MOZAMBIQUE: More funds needed for demining

Mozambique's development has been "retarded by three generations of land mines", President Joaquim Chissano said at the opening of a five day conference in Maputo this week of countries that have signed the Ottawa landmine-ban treaty. Chissano said it would take Mozambique 160 years to clear the estimated two million mines strewn across the country. Since the start of a demining operation in 1993, 60,000 mines have been made safe at a cost of US $116 million - one of the highest figures for any demining programme in the world, according to a report by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL). In its report ICBL said one of the biggest obstacles to demining was funding. It noted: "Humanitarian mine action programmes are underfunded, and often funding choices do not support the long-term integrated approach needed in sustainable humanitarian mine action." ICBL identified a number of areas of humanitarian assistance for mine victims. These include physical rehabilitation, providing victims with prosthesis, and psychological rehabilitation to help victims overcome not only the trauma of having a limb amputated but also helping them to deal with the social stigma which they often face. Mine awareness is also cited as a crucial part of any anti-mine action programme. According to ICBL: "Mine awareness involves information programmes to reduce the threat of landmines to affected communities." It continues: "The local population must learn how to live their daily lives in mine infested areas until the threat is removed." At the signing of the Mine Ban Treaty in Ottawa in December 1997 an estimated US $500 million was pledged by donors to support mine action programmes. The ICBL quoted a recent Canadian government report which stated that 10 donors had started 98 new mine action programmes in 25 countries over the last 12 months. However it added that many of the programmes were military-to-military demining training exercises and it was "unclear how much of the money actually goes to lifting mines out of the ground." According to the ICBL report one suggestion to increase mine action was to ask countries to donate one percent of their defense budgets. It adds that between 1988 and 1998 the global annual average for defence spending was US $74 billion. One percent of this figure would give an estimated US $740 million to mine clearance programmes annually, helping to resolve the problem in years and not decades.