Statement by the ICBL Mine Awareness sub-working group

(Friday 21 September 2001 Managua - Nicaragua)

Third Meeting of State Parties to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-personnel Mines and on their Destruction.
Managua, 18-21 September 2001.

Mister President,

The ICBL mine awareness sub/working group welcomes the proposal to integrate mine awareness in the SC on Mine Clearance and Technologies. This should enable us to look at mine awareness in the scope of the activity it is the most related to : that is of course mine clearance.

We also hope that this reorganisation of the intersessional work shall contribute to a better mobilisation and allocation of the limited resources available in this sector.

In fact, we have noticed in the last few months that some mine awareness programmes in the field may be obliged to close because of a lack of funding. Such funding difficulties have been experienced in some key countries and areas such as Angola, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Somaliland... This list is not comprehensive.

In the interest of improving the quality of mine awareness programmes in the field, two concrete steps have been taken in the last few weeks :

• Publication of a Mine Risk Education Implementation Guide by Handicap International. This guide is available from HI and we urge those implementing mine awareness programmes to obtain this guide.
• Development of international mine awareness standards, under the coordination of Unicef and with the involvement of ICBL mine awareness agencies.

While we welcome the development of mine awareness standards, we hope that an even broader and increased involvement of field operators and local communities shall be possible in the future.

The fact that the numbers of mine victims has decreased according to LM 2001 is in part due to mine awareness programmes. Financial support to mine awareness programmes is currently insufficient. By expanding support for mine awareness programmes, not only will more lives be saved, but long term costs will significantly be reduced as a result of prevention of new mine victims.

Thank you.