[Ngo-lwg] Fwd: After 22 Years of Work, Mozambique Is Free of Land Mine Peril

Chuck Searcy chuckusvn at gmail.com
Sat Sep 19 11:16:34 ICT 2015


Probably everyone has seen this already.

Though the article does not contain much information, this is an impressive
achievement.

​Someone asked me for details, but I have nothing more. ​

​A
nyone?

CS

*​=========================================*
*CHUCK SEARCY*
*International Advisor, Project RENEW*
*Vice President, Veterans For Peace  Chapter 160*
*VN    +8 490 342 0769*
*Sk     chucksearcy*
*E       chuckusvn at gmail.com <chuckusvn at gmail.com>*
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New York Times
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/18/world/africa/after-22-years-of-work-mozambique-is-free-of-land-mine-peril.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0>


*After 22 Years of Work, Mozambique Is **Free of Land Mine Peril*

By RICK GLADSTONE
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/rick_gladstone/index.html>SEPT.
17, 2015

CreditJoao Silva/The New York Times
Once contaminated with tens of thousands of land mines from a legacy of
war, Mozambique
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/mozambique/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>
was officially declared cleansed of those weapons on Thursday after 22
years of work.

The achievement, celebrated at an event in the capital, Maputo, was
considered especially remarkable by disarmament advocates. Some had
regarded Mozambique as so riddled with land mines that clearing them would
perhaps take centuries.

A few decades ago, “many doubted that clearance could be completed in a
timely fashion — or that it would take hundreds of years,” said Megan
Burke, director of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines — Cluster
Munition Coalition <http://www.icbl.org/en-gb/home.aspx>, a leading
advocacy group.

Most of the clearance work was done by the Halo Trust, a Scotland-based
international organization that helps former conflict zones cleanse
themselves of land mines and other vestiges of war that can kill and maim
long after the combat has stopped. Teams are still at work, for example,
clearing World War I battlefields of unexploded ordnance.

Overall, Halo said in a statemen
<http://halotrust.org/where-we-work/mozambique>t, its workers cleared more
than 171,000 land mines from Mozambique in a decontamination project that
began in 1993, accounting for about 80 percent of the total destroyed.

Destruction of the last-known land mine took place Wednesday and was
witnessed by Cindy McCain, the chairwoman of Halo U.S.A., the group’s
American branch, and the wife of Senator John McCain of Arizona. She said
in a statement that the destruction symbolized the end of a dark era for
Mozambique, “once strewn with the deadly debris of war.”

A former Portuguese colony, Mozambique was consumed by conflict for
decades, first in a war of independence and then a civil war that lasted
until 1992 and left about a million people dead.

While the casualties from leftover land mines in Mozambique have not been
calculated, Human Rights Watch said in a 1994 report that more than 10,000
people had been killed or maimed by these weapons in just the first few
years of peace.

Under an international treaty banning land mines, known as the Ottawa
Convention, stockpiling, production and transfer of antipersonnel mines is
forbidden. Most countries have accepted
<http://the-monitor.org/en-gb/reports/2014/landmine-monitor-2014/status-of-the-convention.aspx>
the
treaty. At least 30 countries have not, including the big powers China,
Russia and the United States.

In June 2014, the Obama administration put the United States on a course to
eventually sign the treaty, announcing steps
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/28/us/us-to-cut-its-land-mine-stockpile.html>
to
reduce the American stockpile and find alternative ways to achieve the
tactical military advantages of land mines.

The United States has been a leading funder of land mine clearance work,
including in Mozambique, which now joins 27 other countries formerly
contaminated with them that are regarded as free of mines.
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