Libya Holds Second National Mine/ERW Risk Education Workshop
As 2011 came to an end, real progress on the national coordination of risk education (RE) for mine and other explosive remnants of war (ERW) in Libya seemed to begin. The first ever national workshop on the subject was held in Tripoli, with representatives from Government, the UN and international and national NGOs coming together to discuss how best to meet the RE needs across Libya.
Yesterday, those discussions continued in a second workshop, which was opened by Najia Abdullah Subkha from the Ministry of Education. “I hope we succeed in protecting the Libyan citizen,” she said. The one-day workshop was organized by the Joint Mine Action Coordination Team (JMACT), a partnering of the UN and international Mine Action NGOs. Since April, JMACT partners have provided RE to more than 84,000 Libyans. But that is just a fraction of the people that need to be reached given the extent of the contamination.