Swiss foundation training landmine clearance teams

The Swiss Foundation for Mine Action has started training and deploying two landmine emergency teams in and around the town of Bunia, in the Ituri district of northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. The organisation said on Tuesday the undertaking was at the request of the UN Mine Action Service and that one Swiss supervisor had already arrived in Kinshasa, the Congolese capital. Two more are expected by the end of November. Supervisors from the foundation will begin the recruitment and training of 20 local mine clearing specialists in the next three weeks. "This will also provide job opportunities for ex-combatants and demobilised soldiers," the foundation said. Ituri has been the scene of inter-militia violence that peaked in May 2003. Hundreds of civilians have died and thousands others displaced by the fighting in which landmines were used. Money has been allocated for the mines project that is to run for an initial seven months. Personnel training will begin a three-week basic operators course, it said, and a doctor from the foundation will arrive to conduct advance trauma medical training for the team's paramedics. The foundation said that on completion of their training the teams would be deployed, in accordance with a work plan prepared by the foundation's programme manager in coordination with UNMAS and the National Mine Action Authority. [For more on the programme visit www.mineaction.ch] On Wednesday, the UN Security Council urged UN member states to support projects to clear landmines and unexploded ordnances from countries emerging from armed conflicts and to help rehabilitate mine victims. In a statement, Security Council President Ismael Martens of Angola said countries should donate further to the Voluntary Trust Fund for Assistance in Mine Action. He also called on governments whose countries were affected by the presence of landmines and unexploded ordnances "to include a mine action impact assessment in all development planning". The Security Council also said there was need to ensure social, economic, physical and psychosocial reintegration of mine victims. In addition, it said that refugees and internally displaced people needed to be repatriated in an orderly fashion; mined lands had to be restored to productive use; and people needed to be able to move without risk of injury or death.