Learning to live with mines

A total of 35 people received training on mine awareness in two courses conducted this month in Guinea Bissau, the programme officer of the Swedish NGO Radda Barnen, Nikolas Jerkedal, told IRIN. The training sessions, organised by ANDES, a local NGO, and run by a consultant hired by Radda Barnen (Save the Children - Sweden), were held on 1-6 July in the northern town of Suzana and on 6-11 July in Bissau. The objective was to teach people how to live with mines, OCHA said in its Humanitarian Situation Report for Guinea-Bissau, covering 1-15 July 1999. According to Jerkedal, the target group comprised people with good communication skills, respected in their local community and willing to deal with mine awareness issues on voluntary basis. The participants ranged from teachers and nurses to people from NGOs and the Roman Catholic Church. They discussed issues such as the various levels of society that are affected in a situation such as Guinea Bissau's where many mines were laid during the 1998-1999 army mutiny that led to the overthrow of ex-president Joao Bernardo Vieira. They also received information on unexploded ordnance, what to do if a person ends up in a mine field, various ways of marking and methods and bad examples of teaching mine awareness, Jerkedal told IRIN. A representative of Guinea Bissau's Prime Minister's office announced the government's intention to form an inter-ministerial commission for national mine action policy, OCHA reported. On 15 July, Prime Minister Francisco Fadul opened the first working session for people working on mine action policy in Guinea Bissau, which was attended by representatives of NGOs, ministries, the UNDP and UNICEF. "For the future we are planning to support our regular partners in order to work with (mine awareness) but also take active part in the newly established governmental working group and support the initiative taken by the government," Jerkedal told IRIN. However, he said, "We think that this question in the longer term has to be dealt with mainly by the Guinean government, rather then a few international organizations."