Further funds pledged for demining

The Australian government is to provide, via the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), $3 million to support demining programmes under way in Mozambique.

This financial aid will be channelled over the next three years to the three humanitarian agencies working on mine clearance. The purpose is to ensure that all known minefields are cleared of mines by 2014 – this is the deadline for Mozambique to complete demining under the Ottawa Convention outlawing anti-personnel land mines.

There are still 16 million square metres of land suspected to contain mines, and which must be cleared before March 2014. The most heavily affected areas are in southern and central Mozambique.

Under its Plan of Action against Mines, the National Demining Institute (IND) intends to clear 25 districts of land mines this year, leaving 17 for 2013. Of Mozambique’s 128 districts, the demining programme has already cleared 86.

The IND estimates that $32 million is required to conclude the demining programme. So far less than half this sum – about $14 million– has been pledged.

The Ottawa Convention obliges the 156 signatory countries to conclude demining within 10 years. Since Mozambique acceded to the convention in 1999, it should have ended mine clearance by 2009. This deadline was impossible to meet, and so the Mozambican government requested, and was granted, a five year extension to 2014.