Landmines: CARE's Response
CARE implements relief and development programs in 39 of the 69 countries riddled with landmines. CARE's work takes place in some of the world's most heavily mined areas, including Angola, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Somalia, Bosnia and most recently, the province of Kosovo. CARE International -- the 10-member umbrella confederation of CAREs -- is one of the most involved nongovernmental organizations in the world in landmine awareness and eradication.
CARE currently has significant mine action programs in Kosovo, Cambodia, Somalia and Angola, and the organization is about to begin a landmine program in Albania. The organization's Landmine Safety Handbook -- a field guide for relief and development workers operating in or near mined areas -- has become an industry standard. The United Nations will reprint 25,000 copies of the handbook and has asked CARE to provide worldwide mine awareness education for its staff.
CARE's approach to the landmine problem in the developing world is a humanitarian one that integrates the needs of individual communities. CARE's strategy is to confront the landmine problem from the perspective of how it impedes peoples' ability to meet their basic needs. Rather than detect, inch by inch, every landmine buried in a particular country or area, CARE's solution is to work with communities to remove the threat of the landmines that lie between farmers and their fields, students and their schools and children and the clinics that serve them.
Bob Macpherson, CARE's landmine coordinator, explains: "We've found that it's much more effective and makes much more sense to integrate landmine programs into the reality of people's daily lives. So it's not just about clearing mines. It's understanding where mines are causing the most damage, where they are acting as obstacles to economic development or hampering people's ability to secure their livelihoods. Once we know where and how mines or UXO are impeding economic opportunity, then we can be more effective about how we target our programs.
"The trick is to get to the people. Find out what their needs are and then figure out how to meet those needs. Take a situation where there are mines placed around a water source, for example. Beyond the terror factor of the daily risk to life and limb that people face, those mines are affecting agricultural productivity, and they are affecting people's long-term health as well because they are probably resorting to drinking unclean water. Once we know where the main obstacles are, we can address them in the most efficient way, whether it's marking a safe path to the water source, or actually clearing the mines."
In Angola, CARE's landmine awareness and removal program has helped people learn more about landmines and how to avoid them.
"People in this area had to rely on word of mouth to find safe routes to water, firewood and food," says Christiane Tremblay, project manager for CARE. "Now CARE consolidates and provides information on where mines are located and how people can live with them without injury."
Landmine awareness instructors, who are a component of all CARE demining activities, visit villages to discuss how to mark a mine once it is found and what to do in the event someone triggers a mine. Each program targets different audiences.
"Children love to sing, so to get the message across to them, we sing a song about landmines," says Ester Sacapa, a CARE instructor in Angola. "For adults we have vivid posters and information on various landmines and how to care for someone who has triggered one."
In Kosovo, when CARE re-entered the province just days after NATO forces, landmines and unexploded ordnance were a tremendous problem, particularly in the southeastern zone of Ferizaj where CARE was working to provide immediate relief to the victims of the crisis. CARE was quickly and efficiently able to tackle the challenge of meeting people's basic needs and assessing and beginning work on the landmine problem.
Macpherson explains: "Building on our integrated approach to demining and development, we paired landmine teams with each of our regular program assessment teams as they entered Kosovo so that the situation would be approached in a comprehensive manner. As relief workers were assessing the extent of the damage to the agriculture sector and what sort of help people were going to need getting their crops planted or their tractors working, landmine teams were able to assess the extent of mining in people's fields and identify areas that were most critical to clear in order for agricultural production to resume."
Mine teams uprooted 450 mines and cleared 10,000 homes in the first four months after CARE's re-entry into Kosovo. Their identification of minefields and safe areas provided a greater sense of security for tens of thousands of returning families.
Despite these successes, the landmine problem remains a daunting one. "While we are definitely making progress in specific countries and communities and helping individual families, on a global scale the landmine problem continues to grow. This is an area that requires more support and commitment from the international community, in political as well as monetary terms," Macpherson says.
"We need to get the main producers and stockpilers of landmines to sign on to international legislation that would ban landmines. We also need more resources to clean up the mess that has been made."
The high cost of mine awareness and demining programs is a recurring dilemma for organizations involved in mine education and demining.
"CARE must raise approximately $1 million each month to keep our landmine programs going," explains Macpherson. "This isn't because people are getting paid a lot of money. It's because the requirements of demining are so exhaustive and so technical. It's just expensive to do. It costs about $3 to manufacture a landmine, but between $300 and $1,000 to remove one."
For Celestina Dominga, a young girl in Angola who lost her left leg to a mine, it is too late. "My life will never be the same," Celestina says as she brushes the dust off her pale prosthesis. "I can't do the same chores other girls my age can do, and I can't play the same games they play."
But for her father, and millions like him around the world, the work that remains to be done is clear: "I have six children to protect from a war that ended years ago. Now CARE can help me save their legs, arms and feet."
|
