Land Mine Campaigners see Big Funding Shortfall
Date: 23-Nov-05
Country: WORLD
Author: Irwin Arieff
Just $51 million of a needed $442 million has been pledged to date for the projects submitted by governments, UN agencies and private aid groups, said Dermot Carty, land mines coordinator for the UN Children's Fund UNICEF.
"The goal of achieving a world free from land mines and explosive remnants of war can be achieved in a matter of years, but resolving the problem once and for all will require a sustained effort," Carty told a news conference.
Of the total, 172 projects are proposed for Africa and 117 for Asia. Afghanistan, torn by on-and-off fighting for three decades, would be the single biggest beneficiary, seeking more than $76 million for the coming year's work, according to a compilation of projects by the UN Mine Action Service.
To date, 147 nations have ratified the 1997 Ottawa Treaty banning the production, sale and use of land mines.
Among the holdouts are China, India, Iran, Israel, North and South Korea, Russia, Syria, the United States and Vietnam.
An international conference of the parties to the treaty, held in Nairobi last year, adopted a plan to rid the planet of land mines by 2009.
As a result of the treaty, land mines today claim about 15,000 to 20,000 lives a year compared to 26,000 in 1997, according to UN estimates. For the most part, these result from mines laid previously but never cleared, rather than newly placed mines.
The International Campaign to Ban Landmines reported separately on Tuesday that there was virtually no trade in antipersonnel mines around the world in 2005.
The campaign said Egypt and Iraq had stopped making mines this year. But it criticized Myanmar, Nepal and Russia for continuing to lay antipersonnel mines in 2005.
