|
|
What you can do to help?Landmines are a problem in about 70 countries, so there is likely to be a mine-affected country near you. What can you do to help? Many people ask us this question, and here are some suggestions which we have sent from time to time. "I am an engineer and I have lots of ideas for solving the mine problem, but I can't get financial support or funding to try them out" Maybe you have some good ideas, but there are lots of failed ideas in demining. Why? There are several reasons. First, minefields are usually quite different to what we expect them to be. You can study our photograph collection, but there is no substitute for visiting minefields yourself to understand what the real problems are. Most mine clearance organisations are happy to assist provided you meet your own expenses. While there, you need to study how the deminers see their problems, and what support facilities are like for machinery or whatever you might be thinking of. For example, we often take electricity supplies and telephones for granted as basic services available anywhere. Yet the mined areas of Cambodia do not have access to telephone or electric power other than low powered generators, often privately owned. Second, a good idea has to provide a real prospect of a significant improvement in safety, quality of mine clearance or clearance rate. Safety is not often what it seems. We think that demining must be extremely dangerous and that the deminers are scared all the time. True, they are scared, a little, and it is dangerous when they are not scared. But the statistics will tell you that demining is often less hazardous to deminers than many other occupations (e.g. construction workers). If deminers follow procedures, the risk of an accident is very small indeed. Third, most equipment provided for deminers is provided by donor governments, rather than being purchased by the demining organisations directly. This means that normal economic considerations seldom apply. In fact it can be quite difficult to follow the logic of many equipment purchases made by demining organisations without an understanding of the funding setup and the political interactions between the different stakeholders. So what can you do?First, arrange a visit to a mine-affected region and talk to local people to understand their problems. You may be surprised. We found that local people in Cambodia, in one of the worst mine-affected regions in the world, were more concerned about clean drinking water supplies, medical facilities for their children, and schools. These needs can often be overlooked by aid agencies and donor governments who only see the mine problems. If you actually want to help directly with demining, you can only do this if you are a national of an affected country: foreigners are banned from actual demining work by international treaties, except under commercial limited term contracts and in supervision roles. However, you can enlist with an international volunteers organisation like Australian Volunteers International (http://www.osb.org.au/). If you cannot do this, what else can you do?Have you thought about raising money for mine clearance or victim assistance? Mine clearance programs are chronically short of money: donor governments are doing their best, but we need to at least double the money going into mine clearance to have a reasonable chance of eliminating this problem in the next 20 years (currently about US$400,000,000 a year is being spent on mine clearance). Join the local branch of the international campaign to ban landmines, and become better informed about the real facts of mine clearance - i.e. study this web site and others like it. Find out what your government is doing about mine clearance, and ask them to support more mine clearance programs. Subscribe to the E-mail network run by MgM in Germany - it is sometimes crazy, sometimes informative, but you will learn just be reading the mail messages which will come every day. Join an organisation like the Red Cross or Red Crescent which provides assistance to mine victims and other people in nearly every mine-affected region. Best wishes, and thanks for your support. You can even support our work: we accept private donations which are tax deductable in Australia. Simply send money to The University of Western Australia, Nedlands 6907, Western Australia and specify that the funding is to help with research on humanitarian demining. |
|
| Demining Home Page | James Trevelyan's Home Page
| UWA Home page | |