Deminers call on donors for more funds

The Tajik Mine Action Centre (TMAC) is calling for more funds from international donors to boost the clearing of about 25 million square metres of minefields in Tajikistan, TMAC manager Jonmahmad Rajabov said on Thursday. “Of the total amount of US $3 million requested, donors have confirmed a donation of about $1.5 million for the current year so far,” Rajabov said at a press conference at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) premises in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe. UNDP Tajikistan has donated $90,000 to TMAC to purchase 12 demining dogs from Germany and train them in the Afghan capital, Kabul. While the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has approved a $70,000 grant to construct a kennel for demining dogs in the capital. “We need about $12 million for the next five years for Tajikistan. That could manage the mines problem almost completely,” William Lawrence, UNDP’s chief technical adviser for mine action, said. Since 2003 when mine action work started in the country, Tajikistan received almost $5.3 million worth of assistance for mine clearance work. The authorities also requested $3 million for 2005, but received only $1.9 million. Most of the mines in the former Soviet republic were laid during the country's bloody five-year civil war that ended in 1997, but they can also be found along its borders with neighbouring Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. In 2003, Tajikistan acceded to the 1997 Ottawa Convention. According to the Convention, Tajikistan is expected to destroy all anti-personnel landmines and clear its territory of them by 1 April 2010. The government has already destroyed all mine stockpiles that it had since Soviet times. Some 1,800 anti-personnel landmines were cleared in Tajikistan on the borders with Afghanistan and Uzbekistan in 2005. Mines killed at least seven people and 12 were injured in the same year. Since 1992, 238 people were killed and another 239 injured by landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXO) in the country, of whom at least 20 percent were children. Most of those were killed on the 1,050-km Tajik-Uzbek border, TMAC said.