Donor funds needed for demining

Donor pledges of US $7 million made earlier this year for demining in Mozambique in the wake of the country’s severe floods are yet to materialise, but emergency work has been carried out to enable the resettlement of people who lost their homes.

Jakob Kaarsbo at UNDP in Maputo told IRIN that immediately after the floods it was impossible to judge accurately what was needed to tackle the problem of landmines left over from Mozambique’s civil war that were washed downstream by the flood waters. “If we could start with US $3 million we could do something. Even with US $2 million we could start doing a reconnaissance,” he said.
According to official figures, two million mines were planted in Mozambique over 13 years of civil war which ended in 1992. Although a major survey has been underway in the north of the country for more than a year, the flooding affected the south and centre of the country, dislodging mines and dropping them in areas that were previously considered safe.

“The figures are not that important.
What we do know is that large areas of land for socio-economic development are still mined. After the flooding one problem is the uncertainty (over where the mines now are). Just five mines can prevent 5,000 people using a large chunk of agricultural land,” Kaarsbo noted.

Mozambique’s reconstruction effort is linked to mine surveys. “To resurrect a power line you need to have a large chunk of land surveyed,” Kaarsbo said, which is also the case for the railway network, and other public projects including housing.

Up until May, basic mine awareness campaigns were conducted in the camps for displaced people, and reconnaissance carried out in the areas to which they were resettled. But the general surveying needed for reconstruction, which would be sub-contracted to private companies and humanitarian agencies by the government’s National Demining Institute, is dependent on the donor pledges. The US $7 million for mine activities is part of a US $453 million reconstruction package that donors agreed to finance at a conference in Rome in May.