately poor place, following three decades of civil and international wars that caused an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 deaths. It ranks as the 167th most-developed nation, according to the UNs 2004 Human Development Index. Chad is today relatively stable, since president Idriss Dby and his party, the Mouvement patriotique du salut (MPS), seized power in 1990. Despite relative peace, it is still struggling with one of the worst mine situations on the African continent. The Survey Action Center (SAC) estimates in its 2001 Landmine Impact Survey, that 284,435 Chadians live under the constant threat of mines and unexploded ordnance (UXO). The affected areas cover 1,081 sq km of land, a total area larger than the entire city of New York. Pollution by mines and UXOs first appeared in Chad in 1960. From 1977 to 1983, various Chadian factions fought and planted mines across the country. Most were planted during the second Libyan occupation of northern Chad, from 1984 to 1987. They were part of a deliberate campaign of terror aimed at forcing Chadian populations to flee northern areas. Subsequent conflicts between the Chadian armed forces and various opposition groups (such as the MPS and formerly, the Mouvement pour la Dmocratie et le Dveloppement [MDD]), led to further ordnance usage. Tackling the mine problem in such a wide and scarcely populated country presents a unique set of challenges. The immensity of the territory leaves many parts of the country without any trace of infrastructure, further impeding demining efforts. Michel Destemberg is chief technical adviser for the UN Development Programme for demining in Chad. He explained the specific constraints of demining such a vast area to IRIN. We have to aggregate demining operations around airstrips because if staff get injured, we must be able to fly them out to a hospital in less than six hours, which means reaching the capital, Ndjamena, sometimes from a distance of 1000 km, Destemberg said. The geographic distribution of the inhabitants in the
Two deminers in the Chad programme battle against the mines, the heat and the terrain. Credit: Michel Destemberg: CTP/HCND/UNOPS
IRIN
35
demining teams to rise long before dawn. Sand storms accompanying deafening winds also hinder demining efforts. Sand winds can be so deafening as they cover the sound signals of our detecting devices, Destemberg told IRIN. can be delayed by days. A mine action expert working for the initial studies of the Survey Action Centre in Chad told IRIN not surprisingly, as in other sparsely-populated countries such as Afghanistan - where infrastructure is also weak - many victims die of blood loss before help can reach them. Communities in Chad were also affected by the fact that many mines have been laid around water sources. The systematic mining of water resources and their areas, mainly in the northern part of the country, seriously affected water access for many. About half of the Chadian communities surveyed by the SAC in the north reported they had to permanently leave their normal living areas because different water supplies had become too dangerous to visit due to landmines.
WEB SPECIAL
Deminers in Chad preparing anti-tank mines for controlled detonation but the abandoned weapons are spread over a wide area in a harsh climate. Credit: Michel Destemberg: CTP/HCND/UNOPS
UXOs are found in dangerous quantities in several of the firing ranges the Chadian army has used for training over the years. According to the 2001 Landmine Impact Survey, these sites can be viewed as active battlefield areas, in which the level of contamination is continually replenished. The vastness and geographical features of the Chadian landscape are not only an impediment to proper demining efforts, but are also a threat to the provision of care to mine victims. Chadian medical infrastructure is basic and is currently unable to offer any ordinance victim physical rehabilitation or vocational therapy. Sometimes, if the accident happens far away from the few existing large towns, even basic first aid to a victim
3. Special reports and articles KENYA: Treaty signatory and host to the 2004 Summit
Kenya, the host of the 29 November to 3 December 2004 summit of parties to the Ottawa Convention - that calls for the ban of production and use of antipersonnel mines (APMs) - has been one of the most active parties to Most of the 240,000 refugees in Kenya come from countries affected by the landmine problem, including Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea. The refugees include some of those who have lost limbs to landmines in their countries. At Lopiding, close to the Kenyan-Sudanse border area of Lokichoggio, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) runs one of the largest field hospitals in the world, treating mostly those affected by war in southern Sudan. In 1992, the ICRC set up an orthopaedic workshop at the Lopiding hospital that makes artificial limbs for amputees, including victims of landmines, and fitting those with disabilities with orthoses. Fighting between Ethiopian troops and rebels of the Oromo Liberation Front has occasionally spilled over into Kenya, and in the late 1990s there were several reported cases of the rebels planting mines on the Kenyan side of the border to prevent Ethiopian forces from pursuing them. The mines were removed by the Kenyan military mines, according to Oyugi. The Convention on the Prohibition on the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of APMs and their Destruction, came into force on 1 March 1999 and has been widely hailed as the most successful global disarmament and humanitarian treaty ever, having been ratified by 143 states.
All over the world communities and individuals affected by mine could benefit if concrete action results from the Nairobi Summit. Credit: MAG/Sean Sutton
the Mine Ban Treaty. Kenya completed the destruction of its 38,774 stockpile of APMs in August 2003, four years ahead of the 2009 deadline stipulated in the convention, according to Michael Oyugi, head of the secretariat of the committee organising the summit in Nairobi. Some 3,000 mines have been retained for training purposes, he added. The decision to hold the summit in an African country is also significant because the continent is most affected by the hazards of landmines, according to Oyugi. Although the country does not have a landmine problem, Kenya has - over the years - emerged as a hub for humanitarian activities, a factor that makes Nairobi an appropriate choice as host of the summit, which will also address the humanitarian dimension of landmines, Oyugi said.
IRIN
36
According to Oyugi, Kenya will gain from a raised international profile due to the media focus on the summit as an estimated 1,500 delegates gather to review the Mine Ban Treaty. The gathering is widely seen as the most significant meeting of world leaders to address the global landmine problem since the historic Convention signing in Ottawa, Canada, in December 1997. There is likely to be a tourism spin off from the summit, said Oyugi, referring to the increased exposure Kenyas tourism industry, one of the countrys foreign exchange earners, is likely to gain during the meeting. Mereso Agina, the research coordinator of the Kenya Coalition Against Landmines, hoped that the successful hosting of the mines summit would lead to the upgrading of the United Nations Office in Nairobi with a view to holding more such international meetings in Kenya. That would be a direct benefit to Kenya, promoting the country as a conference destination with the expected benefits to the hospitality industry, she said. Nairobi hosts the headquarters of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT). The Nairobi Summit is aimed at reviewing issues critical to the Convention, including deadlines for mine clearance and destruction of mine stockpiles by state parties to the convention and providing help to those maimed by landmines. Some countries may need assistance to meet the [mine clearing] deadline, for example Angola - mine clearing is a tedious exercise, said Oyugi. He said the Nairobi Summit is expected to come up with two documents. One of them will be a programme of action on how the goals of the convention are to be achieved, while the second one will be a political declaration by state parties re-affirming their commitment to the convention. The summit is expected to re-invigorate the convention - give it a new lease on life, Oyugi added. Although Kenya does not have a landmine problem, parts of the countrys arid and semi-arid pastoral north and eastern areas are contaminated with unexploded ordnance (UXO) left behind by foreign and Kenyan armed forces carrying out training exercises. Regular military training exercises have been carried out around Archers Post in the Eastern Province and Dol Dol in Northeastern Province, exposing an estimated 600,000 people to potential danger. In July 2002, the British government agreed to pay compensation of 4.5 million pounds (about seven million euros at that time) to more than 200 Kenyan members of the Maasai and Samburu nomadic communities, who have been injured or maimed by UXOs left on their land by the British army. Britains defence ministry said it accepted limited liability for what happened during a 50-year period during which, British forces conducted live-fire exercises on land used for grazing by Maasai and Samburu livestock herders. UXO-clearance operations have been carried out in the affected areas by the British army in conjunction with the Kenyan military. According to last years report by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), UXO-clearance teams working in the Archers Post area in 2001 and 2002, found four to five pieces of ammunition per sq km. A Kenyan army-demining unit, serving with the UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE), has been involved in mine clearance along the two countries border. Ethiopian and Eritrea fought a bloody twoyear border that ended with the signing of a peace agreement in 2000. To facilitate travel to Nairobi for registered delegates who will attend the summit, Kenyan embassies abroad are issuing visas free of charge, Oyugi said. Delegates from countries where Kenya does not have embassies will obtain visas on arrival from a special immigration counter that will be set up at the Jomo Kenyatta International airport in Nairobi. Hotels in Nairobi will also offer special rates for delegates and there will be shuttle buses running between the city centre, where most of the hotels are situated, and the UN complex in the Nairobi suburb of Gigiri, the venue for the summit. Some 800 more police Not only landmines but unexploded ordnance, littered in their millions, are a security threat in post will be deployed in conflict situations. Agencies hope that the Nairobi Nairobi to boost secuSummit will help reduce the UXO problem through firm action against mines. rity during the summit. Credit: MAG/Sean Sutton More information on the summit is available on its Web site (www.minesfreesummitnbi.or.ke). The summits official opening ceremony will be held in the Kenyatta International Conference Centre in central Nairobi on November 28, presided over by Kenyas President Mwai Kibaki, a day before delegates shift to the UN complex for the rest of the conference. It will be attended by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. According to ICBL, most countries in sub-Saharan Africa, the most heavily mined region in the world, are state parties or signatories to the Mine Ban Treaty. There are 23 mine-affected countries in sub-Saharan Africa, including Angola, Burundi, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mozambique and Sudan. In 2002 and 2003, new landmine casualties were reported in 20 of the 23 mine-
WEB SPECIAL
IRIN
37
affected countries, according to ICBL. In many of the mine-affected countries in the African region, medical facilities and rehabilitation services are in poor condition, mostly due to a lack of financial resources. Armed conflict, whether ongoing or in the past, has also taken a heavy toll on the health infrastructure in several countries, meaning that landmine survivors have had little hope for rehabilitation and re-integration into society.
WEB SPECIAL
3. Special reports and articles RWANDA: Funding shortage retards mine action efforts
Rwandas civil war and notorious 1994 genocide, in which an estimated 800,000 people were killed, continues to have far-reaching effects on Rwandas peacetime population. Unexploded mines threaten the innocent who are still unaware of their existence. Rwandan officials say the former Hutu regime that masterminded and carried out the genocide laid mines in different areas of the tiny country and left behind a multitude of unexploded ordnance (UXO). Most of Rwanda has already been combed for mines and UXO, but still a significant portion of Rwandas landscape remains inaccessible to civilians due to the continued presence of mines and other abandoned weapons. Despite almost a decade of peace and years of mine clearance activities, the scourge of the hidden killers and eternal sentinels - as landmines have been called - remains. The coordinator for the Rwanda demining office, Lt Francis Kabuce, says the minefields have been reduced from 974,673 sq mt to 639,770 sq mt between April 2003 and April 2004, a reduction of only 33.5 hectares. Sadly, some of the areas still infested with mines are in the most productive parts of the country, says Kabuce. Even the capital, Kigale, is still affected. In June 2004, the demining office cleared the Kanombe minefield, which took up 503,935 sq mt, or just over 50 hectares around the capital. The lush northwestern province of Gisenyi is riddled with minefields. Much of the population relies on tea production for their livelihoods and yet, two tea plantations, Nyabihu and Kabaya, still remain closed due to the presence of mines and UXO more than a decade after the end of the civil war.
Though mostly cleared by deminers in the last decade, landmines are part of the impact of the 1994 genocide still troubling Rwanda. Credit: IRIN
When mines are located, they are not recycled or stored, but are eliminated through controlled explosions. The international community of humanitarian mine clearance agencies, led by the UN, have recently completed a set of international standards to deal with all aspects of mine action. We destroy mines discovered during demining operations and this is normally done in accordance with international mine-action standards, Kabuce told IRIN when detailing their procedures in Rwanda. However, its not just mines posing a threat to civilians. Between April 2003 and April 2004, the Rwandan National Demining Office (NDO) cleared up to 1,198 different items of what are know as explosive remnants of war (ERW). According to official statistics, landmines only make up 1.5 percent of the total number of items cleared over the past year. Increasingly, all over the world, the location and destruction of other abandoned weapons, while in the process of looking for landmines, is included under the activities of mine action because all items - when found close to communities of civilians - pose lethal threats. IRIN was told that since 1995, a total of almost 30,000 different items of UXOs were located and cleared, but despite these efforts, landmines and other UXOs continue to maim and kill civilians. In 2003, and in the first six months of 2004, mines and UXOs killed five people in the Mutara, Kigali City and Ruhengeri provinces. Since the war broke out in 1990, to date, Rwandas northern Byumba province has the highest death toll at 124 people due to mines and UXOs. At the height of the 1994 genocide, 42 people were killed and many more injured. Due to a lack of funds, the NDO does not offer any medical or rehabilitation assistance to mine victims, Kabuce said. The NDO has a survey team that roves around the country to identifying mine-affected areas. This helps prioritize activities and sets a target date for clearance completion. Minefields are identified based on war history (areas of heavy fighting) and on reports from the communities that have benefited from the mineawareness campaign. Mined areas are clearly marked and all personnel, and the local population, are made
IRIN
38
aware of the marking procedures. Though the NDO has noted an overall success, it is now short of funds and unable to launch awareness campaigns through print or broadcast media. Budget constraints halted regular broadcasting over national radio, television and in newspapers in 2002. Kabuce told IRIN that Rwanda badly needs additional resources to clear the remaining minefields. Currently, all minefields are cleared manually, but the sheer size of those still to be demined necessitates more efficient technological devices. Theres need for international assistance in demining activities in order to have a mine-free nation as soon as possible, says Kabuce echoing similar sentiments from all over the world. These same experts are hoping the outcome of the Nairobi Summit for a mine-free world in November 2004 will increase donor commitment to global mine clearance activities. To date, the US has been the only foreign donor to provide aid in funding, equipment, logistical support and explosives training, with a total of US $14.2 million in mine action assistance alone to Rwanda during 1995 to 2000. US funding for Rwanda stopped in 2001. Rwanda was one of the first to sign the Ottawa Mine Ban Treaty on December 3 1997 - the day the treaty was open for signatories. It was subsequently ratified by Rwanda on 13 June 2000.
WEB SPECIAL
3. Special reports and articles SENEGAL: Senseless deaths in Casamance

In Casamance, after 22 years of a now-fading conflict, the sentries that never sleep still kill and maim civilians. Casamance, the fertile southern region of Senegal enclaved between The Gambia and Guinea Bissau, was once considered the granary of the nation. However, the separatist rebellion sparked in 1982 left much of this lush-green tropical land devastated by clashes between the Mouvement des Forces Dmocratiques de Casamances armed branch (MFDC, or Movement of the Democratic Forces of Casamance) and the Senegalese army.
Children playing in the mined village of Darsalam. Credit: IRIN
importance. What is needed is a humanitarian demining programme, that is, a complete depollution of mines in all areas and not just the ones of military significance, otherwise civilians will keep stepping on them Martinez adds. The Senegalese authorities say they cannot launch the comprehensive, humanitarian demining of the region unless a ceasefire is enforced. Otherwise, our demining teams will keep being shot at by the MFDC, as happened a couple of months ago near the town of Niaguis, says Mame Biram Sarr, governor of Ziguinchor, the regional capital. Amy Sagna, a 42-year-old mother of six and a member of the Association Sngalaise des Victimes de Mines (ASVM, or Senegalese Association of Mine Victims) lives in the village of Darsalam, near Ziguinchor. On 17 July 1998, a date she recalls without hesitating, she stepped on a mine and survived, but lost a leg. I was going to the mango fields, which I used to sell in Ziguinchors market, she explains, sitting on her porch surrounded by her children. I was walking on a track that borders the Senegalese army camp, when I had my accident. She now runs a small shop from her fathers house, selling a few meager onions and some cigarettes. After the accident, she had to leave her home, as the village district she used to live in was infested with mines. Out of 10 districts in our village, six are now aban-
Today, as the conflict dies down despite internal strife within the MFDC and so-far unfruitful peace talks with the Dakar government, civilian residents are still victims of landmines planted at the height of the conflict from 1996 to 2001. Handicap International (HI), an NGO monitoring landmines in the region, puts the figure at 657 victims as of October 2004. According to HI, 147 victims lost their lives. Among them, 23 were children below the age of 14. Civilians are being lured into a false sense of security by the scarce demining efforts undertaken by the army and that creates more accidents, even though the yearly figures are in steady decline, Philippe Martinez said, programme manager for HIs operation in Casamance. The Senegalese army has carried out infrequent demining operations, mainly focused on areas of strategic
IRIN
39
doned because of the mines, she said. There are no signs warning of the presence of mines in the village. Villagers must rely on verbal information, which often comes after an accident. Comprehensive demining efforts would be a daunting task in CasaA prosthesis made at the Ziguinchor hospital. mance. The separatist Credit: IRIN MFDC planted mines without keeping track of their location and the Senegalese army denies using any landmines, especially since the government signed and ratified the comprehensive landmine banning treaty in 1998. Many victims are women because we work in the fields, and children, because they dont know what a mine looks like, Sagna told IRIN. I myself saw the landmine before I stepped on it, but I didnt know what it was. There have been five mine accidents in Darsalam so far, two of them instantly killing the victims. Victims of landmine accidents are referred to the state-sponsored, regional hospital in Ziguinchor, where they undergo surgery and re-education lasting on average three months. However, the prostheses needed to recover some partial mobility are too expensive for most victims. Felix Diandy is an orthopedist at the Ziguinchor regional hospital. In the country, where GDP per capita is barely above US $600, a prosthesis costs anything from $120 up to $ 150 for a femoral apparatus, used by victims amputated above the knee, he explains. According to Diandy, the Senegalese state does not subsidize prosthesis limbs, and most of the cost must be covered by relief organizations. This can amount to a substantial sum in the case of amputee children, as they require a new device every six months in order to keep up with their growth. Most victims are subsistence farmers, he said. If they were well-off, they would never have to go fetch a living in the fields where the mines are. However, surviving the accident and coping with a severe disability is not the end of the ordeal for many victims. Upon leaving the hospital to return to Boutoute, Elizabeth Nassalan - who lost both legs to a mine planted in her uncles garden - discovered she was not welcome anymore in her husbands home. After the accident, my husband remarried and chased me and our eight children from his home, saying I was no use for any work, she said. She has had to place her three-year-old twins in an orphanage, to be able to provide for the remaining six. Her husband, Dsir Namatan, was not available for comment. Sagna confirms there is little assistance provided to victims by the community. In our culture, we are supposed to be able to fend for ourselves, she said. There is no solidarity with mine victims in our village - I can only rely on my family. Most mines were planted in the bush and in villages, but accidents have been recorded inside the main towns as well. Mamady Gassama, assistant secretary of the ASVM, stepped on a mine in the Ziguinchor city centre when he was 14, in 1998. After a night attack by the rebels on Ziguinchor, the population went to read posters they had placed in the hospital compound, he explained. Thats when I stepped on a mine. My friend and my younger brother were seriously injured, but they were saved. Gassama said he speaks for most of the Casamance population when he says they are not interested in independence, but only the end of the war. After school, I want to study law and stand for the rights of landmine victims, because many treaties have been signed by governments, but few are actually enforced, he continues. Most observers figure both parties to the conflict used landmines. Elizabeth Nassalan (far left) at home with six of her children. Abdoulaye Dhidiou, Credit: IRIN who presents himself as the legitimate secretary of the fragmented MFDC and says he speaks for Atika, the armed branch of the MFDC, concurs. Landmines are sentries that never fall asleep and both sides used them, he said. But we, the MFDC, only planted them around our cantonments. Ibrahima Gassama runs a weekly radio programme in partnership with HI called Living Upright. The programme carries sensitisation reports and testimonies from victims in the regions six vernacular languages, as well as French, the local lingua franca. He explains that sensitisation is essential. The victims themselves are now relaying the information, reaching villages and showing their prosthesis to previously sceptical villagers, Gassama said. However, as the conflict dies down and claims of
WEB SPECIAL
IRIN
40
independence are watered down by the Senegalese governments development and reconstruction efforts, the menace remains. People think a halt in the fighting means peace, whereas landmines never rest, they remain alert forever, Gassama said.
WEB SPECIAL
3. Special reports and articles

SOUTH SUDAN: Big challenges in the south
The deadly use of landmines in global conflicts have left a lethal legacy hampering reconstruction and post-conflict recovery throughout the world. The Sudan is no different. they have started de-mining the areas under SPLM/A authority, while the Government of Sudan (GoS) is de-mining the Darfur region. NSMAD operational territory starts from Lokichoggio, Kenya - near the border - towards Kapoeta in eastern Equatoria, in southeastern Sudan. One South African based de-mining company, MECHAM, is working hand in hand with a Sudanese-created NGO, Operation Save Innocent Lives (OSIL). OSIL reported between September 1997 and November 2002 that their teams in Yei and Nimule had cleared an area of 5,176,363 square km and 1,284 miles of roads, destroying 3,376 anti-personnel mines in the process and 112,947 UXO. OSILs annual report from April 2003 to March 2004 said that an area of 10,478,437 square km had been cleared in both the Nuba Mountains and in southern Sudan. More than 1,500 miles of roads have been cleared as well. However, a field co-ordinator for Humanitarian Mine Action [an OSIL department], Akech Athieu, told IRIN that it is difficult to determine the scope of the problem in terms of numbers of mines since there is no legitimate record of where or how mines were used. The OSIL-trained deminers know they work in a dangerous context where their lives as deminers are also at risk. In the case of Manaseh Jigo, a retrained combat A mine awareness lecture organised by the local engineer, his leg was NGO Sudan Integrated Mine Action Service, in Rumbek, southern Sudan. severed while on deminCredit: Stevie Mann/UNICEF ing duty in the Blue Nile region of southern Sudan. After treatment I felt I could not give up de-mining, Jigo said. Despite losing his leg, he is now working again near the town of Yei and in Eastern Equatoria. Jigo was trained by the NGO, Mines Advisory Group (MAG). The British-based MAG is responsible for training many of the local Sudanese de-miners working in the south. The training mission became larger when representatives from Khartoum joined the campaign in 1998 and
The US-based agency, Human Rights Watch calculate that more than 340 anti-personnel landmine types have been produced in at least 48 nations world wide. And it is estimated that 110 million mines are spread in 64 counties world wide. Furthermore they estimate that landmines maim or kill between 1,000 to 2,000 people per month, most of whom are innocent non-combatants. Although mine action agencies resist the temptation to quantify the scale of the problem today, in September 1994 the UN Secretary-General stated that there were approximately 110 million world-wide and mine clearance alone would cost more than US $33 billion. In the following year the international community only allocated US $70 million for the clearance. After a decade of mine action the sector is not only better funded but clearance activities are taking place in tens of countries where mines and unexploded ordnance litter the country-side and threaten communities. Not least in South Sudan where comprehensive mine clearance programmes were virtually impossible before the government and the rebels started discussing peace and the end to the decades-long civil war. Recently the spot-light of the humanitarian mine action community has been focused on South Sudan where large areas of land area contaminated with landmines and Unexploded Ordnance (UXO). The Sudan Government and the southern rebel movement are currently running a first-ever joint operation on landmines which both side are responsible for laying since their wars began in 1983. The Director of the New Sudan Mine Action Directorate (NSMAD), an organisation managed by the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M), said
Sudanese mine victims waiting for limb replacements and rehabilitation in Lokichogio,south Sudan at the ICRC centre. Credit: ICRC
IRIN
41
1999 as peace was being negotiated. In another incident, an OSIL truck hit an anti-tank mine near Kauda in the Nuba mountains, killing eight civilians and injuring a many others. MAG has tried to reduce the risk for civilians by creating a system of special signs and signals, which communicate messages, alerting the local people to the presence or absence of mines in particular areas. The mines awareness messages are introduced to the communities by community agents but is then meant to be passed on to local people through the community members themselves and, in turn, to returning refugees in the same area. The de-miners claim the process is particularly slow in southern Sudan because the areas are bushy and camouflaged with tall grass. The Nuba Mountains OSIL teams and MECHAM, which use sniffer dogs to find mines, are hampered by the geography and climate because of the heat and aridity of the areas. The adverse climate only allows them to work in the cooler periods of the day. Although the recorded numbers of accidents in Sudan do not compare with some of the more notorious mine-affected countries globally, landmines have been responsible for numerous deaths and injuries over the years. In 2003, the Landmine Monitor reported that six people were killed and 10 injured in Magwi County of southern Sudan and that one man had his leg blown off in Yei County, but it is generally regarded that many incidents go unreported. An International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) staff member told IRIN that due to the predominantly random and widespread way in which landmines have been used in the wars they almost always hit without warning. Getting help after an accident can be a serious problem in a land where even the most basic services and infrastructure are unavailable. Following an accident, It can be a long time in some instances before anyone helps the victim of a landmine explosion. In remote areas where these incidents occur most, an injured person can be transported through informal means, without anesthetics, potentially worsening the injury level. Many clinics in southern Sudan lack ample blood supplies, antibiotics or surgical instruments he explained. Beyond the fear of landmines to life and limb the residents of Yei and Morobo counties have called upon the de-mining agencies to help them clear their agricultural land as well. The mines not only cause human destruction, they also turn land infertile and render it dangerous, a manager from OSIL told IRIN. Local residents are reported as asking, We are being encouraged to use the land, but how can we risk it? In 1997,as tens of countries queued to sign the new and ground-breaking Mine Ban Treaty Sudan was one of the early signatories committing themselves to strict stipulations prohibiting the production, transfer, sale and use of mines. However, there has been some disagreement as to how closely the Government of Sudan has respected the articles of the Treaty. I am A mine awareness sign, Rumbek, southern Sudan. surprised to hear that Credit: IRIN Sudan also signed the treaty in 1997, while in 2002 government forces laid 13,500 mines in Lopon, in eastern Equatoria when it captured it from the SPLA, claimed OSILs Akech while talking to IRIN. The government and the rebel parties have been accusing each other of using mines. The rebels also accuse the government of maintaining stockpiles of mines. The government of Sudan (GoS) denies having stockpile of landmines and reported that the few it did have, were for practice use only, according to Landmine Monitor, a publication of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. In late November 2004 Nairobi will host a Review Summit on a Mine-Free World marking the watershed five-year mark following the entry into force of the Treaty itself. Those organising the summit, which is set to attract heads of state and senior diplomats from over 150 nations, hope the international community will re-commit themselves to ridding the world of the scourge of landmines. Aleu Ayieny Aleu, the director of New Sudan Mine Action Directorate (NSMAD), will represent southern Sudan in the summit.
WEB SPECIAL
IRIN
42
3. Special reports and articles UGANDA: A need to address the landmine question
Compared to other countries, the problem of landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXO) is not huge in Uganda, but experts say landmine casualties have been The Ugandan army has been unable to protect people in the villages from LRA attacks. reported in the Luwero Credit: OCHA/Sven Torfinn area of central region, the Rwenzori mountain area of western region and across the northern region - where a rebel insurgency has continued for 18 years. Historically, landmines in Uganda have been laid by rebel groups, Auke Lootsma, deputy resident representative of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in Uganda, told IRIN on 1 November. No scientific study has been done on the problem in Uganda, but landmines are a potentially constraining factor in resettling internally displaced people in the country, Lootsma said. We are supporting the government to build a database, then we will move into mine clearance. Luwero was the site of the war between the rebel National Resistance Movement (NRM) and the government from 1980-86, before the NRM seized power. The Allied Democratic Forces - a rebel group, which fought the NRM in the late 1990s, infiltrated and fought in the Rwenzori Mountains. However, it is in the north - where the rebel Lords Resistance Army (LRA) has fought the NRM for 18 years - that the problem remains significant. The LRA has stocks of landmines, but have not used them extensively, Lt Paddy Ankunda, the Ugandan army spokesman in northern Uganda, told IRIN in Gulu town, 380 km from the capital, Kampala, on 26 October. I dont think the region is heavily mined, although the army has recovered 52 anti-personnel and 34 anti-tank mines from the rebels. On 25 August 2002, President Yoweri Museveni, who led the NRM war, had reported that weapons and equipment - recovered during a military operation called Operation Iron Fist - included 174 anti-personnel mines (APMs) and 20 anti-vehicle mines (AVMs). Other sources within the Ugandan army say retreating LRA fighters could be laying landmines in largely inhabited swathes of land where the people fled years ago, citing areas near the Uganda-Sudan border, including the Dingotona mountains. This, the sources said, would hamper the possibility of internally displaced persons (IDPs) returning to their homes. Relief workers in northern Uganda told IRIN a new APM exploded in early September in Pelah village near Kitgum town, injuring two government soldiers. Two other mines were found in Pajimo camp for IDPs. Another was found near a borehole and another close to a health centre, while a minefield is believed to exist in Pader District in the area between Puranga and Geregere. According to experts, the Ugandan army has not been known to use mines against the rebel groups in the country, although it was suspected of using some during an earlier incursion into neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo. In 2001, the government closed down its mine-producing factory at Nakasongola, near Kampala. In July 2003, it destroyed over 4,000 APMs, but retained a few thousand Landmine victim Grace Alanyo says its time the fighting stopped. for training purposes.
Credit: IRIN
WEB SPECIAL
Nevertheless, hundreds of Ugandans have been hurt or killed by landmines over the years. According to the Landmine Monitor Report of 2003, at least 34 casualties were recorded in northern Uganda between 2002 and 2003, including five people who were killed when a bus hit a landmine in June 2003. Another 19 people were seriously injured in the incident. Data collected from hospitals in the north shows that 385 people suffered amputations as a result of mine or UXO accidents between 1999 and 2003, making this the single largest recorded cause of disability in the region.
IRIN
43
4. Interviews AFGHANISTAN: Interview with deputy foreign minister on mine clearance
A huge mine clearance programme has been running in Afghanistan for more than a decade now, involving several thousand people and many local and international organisations. Despite clearing mines and UXOs from more than 300 sq km of land, Afghanistan remains one of the heavily mined countries in the world with more than 800 sq km still to clear. In an interview with IRIN, deputy minister of foreign affairs and chairman of the national demining consultative group, Mohammad Haidar Reza, said that the country would be free of mines within ten years but that US $200 million was required to clear high priority areas by 2007. He added that stockpiles of mines remained throughout the country, but that some were still in the hands of regional warlords.
Mohammad Haidar Reza. Credit: IRIN
WEB SPECIAL
QUESTION: What is the extent of the mining problem in Afghanistan?
ANSWER: It would be very difficult to give a figure for the number of remaining mines and UXOs, but in terms of casualties, more than a year ago the average number of mine-related incidents per month was more than 300. Thank god this year that figure is about 100 people per month, which is still very very high. In terms of areas contaminated with mines and unexploded ordnance, it is estimated around 815 sq kms. Q: Why is the ministry of foreign affairs chairing the consultative group? A: After the signing of the Ottawa Convention in 2002, Afghanistan became a full member of the convention and therefore there was a kind of political responsibility on the shoulders of Afghanistan. And the ministry of foreign affairs was put in the lead to look after the demining activities. Right now I chair this consultative group and it is going to continue for the foreseeable future until we have a national mine authority in place. Q: Afghans have been critical that the demining process has not proceeded rapidly enough. A: Now there are about sixteen NGOs that are operational [in demining] in Afghanistan. Allow me to say that these people have done a tremendous job. Recent studies that have been done, for example a team from the European Commission was here and they did a kind of survey of the whole [demining] operation. The overall finding shows that demining in Afghanistan is one of the most successful operations in the whole world. Q: How will the new mine actions authority, which is a government body, affect mine clearance programmes across the country? A: One thing which is important, although the UN is coordinating demining operations, the actual work is done by NGOs and by the Afghans themselves. So when the government takes over from the UN, it will be still these NGOs and the Afghans doing the demining work. Q: How much will demining activities cost next year? A: The budget for 2005 has been anticipated at something between US $75 and $80 million. But only one third of it has been received, another one third is in pledges and the last third we still have to raise. It is important to mention that once the transition takes place, we will make sure to fund the demining activities through the national development budget of the government in the future. According to the strategic plan, Afghanistan will be free of mines by the year 2012. Based on this plan, we are going for priority areas. In the next five years, we are mainly emphasising high and medium priority areas and for this period we are anticipating something around $ 210 million will be necessary to arry out demining activities in Afghanistan. Q: What factors are hampering demining activities? A: The extent of problem in itself is a challenge. Also, lack of resources is another challenge and third is the number of people that right now are working in the demining. Currently 8,200 people are working as deminers in all 16 NGOs. The ministry of defence is talking about 8002,000 people that they will have in their
IRIN
44
demining department when it takes over from the NGOs. So I wonder if the number of people we have is enough. But with a good planning I hope we will be able to look after the high priority areas. Q: How do you priorities? A: In consultation with the ministries we find out what is exactly top priority. For example, the electricity is planned to come from Uzbekistan via the northern provinces to the capital, Kabul. Just recently we were in discussion with the ministry of water and power to look at where exactly the transmission lines will be laid to deploy teams in the mined areas on this route. Q: In terms of service delivery for landmine victims it seems very little is happening, why? A: As far as victim support is concerned, the Ottawa convention states it is the responsibility of each state to assist the victims. I wouldntt agree that we are not assisting them. The government is trying to assist the victims as much as possible. Just now, there is a substantial amount that has been given to victims through the Ministry of Martyrs and disabled and or through ministry of health and other institutions within the government. But also thanks to other colleagues, for example ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] they are doing a marvellous job in terms of prosthesis production, physiotherapy and so on. It is true that because of limited resources the government cannot take care of every need. Q: Does the government maintain stockpiles of land mines? A: Throughout Afghanistan, we have around 250 stockpiles of land mines. In Kabul there was a pilot destruction, which was very successful. Based on the Ottawa treaty we have to destroy all of our stockpiles by the beginning of 2007. This, technically speaking, is a huge task logistically. It requires time and resources to bring all the mines to secure destruction points. It is also a bit sensitive in some places and we have to deal with it carefully. Some of these stockpiles are with government military institutions such as the ministries of defence and interior and some are under the control of local commanders. Q: Are land mines still being used as offensive weapons in Afghanistan? A: This is a difficult question. I would say the major worry that we had a couple of years ago is no longer there. But with pockets of problems that take place from time to time in different parts of the country, especially in the south, no one would deny for sure that this will not happen again. The insurgents that cross the border and come inside Afghanistan, now the chances are there that they will plant the mines. So this is something difficult to predict. But with the passage of time and regional cooperation, and especially in this case with our friends in Pakistan we will resolve this.
WEB SPECIAL
IRIN
45
4. Interviews Interview with Rae McGrath, Co-laureate of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize
Interview with Rae McGrath, Co-laureate of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize. McGrath is a writer, civil society campaigner and has been involved in mine action programmes for 17 years. Despite being a main instigator and activist of the international campaign to ban landmines and a co-laureate of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize, which the campaign earned, Mr McGrath has criticisms of the progress in implementing the treaty. During a telephone interview with IRIN he argues that a redoubling of effort is required if those communities, and individuals, affected by landmines are to see tangible benefits in the coming years. QUESTION: Surely the Ottawa Convention must be regarded as successful by any measure?
WEB SPECIAL
ANSWER: The Treaty made a huge step towards dealing with the problem of antipersonnel mines (APM) - it dispenses with complex legal language and goes straight to the heart of the problem. In terms of impact on the ground, we need to be more honest. After five years of campaigning, following the start of the campaign in 1992, we have effectively stigmatized landmines making it almost impossible for major powers, even those which are not party to the treaty, to use anti-personnel mines without incurring international condemnation. This is perhaps the greatest success of the campaign to date. Q: Hasnt the Treaty also provided for rigorous policing of signatories, to ensure they comply with their various treaty commitments? A: On the surface it looks good, but when you get down to the details there are significant weaknesses in ensuring signatories remain consistent to the spirit of the treaty. Even some of the countries showing the highest level of commitment to the Ottawa treaty have made cynical use of perceived loopholes. For example, Canada, along with the UK and a number of other parties to the treaty, retain the Claymore-made mine type. This is a major concern, and one that weakens the treaty and, in effect, re-legalises a mine responsible for killing many innocent people. However, the main weakness of the treaty lies in what happened at the very last minute of its formulation. At the first international ICBL conference held in London in May 1993, it was agreed to write an APM definition based on effect rather than design. We recognized that weak definitions have always damaged and weakened international treaties and we wanted to avoid that. The definition of a landmine is based primarily on its effect on humans was very explicit and was a core element of our campaigning. At a very late stage in negotiations, a definition by design was incorporated into the treaty. This meant, in essence, that manufacturers of future weapons could define whether their weapon was to be covered by the treaty by varying how they described and catalogued it. For me, this was a fundamental betrayal of the people we sought to represent, mine-affected communities, and is an obvious and damaging weakness of the treaty. If definition by effect was enshrined in the Treaty, many cluster weapons and anti-tank mines, which recently killed two international-aid workers in Darfur, would be outlawed by the Treaty. Q: Has significant progress been made with respect to clearance of landmines? A: A huge amount has changed since the early 90s when there was no mine clearance - but its nowhere near enough. Mine and UXO (un-exploded ordnance) clearance will always be a problem because it relies on state funding. Until the polluter pays [where belligerents in a conflict have to pay to clear the land of the debris of war] principle is recognized, no nation is willing to put its money where its mouth is; most governments, including the major parties to the Treaty are far more willing to invest money in weaponry than in saving lives. Compare what the US boasts in terms of funding of mine clearance with the colossal amounts that they spend on their invasion of Iraq. Their overall contributions to humanitarian mine action in the last decade would barely cover the cost of the first day of last years invasion of Iraq. Q: How impressive has the global response been to mine victims since the signing of the Treaty? A: The world has done nothing about victims. Go to any mine-affected rural community and ask them how excited they are about what has happened since the 1997 Treaty - they would look at you blankly. It is entirely
McGrath addressing memebrs of the House of Commons, London. Credit: Gary Trotter
IRIN
46
common to see people with no prostheses or crude homemade devices in hundreds of mine-affected communities. Access to prosthetic centres is possibly more centralized now than it was before and so access for rural victims is still very limited. To be blunt, the best they can hope for are some prostheses, but more commonly they merely become subjects of endless surveys and have become the subjects of popular international voyeurism. Rehabilitation, where it exists at all, is tailored to the budgets of the organizations involved and is never remotely related to the real scale of the problem. Q: Should mine victims be given special status and special attention? A: I have always argued against mine victims being separated from other war victims. Anyway, responding to mine victims is, in part, a response to war victims. Offering assistance to mine victims should cause a general improvement in health care at a decentralized level through a knock-on effect. However, as identified in the Ottawa Treaty, the signatories have a commitment to help mine victims in particular, but the common-sense response of relevant agencies will mean that they cannot refuse other war victims as they treat mine victims. Q: If the most important aspect of mines is their effect on communities, why is universalisation of the treaty so important if minimal mine usage occurs and mine clearance continues? A: In terms of the universalisation of the Treaty, international civil society is going to have to make it clear that it is not acceptable for certain major countries to stay out of the Ottawa process, especially in the United States. It is up to the people to insist that their government joins the process. The problem with major countries like the US not participating in the treaty is that it allows other non-signatories to point to the US and justify their own non-participation. Universalisation is critical because continuing wide acceptance of the treaty - in word and spirit - underpins continued eradication and victim-assistance programmes. Q: So, is 2009 a realistic date for completion of most of the Treatys commitments? A: There is no way that by 2009, mine clearance will be finished or even remotely close. In some countries they have hardly started - and remember, President Bush has recently retained the right to use APM in the future. If funding continues at present levels, we will be nowhere near the treaty clearance target. Continued diversion of funds that could be used for mine clearance - towards unrealistic and sometimes irrelevant research projects -should especially be stopped, especially to those projects which are more likely to produce military spin-offs than solutions for humanitarian mine action. Millions have been spent on research already - where are the results? Neither should we forget existing mine victims whose plight the treaty tried to address - the outlook for victims is bleak if current trends continue. Q: Some argue that the humanitarian mine sector has too many commercial interests involved. Is commercialization of the sector a problem? A: The UN doesnt feel that commercialization is a problem in the mines-clearance sector. Quite often the UN have been in a rush to bring in commercial operators. NGOs have not done themselves any favours and in some cases, NGOs have tried to set up parallel-commercial operations in an attempt to get the best of both worlds. If commercial operations are carried out well, of course they are acceptable, and in terms of local national operators setting up as commercial units, this can provide a great alternative to international NGOs who come and go. Arms manufacturers who have humanitarian spin offs double dipping, quite simply shouldnt be allowed to operate. Establishing a sustainable mine action indigenous capacity, supported by donors, must be central to any mine-action response. Q: The head of the UN Mine Action Service recently claimed that landmines were now consigned to the dustbin of history. Is this the case? A: I understand his sentiment and wish it were true. But it is a dangerous statement because it gives the idea that the problem is solved. It is a neat sound bite, but in terms of the reality of what has been achieved, it is simply not true. The greatest step was to demonize landmines and make the world aware, but it will be many years, and many people will die and be maimed before Mr. Barbers claim becomes fact unless we learn to fund peace as readily as conflict.
WEB SPECIAL
IRIN
47
4. Interviews Interview with Margaret Arach Orech, Ugandan landmine survivor
Margaret Arach Orech is a single mother with five children. She lost her right leg when a bus she was travelling on hit a landmine. In the immediate aftermath, she was robbed and only just managed to crawl away from the bus before the fuel tank exploded. Her leg was amputated without an anaesthetic. She has adapted well to her new life, having received her first prosthesis two years ago and has given talks at national and international conference on the issue of landmines and victim assistance. In Uganda she is active with the Uganda branch linked to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and also visits new amputees to provide emotional support and share with them her experience of recovery and rehabilitation. In this interview with IRIN, Margaret Arach Orech offers her views on the state of victim assistance and talk about what it means to survive a landmine explosion. QUESTION: How did you become a landmine victim? ANSWER: I became a landmine victim through an ambush carried out by the Lords Resistance Army (LRA) rebels while I was traveling in a public bus during the festive season of Christmas 1998. Q: Where did it happen? A: The incident occurred on an isolated stretch on the Kitgum-Gulu Road in northern Uganda. Q: What kind of assistance was available for you and is this what is normally available to Ugandans who are mine victims? A: After the incident, our immediate need (there were other injured passengers in the bus) was to get to a medical facility for emergency care. It was nearly an hour before we made it to a health unit with the help of a military truck. The army came to investigate the explosion and found us stranded in the bush. The health unit manned by a clinical officer and nurse lacked the essential first-aid kit, but we were lucky they had anti-tetanus toxin, which was administered. We then waited for nearly six hours before a Good Samaritan offered to take us to the main hospital some 80km away. This was in a cattle truck. Finally, after another two hours, we arrived at St. Marys Hospital Lacor, where I received all the necessary medical care at a fee for the next two months. This included x-rays, a blood transfusion, surgery, medication, physiotherapy, food rations and finally, being discharged on crutches. Mine victims arrive or get to medical facilities in all sorts of transport, but generally at the hands of Good Samaritans and family. Ambulances are rarely seen. Transportation can be by hired vehicles, bicycles, trucks, hand made stretchers, etc. Q: What difficulties did you face with the assistance you received? A: The difficulties I faced with the assistance I received was learning to use the assistive devices (crutches) and paying the hospital bill. Q: What type of assistance would you needed more of? A: I would have needed more counseling and subsidized, or free, medical treatment as I was not in a position to pay my bills. Q: How did your community and family receive you after the accident? A: My family gave me all the support. My friends took off. I was abandoned. The community (my village) did not all support me, but some thought I have bad luck and the accident was a punishment for some wrong I did. Why me? To this day I have not yet seen some of my friends. Q: How were you able to overcome the social, economic and psychological difficulties after the accident? A: I am a practicing Christian and this was my source of strength at the difficult time. I learned that we should give thanks under all circumstances and trust in the Lord. Also being a mother made me to strive for my children. I was able to get employment after one year, thus making it possible for me to earn a living and not
WEB SPECIAL
IRIN
48
become a dependent. Q: How would you describe the scope of the problem of landmines today? A: The use of landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXO), used in numerous conflicts throughout the continents, has killed and maimed thousands of innocent civilians. It has also robbed the affected communities of productive land and made them prisoners in their own land. Even though many states are signatories to the Mine Ban Treaty, some non-state actors (rebel forces) continue to use mines. Landmine survivors, the majority of whom reside in rural areas, continue to live without the knowledge of their basic human rights. They live day by day in a situation of hopelessness and are considered unvalued members of their society. They also need ongoing medical care, prosthetics, rehabilitation, and social and economic re-integration to be able to regain their position in society. Q: What are the major challenges with mine-victim assistance since the treaty was signed? A: The major challenges with mine-victim assistance are, first, holding governments to their commitment towards the Mine Ban Treaty on victim-assistance-related issues. To some, the issue of landmine survivors is not a priority, as compared to HIV/AIDS, malaria, etc. The second challenge is the lack of funding for victim assistance. The third challenge is the lack of accessibility to structures, information and services. The forth challenge lies in the co-ordination and collaboration among the various stakeholders. The fifth and last challenge is to achieve peace and stability for victim assistance to operate without disturbances. Q: What types of victim assistance are lacking the most? A: The types of victim assistance that are lacking the most are economic re-integration and psycho-socio support, so that landmine survivors may regain their position in society socially and economically as a way of improving their lives. Q: What are the achievements made within victim assistance since the treaty was signed? A: There are several achievements made within victim assistance. For one thing, the definition of victim assistance has been widened, priority areas in victim assistance have been identified, and a six-point-indicator study on victim assistance has been developed. Additionally, substantive work has been done to include landmine survivors in the Mine Ban Treaty-related meetings at the national, regional and international level. Mine affected states parties now present their status of victim assistance using the four Ps: Progress, Priorities, Problems and Plan. Q: What are the most immediate problems in Uganda with landmines? A: The most immediate problem in Uganda with landmines is the continuing conflict. Forces opposed to the ruling government are using landmines and there is no control until the conflict ends. The locations of mines are unknown and affect large populations who live in IDP (internally displaced persons) camps in mine-affected areas and cannot go back to their homes until the area has been cleared and declared safe. Most affected communities need mine-risk education. Q: What types of victim assistance is available in Uganda? A: The types of victim assistance that are available in Uganda are emergency medical care and medical rehabilitation. There is also disability legislation is in place. Q: What type of victim assistance is lacking? A: The types of victim assistance that is lacking is counseling, economic re-integration and data collection. Q: Who provides the assistance? A: Victim assistance is provided mostly by international organizations, NGOs and UN agencies. They offer it through the existing health-service facilities in the country. Landmine victims can access medical care, but this is always at a fee and often not affordable to the rural poor. Q: What has the Ugandan government done to meet the obligations of the Treaty? A: The Ugandan government has, in collaboration with development partners, embarked on improving existing health facilities and construction of new ones especially in mine-affected areas. The Ministry of Health has now
WEB SPECIAL
IRIN
49
started participating at the intercessional meetings of the Mine Ban Treaty. The government has also put in place comprehensive legislation on disability issues and established a national council on disability. Q: According to the Ottawa Treaty, countries are responsible for the care of landmine victims. How would you describe the compliance of the countries that have signed the treaty to provide adequate assistance? A: Based on the indicator study done by the ICBL (International Campaign to Ban Landmines) Working Group on Victim Assistance, most states have somehow complied with the treaty in regard to victim assistance, though the level of assistance is still not adequate. This is mainly due to the economic situation of most mine-affected states. Q: Which countries are, according to your opinion, in most need of a developed victim assistance service? Of Signatories: Afghanistan, Angola, Burundi, Cambodia, Chad, Chile, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Croatia, Djibouti, Ecuador, El Salvador, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guinea Bissau, Honduras, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Peru, Rwanda, Senegal, Sudan, Tajikistan, Thailand, Uganda, Yemen and Zimbabwe. Of non-Signatories: Burma, Georgia, India, Iraq, Nepal, Pakistan, Russia, Somalia, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. Q: Do you see any problems with the current funding of landmine victims today? A: Yes. Funding towards victim assistance is enclosed within the Mine Action Treaty and the percentage that goes towards victim assistance is not specified and it does not have a time frame. Q: Many donors provide funding only for a short period of time, while the needs of the victim demand a much longer period. Is this something that you have experienced? A: Personally I experienced this. Two years after my first prosthetic limb could no longer fit I needed a replacement. I was unable to get this as the only functioning orthopedic centre located in northern Uganda had run out of funding. I waited until after it got funding to resume work. Q: Is there a preferential trend towards funding in cases of landmine victims, as opposed to victims of polio or car crashes and do you think landmine victims should get specialized assistance? A: Landmine victims benefit from a countrys existing medical facilities. There is no way a facility can be set up solely for the use of landmine victims, leaving out other persons with disabilities. Yes, I do think landmine victims should get specialized assistance. The trauma involved, its nature (deliberate act sometimes at the hand of forces that are supposed to protect the people) and the target population (rural poor), leads me to advocate for specialized assistance. At least some form of compensation would be a good way to help a landmine victim make a start after a long period in the hospital. Q: What are your expectations of the Nairobi Summit on a Mine Free World in late November? A: I expect a commitment by states and donors to the Ottawa Treaty and to see signatories and non-states parties joining the Mine Ban Treaty, especially Ethiopia. Additionally, I expect to see commitment by donors to the allocation of funds specifically for victim assistance and governments to increase momentum and awareness on the Mine Ban Treaty and its related activities. Q: Has there been enough progress on the aims of the Ottawa Treaty? A: Definitely. The fact that there are 143 or more states - I hope the Nairobi Summit on a Mine Free World is indeed a big achievement.
WEB SPECIAL
IRIN
50
4. Interviews Interview with Ambassador Wolfgang Petritsch
In this telephone interview with IRIN the President-Designate of the Nairobi Summit, and Austrias Ambassador to the UN in Geneva, emphasizes the unique partnership of forces between civil society and governments that made the Ottawa Treaty (Mine Ban Treaty) possible and continues to drive the successful monitoring and implementation of the Treatys commitments. His outlook for the summit and the future in relation to humanitarian mine action is explicitly optimistic concluding that the Treaty really has dealt an effective death-blow to the anti-personnel landmine and its murderous impact around the world. QUESTION: How did it come about that Kenya was chosen for the summit location? ANSWER: The State Parties were keen to have the review conference in a region of the world affected by mines and Africa is, as a region, the most mine-infested region globally. There were several countries in Europe and North America vying to hold the conference but Kenya was selected by the members themselves.
Ambassador Petritsch in Cyprus Dec 2003.
WEB SPECIAL
Q: Why will the conference attract such senior diplomats; why are governments so particularly interested in the Mines Ban Treaty (MBT)? A: There are not too many disarmament treaties that are working in the way that the MBT is working. Its a success story with immediate humanitarian and disarmament aspects combined, and I think it is this that will bring so many high ranking representatives to Nairobi. In fact it is crucial for this to happen the next 5 years will be critical and will represent important breakthroughs. We need a new way to push forward; demining needs to be pushed forward both financially and politically. Also victim assistance and stockpile destruction of mines as an important preventative measure in order to save future lives. We have to avoid the sky-rocketing costs of demining as well and stockpile destruction is a preventative way of avoiding future costs. Q: To what extent is the high level of adherence and implementation of the MBT a result of the activities of the International Campaign to ban Landmines (ICBL) and the Landmines Monitor publications for example? Do you see their activities as keeping the mines issue on the agenda and exposing non-adherence? A: For me, definitely. It signifies a new kind of diplomacy; public diplomacy represented through this private/ public partnership. Interestingly the control the civil society has exerted through this partnership has been more effective than any coercive approach. This part has been critical to the success of the Treaty where the civil groups and NGOs have been working on a par with the States Parties in driving the issues forward. The main advantage, I would say, of this partnership has been the fact that more coercive methods were not needed and instead the ICBL with their monitors in numerous countries and the media as well have provided the control needed. Q: Most demining operators would argue that 2009 is entirely unrealistic as a deadline for demining activities globally. Do you agree with this and how will the summit in Nairobi address this perception? A: We are going to cross the bridge in Nairobi the bridge between the first five years and the next five years of the Treaty. For most States Parties the 2009 deadline will not be a problem but for some mine affected States Parties it will definitely be a problem. I would still not say it is unrealistic but a challenge to meet the deadline not just for certain mine affected States Parties but also for donor countries as well. Its very important for the affected countries to have National Plans of action and to bring them to the conference and to use the conference as a springboard for soliciting assistance and support from donor countries. In so far that affected countries use the conference in this way will be a clear indication of how seriously they take the matter in their own country. Q: There are critics of the Treaty who say that landmines victims have been quite neglected throughout the process. How true is this and will the Nairobi summit address is perceived failing? A: Victim assistance is one of the core areas of the issues to be discussed at the summit which shows that it is at the centre of our concerns. Particularly as it is a human security issue I mean the Treaty is both a disarmament treaty but also addresses the plight of the human victims of landmines. As such it is the first disarmament convention to do so. Furthermore it stipulates a responsibility to provide assistance to victims. This too is a new
IRIN
51
development in international law that illustrates the inventiveness and creativity of this new kind of disarmament diplomacy. Q: Is the Nairobi Summit in fact a high-level diplomatic talk-shop or do you foresee concrete results deriving from the meeting? A: There is of course always a danger that meetings at this level can become diplomatic talk shops, but not in this case. We expect that a very substantive action plan will result from the conference. An action plan has already been drawn up with 70 specific action points for States Parties to adopt and implement in the next 5 years. These action points were developed during the intensive preparatory phase over recent months which included extensive consultation around the world. Government representatives coming to the summit already know what to expect because the whole process has been very transparent. I am confident that all the points of the action plan will be firmly adopted. Q: In the 14 months since you have been designated president of this review conference are their some particular aspects of the campaign and the treaty that stand out or which have impressed you personally? A: During my time in the Balkans, I have witnessed the tragedies of new victims, children in particular, long after hostilities have ended. This personal commitment is from having seen victims of landmines on a weekly basis, in real time, and in real situations. Concerning the Campaign I have been very impressed by the way NGOs and civil society have worked and the way governments have opened up to civil society. Basically the issue of landmines is all about people, real people and about how we can work together to avoid future mine victims. What is remarkable is to see the changed level of behaviour worldwide as a result of the Campaign and Treaty in relation to landmines the international behavioural norm has spread far beyond the 143 member states. Even among non-signatories mines have become less acceptable and we see levels of use and production reducing dramatically worldwide. A real change in attitude has taken place-and this is remarkable. We are really on the way to altogether ban and eliminate one kind of vicious weapon from the earth.
WEB SPECIAL
IRIN
52
4. Interviews Interview with Martin Barber, Director of the UN Mine Action Service
Ahead of the coming Mine Action Summit in Nairobi, the director of the UNs Mine Action Service (UNMAS), Martin Barber, told IRIN that despite the immense challenges remaining, the Mine Ban Treaty of 1997 has made major progress towards ridding the world of anti-personnel mines (AMPs). Barber stated that he would like to see the Nairobi summit focus on eliminating the occurrence of new mine victims and seeing countries focus on clearing high-priority mines adversely impact daily life and community reconstruction or development. QUESTION: What, in your view, has made the Mine Ban Treaty so successful, given that it was signed only five years after the campaign for banning landmines started? ANSWER: It was a combination of things. First, a frustration among a number of governments about the slow pace of negotiations in the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) and the fact that they had been negotiating for many years, but didnt feel they were getting anywhere. Second, was the fact that in the early to mid-90s, the consequences of the widespread use of anti-personnel mines in internal conflicts had become horrifyingly apparent as the Soviet troops left Afghanistan - as the UN mission went to Cambodia in 1992 - during the mission in Mozambique in the early 1990s and in Angola. These four countries were coming out of prolonged conflict and there was a realisation that the return to peace was going to be significantly threatened by the presence of anti-personnel landmines, which were killing and maiming people at every turn. Third, was the extremely effective advocacy campaign, including the use of people such as Princess Diana to bring the matter into peoples living rooms and to their TV screens to the extent that governments began to think, Yes, why dont we [ban landmines]? Fourth was the testimony of respectable military commanders that anti-personnel mines were more dangerous to people who laid them then they were to the enemy. One last element was perhaps the commitment of the Canadian government and Lloyd Axworthy [former Canadian Foreign Minister] to push this through. This was very influential. He basically challenged himself and everyone else to come back a year later with an agreed international convention and he did. Q: From your perspective, what progress has been made? And what specifically have been the strengths of the movement to rid landmines? A: In terms of specific achievements, the first obligation that state parties entered into was to destroy their stockpiles within four years of acceding to the convention. The first 45 States met that obligation on time in March 2003 and progressively as the convention came into force in different countries. They came up against this deadline four years after acceding [to the convention]. Quite remarkably, so far, every country that has come up to the deadline has met it. Thats a remarkable achievement. Secondly, the ban on production - before 1997, it was estimated that about 55 countries produced anti-personnel mines. That number is now reduced to 15, of which, none are state parties to the convention. We know that they retain the capacity to produce, but so great now is the stigma of being a mine producer that we are not actually sure that any of these countries are actually producing. It seems that production is way down. Next, the legal trade in anti-personnel mines appears to have stopped. Even countries that have not banned them are not currently involved in the trade. Q: Who is planting landmines now? A: Rebel groups are planting landmines in Columbia, even though the government is a state party. In Myanmar, not a state party, we believe the problem to be quite significant. In Chechnya theres a serious problem. In the Maoist insurgency in Nepal, there is some evidence that landmines are still being used. Were talking four or five countries that are still using them. Also, in the build up of tension in 2002 between Pakistan and India, there were reports of new mines being laid along the border, but only briefly.
Martin Barber. Credit: UNMAS
WEB SPECIAL
IRIN
53
Q: Do you see the failure of nations like India, Pakistan and the US not signing the treaty, as a major weakness? A: In one sense, of course, it is a weakness as it means that the treaty has not been universalised. But in another sense - the fact that there is no international trade - the fact that no one seems to be producing them anymore and the number of countries where they are currently being used, is down to three or four. In that sense, the fact that these countries are outside the convention is not as significant as you might assume. Q: In places like Kosovo, it is clear that landmine clearance has been quick. In other places, its been very slow. Whats ... [your view on this?] A: The Kosovo programme ran for two and a half years and basically did the job. The landmine problem in Kosovo was of limited scope. The mines were used there over a relatively short period and largely in conformity with established military practice, so were talking about known mine fields. Although a lot of money was put in and it was expensive, it was possible to finish it relatively quickly because the scope of it was small and the size immediately apparent. The problem in the worse affected areas is that landmines have been used over a much longer period and in an undisciplined way - as nuisance mines, scattered without being marked or reported and covering vast areas. The four countries that have the most serious landmine problem are Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia and, in the European context, Bosnia. In Afghanistan, we made very good progress over the last 10-12 years in dealing with the known former Soviet Union minefield threats. In Cambodia, a lot of work has been done, but unfortunately a lot of work remains. There was a tragic situation in the early part of this year because casualty rates started to go up rather than down. Unfortunately, this is a result of economic development, expansion of lands under cultivation and reclaiming new lands that havent been cultivated for 20 or 30 years. Casualties were sustained during the spring-cultivating season, as people moved back into mined areas. The same would be true of Angola, which has a big problem and a long way to go. Q: Are people doing enough? A: Well, we believe that the targeting of clearance work has improved considerably over the last five years. We no longer have the old lets-take-mines-out-of-the-ground approach. Our approach now is, Where are mines having an impact? - Where are people being blown up? - Where do mines prevent people from getting to their water supply? So its about impact targeting. I think this has improved considerably. An area with some improvement, but not as much as what people had hoped, is the development of technology. Q: Are you of the view that the money invested in technology in this field, looking for a silver bullet, could start paying off? A: Yes, provided its focused on the three or four developments that can make a difference. The one I mentioned is clearly one of them. Every [mine action] survey comes up with the need to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the handheld detector. The second area where we need a technological advance is in what we call area reduction. How do you quickly establish the limits of a mined area without putting people at risk? Some of the techniques used in the past involve dogs that can smell the vapor as it comes through the surface, but there are limits to using dogs, such as the weather and terrain. A number of other technologies are being trial [run/used], which capture air samples, takes them to a laboratory and then a dog or rat checks the sample. Certain types of rats can be trained very quickly and it appears that they are more reliable than dogs in determining that - bees can also be trained to swarm at the sight of an explosive trace and can tell you if an area within two acres is cleared. Q: How realistic is it that people will meet respective deadlines? A: There is provision in the treaty for countries to request a further 10-year extension if they are unable to meet their deadlines. A proposal that we put forward for the Nairobi conference is that all countries commit themselves to eliminating all high-impact-mine areas by 2009. In Nairobi, countries will be encouraged to focus on high and then medium-priority areas. Its quite clear that a few countries are not going to be able to meet their first 10-year deadline because they simply dont have the resources and the international community is not going to be able to give the resources required to complete clearing low-priority areas. Q: Do see any special provisions for mine victims at the Nairobi conference?
WEB SPECIAL
IRIN
54
A: We feel that the focus needs to be on eliminating the occurrence of new victims - reducing the number of victims as close to zero as possible. There is going to be a big focus on mine victims at Nairobi. Theres going to be a survivors summit the morning of the 28 November, where 50-60 landmine survivors will meet with some key senior political officials from a dozen countries and have a dialogue, and agree on the text of a survivors declaration. At the end of the conference on December 3, the survivors declaration will be handed to the Secretary-General with the formal documents that have been agreed [upon]. Q: You mentioned that military commanders said that mines were not the most effective of weapons. Given that and the definition of an APM, are we going see a situation where technology sees landmines made redundant, but are replaced by other equally devastating weapons, such as cluster bombs? A: Im not sure I would put it quite like that. The distinguishing feature of a landmine is that it is victim activated. The second is that it doesnt get switched off at the end of the war. Any other weapon that might replace mines should have neither of those particularly lethal characteristics. They should be command detonated [i.e., only go off when they are launched]. So, I suspect that alternatives are not going to carry the features that made landmines so indiscriminate and unscrupulously deadly. Thats the good thing. Q: Lastly, what specific aspects would you like to see come out of the Nairobi summit? A: I think the Nairobi summit is really like a vitamin boost, a re-launch of energy for the next five years. I would like to see a recognition that we need to tackle the problem in mine-affected countries with a holistic approach to include the problem of explosive remnants of war. There are basically four types of ordnance that we have to deal with: anti-personnel mines, anti-tank mines, unexploded ordnance and abandoned unexploded ordnance, such as ammunition dumps. In a country like Iraq or Afghanistan, the extent of abandoned ordnance is vast.
WEB SPECIAL
IRIN
55
5. History of landmines
Today it is estimated that over fifty countries have, at some time, been involved in the production of approximately 340 different types of anti-personnel landOver 340 different mines are currently being found mines (APMs). They are by demining groups all over the world. Each mine is designed to kill and main humans- soldiers easy to deploy and cost or civilians. as little as $3 to produce. Credit: ICRC Their utility allows them to be laid virtually anywhere - which combined with their relatively small size, and in some cases low metallic content, makes them difficult to locate and remove. Some military historians claim the massive growth in design and use of APMs originated from efforts to inhibit the removal of anti-tank mines in World War II, but the true origins of landmines are found in the invention of gunpowder in China and the advent of improvised explosive devices in warfare. The military response to the easy detection and removal of anti-tank mines was to create APM, which eventually became weapons in their own right. Many countries doctrines call for careful mapping and marking of minefields, and clearance upon completion of the mission. However, military organisations have often failed to remove their mines.
WEB SPECIAL
The Two World Wars

The anti-tank and anti-personnel landmines were developed as tactical, defensive weapons intended to protect troops, military bases and key installations. They were also used to delay the advance of enemy troops to deny them access to certain areas and resources and to burden them with soldiers injured by landmines. In some instances, mines were laid to maximize the demoralizing psychological effect on troops through the use of nuisance minefields. Soldiers during World War I and World War II operated in a climate of fear (of mines) and invested valuable time and energy in clearing suspected mine areas. Mines have been integral to military operations since World War I. Anti-vehicle (anti-tank) mines were designed and deployed for protection against the newly invented tanks and, in turn, APMs were used to protect the anti-vehicle mines from destruction by opposing infantry units. Mines from the World War I era still turn up in different parts of Europe today. During World War II (1939 - 1945), anti-personnel and anti-tank mines were employed in large quantitiesthroughout battle theatres in dozens of countries. APMs were used extensively in their own right and to deter the disarming of anti-tank mines. One of the most effective APMs during this time was the Germanmade bouncing betty, which was designed to jump from the ground to hip-height when activated and to propel hundreds of steel fragments within a wide range. Significant quantities of mines that were laid in some former European and Far East war zones remain a menace to this day and millions of still-lethal mines left from World War II are strewn across the North African desert. Military historians estimate that during World War II, more than 300 million anti-tank mines, filled with powerful, lightweight trinitrotoluene (TNT), were deployed by all warring parties. Apart from those that were detonated and some that were cleared after the war, hundreds of thousands remain abandoned - some live, some destroyed by time and corrosion. The quantities of abandoned remnants of war were of such high quantity in France, for example, that in1945 the French used 49,000 German POWs (prisoners of war), as well as French civilians and military personnel, in what was one the earliest post-war efforts to methodically and comprehensively clear landmines and unexploded ordnance.
Pre- 20th Century World wars

The first improvised precursors of landmines were used in the 15th century at the battle of Agincourt in France. The term, mine, originated from the tactic of tunneling underground close to ones enemy defenses and packing the tunnel with explosives in order to detonate the gunpowder mix from a safe distance. The use of mines continued in battle throughout the world in various ways through the centuries up to the American Civil War in the 19th century, when explosive devices were developed resembling the modern APM. According to Dave McCracken, who authored The Landmine Action Smart Book, Explosive mines activated by pressure, designed by Brig Gen J. Bains of the Confederate Army, made their first recorded operational appearance in the American Civil War. Subsequently, one of the earliest known casualties of a landmine was a Union soldier killed in 1862 by a Confederate landmine during the Civil War. A century later in the 1960s, five live-Confederate landmines were discovered in Alabama, USA. Landmines were employed on a relatively small scale in some 19th century colonial campaigns and during the Russo-Japanese War (1902-1906), but did not become a weapon used in significant numbers until late in the World War I.
Post World Wars

After World War II, advances in weapons technology accelerated rapidly. In the 1960s, an APM was
IRIN
56
developed that could be delivered by air and automatically activated as it hit the ground. These models, commonly called scatterables, made it possible to rapidly deploy large numbers of mines, rather than manually planting each mine by hand. Increasingly, scatterables and hand-deployed mines were used against civilian populations - to terrorize communities, to displace entire villages, to render fertile agricultural land unusable and to destroy national infrastructures like roads, bridges, and water sources. Scatterables were first introduced by the United States during the Vietnam War. Nearly one-third of all U.S. casualties during the war were due to landmines deployed by U.S. troops themselves as soldiers found themselves retreating through unmarked minefields of their own weapons. The next generation of scatterables included the butterfly mine, which was extensively used by the Soviet Union during the conflict in Afghanistan in the late 1970s and 1980s. The traditional rule of mapping and marking all minefields became increasingly disregarded after World War II. Mass-produced mines by the US, China and the Soviet Union, amongst others, were cheap, effective, and light. Not only during the Cold War era were they readily available during the proliferation of low-intensity conflicts in the 1960s and 1970s, but they were easy to manufacture or procure locally. In less developed areas of the world, landmines became the weapon of choice for many government troops, paramilitaries and guerilla forces. In recent decades, new technologies have transformed the improvised dumb landmine, traditionally used for defensive purposes, into a sophisticated smart mine that is now used largely for offensive purposes. During the 1970s, the U.S. Department of Defense began replacing persistent (dumb) antipersonnel and anti-vehicle landmines in its stockpiles with self-destructing and self-deactivating (smart) landmines to prevent enemy use of U.S. landmines against U.S. forces and to minimize the threat to noncombatants. Technologically advanced mines include remote delivery systems and mines with low-metal content, electronic sensors and self-destruct mechanisms. Remote delivery systems deploy large numbers of scatterable mines from the air, which automatically activate as they hit the ground. Plastic mines contain very little metal content. They are extremely durable and they are virtually impossible to detect with traditional metal detectors. While mines with electronic sensors are intended to differentiate between animals and humans, and are often capable of identifying the numbers of passersby before they explode, they do not distinguish between soldiers and civilians, and between children and adults. Accordingly, even these smart mines are indiscriminate weapons of war. Problematically, technological advances have made landmines more dangerous for civilians and more difficult, if not impossible, to detect. Greater numbers of mines can be laid more rapidly than ever before and landmines have become more sophisticated while mine-clearance technologies have developed very slowly. Manual clearance with prodders and metal detectors continue to be the most effective and reliable method for clearing mines. The Arms Project of Human Rights Watch has compiled a list of nearly 100 companies in 54 countries - both in the developed and developing world - that have manufactured more than 340 models of APMs, or their components, at a production rate of five to ten million mines a year. Conventional APMs cost between $3 and $27 to produce, while technologically advanced mines, like scatterables and self-destructing mines, can cost up to 50 times more. Most warring parties, including rebels, paramilitary groups and governments in low-intensity conflicts, prefer to use traditional dumb mines because they are cheaper, simpler to use, and easier to manufacture.
WEB SPECIAL
The end of landmine history?

The production and trade of APMs has often been a secretive business. Governments and companies are reluctant to disclose information about their involvement in the production or sale of mines. The good news, however, is that the Mine Ban Treaty has had clear tangible effects on the production and trade of landmines, even among countries that have not yet become party to the treaty. By 2001, only 14 of the original 54 mine-producing countries continued to manufacture APMs or their components, and all traditional exporters of mines, except Iraq, have officially ceased their activities. Depending on the success of the Mines Ban Treaty the boon of landmines technology, design and use may have passed its peak and history will record the 1990s as the last decade of serious use of APMs. With the effective implementation and universalisation of the Mine Ban Treaty, the APM may be an item of historical interest only and found in military and medical museums.
[This brief history was compiled using reports from Physicians for Social Responsibility, The Landmine Action Smart Book and The U.S. Department of Defense, Bureau of Political-Military Affairs]
For specific information or enquiries concerning IRIN documentaries Please contact: David Gough IRIN Film Unit Tel: +254 20 621994 Email Address: gough@IRINnews.org Headquarters, IRIN Central & East Africa IRIN Horn Of Africa - Nairobi UNOCHA House, UN Crescent, Off UN Avenue, P.O. Box 30218, Nairobi, Kenya Tel: +254 20 622147 Fax: +254 20 622129 Or 624356 Email Address: Irin@IRINnews.org IRIN-Central Asia - Ankara Room B03, UN House, Birlik Mah, 2 Cadde, 11,06610, Cankaya, Ankara, Turkey Tel: +90 312 454 1177/75 Fax: +90 312 495 4166 Email Address: Sean@IRINnews.org IRIN Kabul WFP Guesthouse # 5 Shashdarak, Kabul, Afghanistan Tel: +93 (0)70 281124 Email Address: shoaib@IRINnews.org IRIN - Southern Africa - Johannesburg 3rd Floor, Sandton City Office Towers, Rivonia Road, Sandton 2146 P.O. Box 1617, Parklands, 2121, Republic Of South Africa Tel: +27 11 895 1900 Fax: (Admin) +27 11 784 6223 Email Address: Irin-Sa@Irin.org.za IRIN - West Africa - Dakar Sur La Vdn - Villa N 9368 Sacr-Coeur 3, Bp: 45792 Dakar-Fann, Senegal, Code Postale 12523 Tel: +221 867 27 30 Fax: +221 867 25 85 Email Address: Irin-Wa@IRINnews.org IRIN Liaison Office - New York United Nations Plaza, New York, New York 10017, USA Tel: +212 963 1234 Or 212 963 5699 Fax: +212 963 1040 IRIN Liaison Office Geneva Office A827, OCHA/ESB/IRIN, Palais Des Nations, 8-14 Avenue De La Paix, Ch-1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland Tel: +41 22 917 1135 Fax: +41 22 917 0067 Email Address: Joanne@IRINnews.org IRIN Coordinator, Ms. Pat Banks Tel: +254 20 622133 Email Address: Pat@IRINnews.org

Humanitarian Mine Action IRIN in Depth

Caricato da

Informazioni sul documento

Descrizione originale:

Copyright

Formati disponibili

Condividi questo documento

Condividi o incorpora il documento

Opzioni di condivisione

Hai trovato utile questo documento?

Questo contenuto è inappropriato?

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

Humanitarian Mine Action IRIN in Depth

Caricato da

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

IRIN

Documentary - November 2004

Laying Landmines to Rest?

IRIN Web Special on Humanitarian Mine Action, November 2004 - Page 2

The new action plan for 2005-2009

The fast track to Ottawa 1997

IRIN Web Special on Humanitarian Mine Action, November 2004 - Page 3

Many communities remain affected by landmines

The neglected mine victims

Slow and dangerous work

IRIN Web Special on Humanitarian Mine Action, November 2004 - Page 4

Unprecedented unity of civil society and governments

IRIN Web Special on Humanitarian Mine Action, November 2004 - Page 5

The scope of the problem

Responding to the crisis

IRIN Web Special on Humanitarian Mine Action, November 2004 - Page 6

The continual challenge of mine clearance

The need for data and international standards

IRIN Web Special on Humanitarian Mine Action, November 2004 - Page 7

IRIN Web Special on Humanitarian Mine Action, November 2004 - Page 8

What needs to be done?

IRIN Web Special on Humanitarian Mine Action, November 2004 - Page 9

Who has responsibility?

IRIN Web Special on Humanitarian Mine Action, November 2004 - Page 10

Funds for assisting the victims

Who helps the victims?

IRIN Web Special on Humanitarian Mine Action, November 2004 - Page 11

2. Features covering the 5 core elements of the Web Special

Stockpiles and the global reach of the Treaty

IRIN Web Special on Humanitarian Mine Action, November 2004 - Page 12

Changing the international norm

2. Features covering the 5 core elements of the Web Special

IRIN Web Special on Humanitarian Mine Action, November 2004 - Page 13

The path towards new international law

Arriving at the Mine Ban Treaty

IRIN Web Special on Humanitarian Mine Action, November 2004 - Page 14

The challenge of universalisation

IRIN Web Special on Humanitarian Mine Action, November 2004 - Page 15

IRIN Web Special on Humanitarian Mine Action, November 2004 - Page 16

IRIN Web Special on Humanitarian Mine Action, November 2004 - Page 17

IRIN Web Special on Humanitarian Mine Action, November 2004 - Page 18

IRIN Web Special on Humanitarian Mine Action, November 2004 - Page 19

IRIN Web Special on Humanitarian Mine Action, November 2004 - Page 20

IRIN Web Special on Humanitarian Mine Action, November 2004 - Page 21

Mine victims in Basra. Credit: IRIN

IRIN Web Special on Humanitarian Mine Action, November 2004 - Page 22

IRIN Web Special on Humanitarian Mine Action, November 2004 - Page 23

IRIN Web Special on Humanitarian Mine Action, November 2004 - Page 24

IRIN Web Special on Humanitarian Mine Action, November 2004 - Page 25

Response to landmine problem

Rehabilitation of mine victims

IRIN Web Special on Humanitarian Mine Action, November 2004 - Page 26

Pakistans landmine policy

IRIN Web Special on Humanitarian Mine Action, November 2004 - Page 27

IRIN Web Special on Humanitarian Mine Action, November 2004 - Page 28

IRIN Web Special on Humanitarian Mine Action, November 2004 - Page 29

3. Special reports and articles ANGOLA: Amputee soccer stars shine

IRIN Web Special on Humanitarian Mine Action, November 2004 - Page 30

Extra funding needed

IRIN Web Special on Humanitarian Mine Action, November 2004 - Page 31

IRIN Web Special on Humanitarian Mine Action, November 2004 - Page 32

IRIN Web Special on Humanitarian Mine Action, November 2004 - Page 33

IRIN Web Special on Humanitarian Mine Action, November 2004 - Page 34