“A Shared Experience: Striving for Safety”, a documentary about clearing landmines in Vietnam, was screened on the sidelines of the seventh Meeting of States Parties of the Convention on Cluster Munitions in Geneva on September 5. “A Shared Experience: Striving for Safety”, a documentary about clearing landmines in Vietnam, was screened in Geneva, Switzerland, on September 5. Filmed in Europe and Vietnam, the documentary was produced by the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining (GICHD) in partnership with Vietnamese Defense TV and aired in Vietnam in April 2017 on the occasion of the International Day of Mine Awareness. The documentary aims to improve understanding of residual risk management from the perspective of Vietnam and compares the issues Vietnam faces to the situation in European countries, including how mines from World War I and World War II are managed. The screening was held by the GICHD in the presence of Permanent Representative of Vietnam to the UN Duong Chi Dung, representatives from the World Trade Organization and other international organizations in Geneva, and speakers from UK-based mine action and explosive ordnance disposal consultancy Fenix Insight. In his remarks at the event, Dung said Vietnam is among countries most heavily affected by mines and explosive remnants of war (ERW) with about 800,000 tons of unexploded bombs and mines left, contaminating 6.13 million hectares of land or 19% of the country’s area. They have killed more than 40,000 people and injured about 60,000 others since 1975, he noted. Vietnam has been working with the GICHD to minimize the effects of ERW, he said, adding that experts from the GICHD have assisted Vietnam in applying long-term risk management in coping with ERW since 2015. (VietnamNet Sept 7)
