Daunting’ task ahead for deminers

But the number has been dropping rapidly. The average number of yearly casualties (which includes injuries and deaths) from 1979 to 1999 was 2,720, which fell to 789 in the years between 2000 and 2006, and 272 from 2007 to 2012.

“I note that in the last three years, we have made very big improvements,” said the director general of the Cambodian Mine Action Centre, Heng Ratana, who attended the conference.

In the area of released land, or that which is deemed free of mines and remnants of war, Ratana said authorities have, in three years, finished almost half of what was done in the prior 17 years.

“We released more than 205 square kilometres,” he said. “In the last 17 years, we cleared less than 400 square kilometres.”

Deminers with the action centre are undergoing extensive salvage training this summer with the Golden West Humanitarian Foundation, with the aim of clearing unexploded ordnance left in the depths of the Mekong following Cambodia’s civil war.

General Sem Sovanny with the National Center for Control of Peace Keeping, Demining and Explosive Remnants of War, said that Cambodia has exported its expertise abroad to countries in Central Africa, South Sudan and Lebanon and Chad.

“As of 2006, Cambodia has sent demining teams in the name of UN, a total of 1,445 people,” he said.

In addition to clearance, authorities with the National Police are also cracking down on scrap dealers reselling metal from found bombs, and those who may resell the bombs themselves.

The police in recent years have asked nearly 1,600 scrap dealers and men using metal detectors to sign promissory contracts swearing off the practice, and filed 37 complaints to the court against 66 suspects.

While positive steps have been taken, landmine victim and advocate Tun Channereth, who conducts his campaigns from a wheelchair after an explosion took away most of his two legs, said the government should “hurry up” and clear more land, while also taking care of the maimed Cambodians living in destitute conditions, “without food, water or a house”.

“They must give some opportunity for victims for a safe area to live and have land for their future,” he said. “I’m really concerned about the lives of these people in rural areas.”

Prime Minister Hun Sen closed out the conference by praising the decline in casualties, while calling for co-operation between Cambodia and Thailand in clearing mines along the border between the two countries.

The government’s Mine Action Achievements survey, which started in 2009, could not gather information from restricted border areas containing mines.

He also rejected an earlier statement by Prak Sokhonn, the vice president of the Cambodian Mine Action and Victim Assistance Authority, that deminers sent overseas generate income for the Cambodian government.

“We don’t send deminers overseas to make profits. It’s not that. But the problem is that UN requires us to equip everything before sending them out, so the UN reimburses us, which is much more than what we had spent.”