US demining assistance

The United States is providing humanitarian demining assistance to 14 African countries, including Chad, Guinea-Bissau and Mauritania, the US State Department reported this month. The other 11 countries and territories are Angola, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, Northwest Somalia, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The State Department said the US had spent about US $101.5 million on humanitarian demining in Africa since 1993. It has provided mine awareness training and materials, such as sign postings, and trained a minimum of 1,700 deminers and medical technicians in at least seven countries. Deminers have cleared hundreds of square metres of land and thousands of kilometres of roadway in Africa, enabling hundreds of thousands of refugees to return to their homes, the State Department added. It said the United States was conducting or assessing implementation of mine-detection dog programmes in several African countries. For more information see : http://usinfo.state.gov/)