Cambodia’s Most Dangerous Job?

May 30, 2012
By Gemima Harvey
The Diplomat

Working in the fields isn’t typically considered a dangerous job. But with plantations still littered with unexploded ordnance, some Cambodians are looking for companies to step up.

Frustration grips Von Tha’s face as she fumbles with a hand that no longer works. Ron Run says that seeing his wife’s physical and mental struggle has, for him, been one of the hardest parts of the family’s ordeal. Two months since the explosion at a cassava plantation in Kratie, and the group of five are still feeling its effects. It’s a case that underscores the danger for workers at contaminated sites.

In Cambodia, companies and landowners can choose whether or not to clear areas used for commercial purposes such as agriculture, mining or ecotourism. With improved access to previously difficult to reach areas comes increased economic interest in utilising the land. Accidents on land used for enterprise illustrate the importance of ensuring known-risk areas are cleared of explosive remnants of war (ERW) before workers can enter the site and start tilling the soil.

Run explains that he, his wife Von Tha, brother-in-law Kith Ol and two nephews Ann Yong and Et En, arrived to work at the farm in Kratie’s Snoul District a few days before the March 17 accident. The family stood around a fire, cooking dinner after a long day in the fields, when flames suddenly engulfed the group. The explosion was caused when the heat detonated an explosive remnant. All five people needed medical treatment. Tha and her brother Ol were standing the closest and were critically injured. Run and his two nephews, Yong and En, were standing further back, but were still badly burnt and their skin was shredded by shrapnel.

US-Cambodians Begin Signing Landmine Petition

Thursday, 23 June 2011
Sok Khemara, VOA Khmer | Washington, DC

“He does wonderful work, and for those of us with both hands and legs, indeed, he hasn’t asked us for anything but our signatures.”

Cambodians living in the Seattle, Wash., area have begun putting their names on a petition asking the US to join an international landmine treaty.

Organizers of the petition, including a Cambodian landmine victim and Nobel Prize laureate, Tun Channareth, say they want to collect 1,000 signatures before sending the petition to US President Barack Obama.

According to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, 156 countries have signed an international mine ban and 108 have signed a convention against cluster munitions. Neither the US nor Cambodia are among them.

Henry Ung, a manager at the World Financial Group in Seattle, said he met with Tun Channareth and decided to support the cause and sign the petition. “I support him 100 percent in this field,” Ung said.

Colombia and Cambodia join efforts to fight landmines

Wednesday, 20 October 2010
Christina Filipovic
Colombia Reports

Colombia and Cambodia have announced a new partnership in the fight against land mines, according to ABC.

Fifteen members who compose the Presidential Program for Comprehensive Action against Anti-personnel Mines (PAICMA) are taking a course directed by the Center for Mine Action in Cambodia (CMAC) in Battamburg, Cambodia, one of the regions disproportionately affected by land mines.

Natalia Perez, a program development consultant in Colombia said, "When the CMAC decontaminate an area, they simultaneously educated about risk, assist victims, and collect information. In Colombia, these actions are split by several organizations. In Cambodia, we see the importance of comprehensive action, and how to do everything at once in order to be more efficient."

In Cambodia, CMAC performs plays, sings songs, and leads drawing activities to teach children what to do in the event that they encounter a mine.

Camilo Benitez, the international cooperation advisor said "Up until now, land mines have been a human rights issue in Colombia. Like in Cambodia, we are interested in now linking action and community development."

While there is much in common between the two countries, Colombia is still suffering from ongoing violence, whereas Cambodia is peaceful. In Colombia, alerting authorities may sometimes carry a risk for the informant.

Cambodia, one of the poorest countries in Southeast Asia, has a poor health system, and hopes to learn more about victim assistance from Colombia.

Colombia maintains the record for the most land mine victims in the world.

Fewer Casualties From Mines in Cambodia, but Reduced Funding Means Risk Remains

Children sit near a minefield outside their home in the northwestern Cambodian province of Battambang, one of the most heavily-mined in the country (Photo: VOA - R. Carmichael)

23 February 2010
Robert Carmichael, VOA
Phnom Penh

The number of Cambodian casualties from land mines and explosives left from decades of conflict has been steadily declining. But cuts in donor funding for demining could see this trend reversed.

Cambodia has an unenviable reputation as one of the most heavily-mined countries on earth, along with countries such as Angola and Afghanistan.

So the news that the number of people killed or injured by land mines and leftover explosives dropped 10 percent last year is welcome.

Chhiv Lim heads the office that compiles the statistics on Cambodian mine casualties. He says more than 63,000 people have been killed or injured by mines and explosives since the Khmer Rouge government was driven out of power in 1979.

"From 1979 up to the year 2000 the number of casualties was still high because during that time Cambodia had the civil war, but since year 2000 until the year 2005 the number of casualties [was] still 800 per year," he said. "But since the year 2006 until now the number of casualties has dropped down - this is good news for Cambodia."

Chhiv Lim says that last year 243 people were killed or injured by land mines and leftover explosives in Cambodia, down from 271 the year before.

Chhiv Lim says the decline is due to Cambodia's demining program, which uses clearance teams from the government as well as from private groups such as Halo Trust and Mines Advisory Group, or MAG.

Efforts to educate people about the dangers of mines and explosives have also helped.

Jamie Franklin, the country head of MAG, says better coordination and improved clearance methods devised over the past two decades contributed to lower victim numbers too.

"And I think ongoing clearance and the increasing clearance that has been achieved over the last 10 years along with the risk-reduction and mine-risk education and the high level of awareness of the dangers of mines and UXO [unexploded ordnance] and the risks that they pose have helped contribute toward the ongoing reduction in annual casualty rates," said Franklin.

Franklin says the peace and stability that Cambodia has enjoyed since the civil war ended has also helped.

One-third of the casualties are children, and almost all of those are boys. Chhiv Lim says studies show men and boys tend to be more willing to play with or examine explosives than women are. "But some boys they're clever, [they say] 'I cannot play with this one, I must go home.' But there are still some boys whose behavior has not changed," he said.

That makes education a key part of the country's effort to reduce mine casualties.

Removing mines remains the primary task, and that is slow, dangerous and expensive work. Franklin says it took MAG's 15 de-mining teams the whole of last year to clear just three square kilometers, at a cost $3 million.

The Cambodian government says more than 600 square kilometers of land remains contaminated with land mines. Cambodia has signed the international treaty to ban land mines, and was supposed to clear all land mines by the end of last year.

Given the scale of the problem, that was impossible, and the country was recently granted a 10-year extension to rid itself of mines. But there is a risk that even the 2019 deadline could be missed.

MAG's Franklin says funding for demining worldwide is decreasing as donors switch spending priorities to other areas. If there is less money for removing mines, at a time when Cambodia's growing population needs more land, that could mean more casualties.

"And so there is a risk that if the support to clearance and the clearance reduces that we could see either a slowdown in the reduction of annual casualty rates or a reversal of the trend that we have been seeing for the last 15 to 17 years," he said.

Demining experts say if donors cut funding, Cambodia can not meet the 2019 deadline to make its people safe from land mines.

US Booklet To Help Track Mine Victims

By Taing Sarada, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
09 October 2008

Click here to listen to the Khmer audio program

A new US State Department landmines guidebook could help Cambodian deminers and other authorities keep better data on casualties from mines and unexploded ordnance.

The 75-page “Landmine Casualty Data: Best Practices Guidebook” is designed to help agencies create a mine victim database, or improve existing databases, as well as providing victim assistance.

Khim Sophoan, director general for Cambodian Mine Action Clearance, said he had not seen the booklet, but added it could “fill our experience gap.”

Cambodia continues to be plagued with landmines, despite years of efforts to eradicate them, along with unexploded ordnance. But Khim Sophoan said the number of victims had steadily decreased since 1993.

There were, for example, 1,211 recorded victims in 1999 and 350 in 2007. So far this year, only 186 people have been injured by landmines or unexploded ordnance.

Earlier this week, two Thai soldiers were injured by landmines while patrolling the contentious border near Preah Vihear temple.

Battambang province, the site of some of the Khmer Rouge’s last stands against advancing government forces, remains the worst for landmines.

Khim Sophoan said the government planned to demine another 467 square kilometers by 2015 and have the country cleared of mines by 2020.

Critics say this will be difficult, with many mines still in the deep forests, where they can continue to injure or kill.

“I think if they want to have more effective landmine clearance, they should add more CMAC staff and add more mine detectors,” said Kouy Ny, who was injured by a mine and now works for an aid organization in Battambang.

Many land mines are gone, but much work remains

Former Khmer Rouge soldier Sim Ry, 53, shown with his wife in front of their one-room thatched home, lost a hand to a land mine in 2005 while clearing trees to plant corn outside his village near the Thai border.

Many deadly land mines destroyed in Cambodia, but much work remains

July 28, 2008
By Chris Kenning • ckenning@courier-journal.com
Courier-Journal (Louisville, Kentucky, USA)

PAILIN, Cambodia -- Sitting on weathered steps of his thatched-roof house, Sim Ry gazes at a bony cow grazing in a scrubby field and rubs the brown stump where his right hand used to be.

The former Khmer Rouge guerrilla lost his hand to a land mine in 2005 while clearing trees to plant corn outside his village near the Thai border -- an area so thick with mines that it has been called one of the most dangerous places on Earth.

"I worry each time my children leave the house that they will not come back," Ry, 53, said through an interpreter.

Nearly 63,000 Cambodians, mostly villagers, have been killed or maimed by mines since 1970, a lasting reminder of nearly three decades of violence fueled by the Khmer Rouge regime of Pol Pot that left Cambodia among the world's most heavily mined countries.

The scars from those mines have followed Cambodian immigrants who arrive in the United States, including Kentucky.

Sovanna Chhan, a 51-year-old metal worker working in Louisville, said he still feels the pain from land-mine wounds he suffered nearly three decades ago. "I was lucky to survive."

And while progress has been made to clear Cambodia and other nations of land mines by such international groups as the United Kingdom-based Mines Advisory Group and HALO International, experts say much more needs to be done.

Since the early 1990s those groups have helped destroy 433,000 mines and millions of pieces of unexploded ordnance.

Today there are an estimated 177 square miles of heavily mined land, down from 1,724 square miles in 2002, according to a report by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.

The casualty rate has also dropped dramatically since the 1990s, when 2,700 Cambodians were killed or injured each year by mines and unexploded ordnance, falling to 450 in 2006.

Better mine-danger education, an economic upswing that cut down on risky farming and a growing number of aging, inoperable mines may have helped cut those casualties, experts say.

The problem of leftover mines from war isn't confined to Cambodia.

Although more than 150 countries have signed a treaty banning anti-personnel mines, tens of millions of land mines remain buried in more than 70 nations from Mozambique to Afghanistan, killing thousands each year, taking limbs and stealing livelihoods.

Scars follow immigrants

It's a Sunday afternoon in Simpsonville, Ky., and inside a neat house in a subdivision, Chhan's six children play video games as he and his wife cook a meal of rice and fish he caught in Taylorsville Lake.

The gregarious metal-press operator said he still feels pain from the land mine that ripped into his thighs and legs in 1979.

"It hurts when I stand up all day at work," Chhan said, pulling up his pants to show the scars on his legs.

Chhan was a young man in Battambang when the Khmer Rouge began emptying cities to fill rural communes. He said his family was moved to the country to live in crude and starved conditions. Two of his sisters died from malnutrition and sickness. By the time Vietnam invaded in 1979, Chhan had fled to an unofficial refugee camp along the Thai border.

There he earned money for rice and cooking oil by removing land mines along trails. He was attempting to remove a tripwire mine with only a piece of straightened wire fencing as a tool when a second mine connected to the wire blew up a few feet away.

"I thought I would die," he recalled. "I shook for months."

Eventually he healed, and when the camp was closed in 1991, he immigrated to the United States, spending time in California before coming to Louisville in 1994 to join relatives.

He has two brothers who are still in Cambodia -- one runs a motorcycle taxi, and the other sells home-cooked food along the road.

"I worry about them because there are still a lot of mines," he said.

Tom Hess, a former Louisville Catholic Charities refugee-services official who worked closely with Cambodian immigrants, said most Cambodians in the Louisville area know a friend or relative harmed by a land mine.

Thearith Eng, who runs a nail salon in Crestwood, said that four years ago his extended family sent money to Sap Sung, a relative in Cambodia, to buy a tiller so he could plow fields. It wasn't long before Sung hit a land mine and was killed.

"It blew him into pieces," Eng said.

Pol Pot called mines 'perfect soldiers'

In the noon-day heat of Siem Reap, a Cambodian town near the ruins of Angkor Wat, 42-year-old Teng Dara uses hand pedals on a makeshift bicycle to creep past tourists.

His camouflage jacket hints at his past as a Khmer Rouge soldier, when he lost both legs to a land mine in 1990. Today he gets $30 a month in aid, and makes a living selling photocopied travel books to backpackers on their way to Angkor Wat.

"It is enough to eat one meal a day," he said of his income.

He's among the 43,000 Cambodians who survived a land mine only to face a new struggle in the impoverished nation. Prosthetic limbs are available to some, but social services are scarce.

"There is not much in terms of disability awareness and certainly not much in terms of equal opportunity or discrimination" protection, said Martha Hathaway, director of Vermont-based Clear Path International, which provides prosthetics and adapted houses for the disabled in Cambodia.

Many of Cambodia's mines were planted during the 1979-1989 Vietnamese occupation, although some date to the '60s. The Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese laid them haphazardly as they battled over the countryside.

Pol Pot, the leader of the Communist Khmer Rouge, once described land mines as "perfect soldiers." In the 1990s, Cambodian government troops and Khmer Rouge guerrillas were battling in a civil war, both using land mines to defend villages and roads or make land unusable by their enemies.

By 1999, much of the fighting subsided as Khmer Rouge were captured, gave up or sought amnesty. But the mines remained.

Enter agencies such as the Mines Advisory Group, which are engaged in a slow, dangerous battle to remove those mines.

The Mines Advisory Group, along with humanitarian partners, also helps beyond simply removing the mines -- partly by working with other aid groups in such places as Ta Krouk, a few hours' drive from Battambang.

Not long ago, the village was ringed by minefields. But after the Mines Advisory Group cleared the land in the 1990s, it worked with the global charity World Vision to pay for a school to be built.

A water pump also was built, so that villagers no longer had to go great distances for water. Poverty is still endemic, but life has returned to a modicum of normalcy.

"This has a big impact for the people," said Say Sameth, a Mines Advisory Group officer, standing among the children at the school.

Dangerous work to improve safety

The whistle blasts come first: Three long, three short.

Then a moment of quiet -- only the sound of buzzing insects over the orange earth of remote western Cambodia -- before the explosion bangs a mini-mushroom cloud into the sky.

One more land mine has been destroyed.

The work of removing land mines is difficult, slow and expensive, especially in remote areas such as Ban Hoy, outside the longtime Khmer Rouge stronghold of Pailin.

In a stand of brush and trees that runs between tilled fields are hundreds of mines -- most just a few centimeters below the dirt. Made of ceramic, metal or plastic, they may range from antipersonnel mines that pop up and explode, trip-wire mines, directional-spray mines set alongside trails and larger antitank mines. Unexploded mortars and grenades also are there.

On this day, a demining team from the Mines Advisory Group -- trained locals dress in Kevlar jackets and blast helmets -- work slowly and deliberately with metal detectors, picks and hand tools. Colored wooden stakes mark safe and dangerous areas and mines that will later be detonated with dynamite.

The Mines Advisory Group, which works in 35 countries, has 476 people working in seven Cambodian provinces. Along with groups such as HALO and the government army's efforts, about 4,000 people are working to remove mines.

After the day's work ends at Ban Hoy, mine clearer Pham Bunsont, 43, pulls off his boot to reveal a prosthesis where his leg was blown off by a mine while on patrol with government troops near Siem Reap in 1988.

He said he took the job because he couldn't find other work and to help avert injuries.

"It's a dangerous job," Bunsont said. "But I don't want mines to hurt others like they hurt me."

The Mine Advisory Group is in the area because Ouch Ouy, 40, a villager who was a Khmer Rouge medic, requested that it be cleared. Residents recounted how one villager died when his tractor ran over an antitank mine, while another was killed using a shovel to try to remove mines that were killing his pigs and cows.

Fourteen villagers have been killed by land mines, and 18 have been injured, often left with stumps after trying to till land to plant corn or other crops.

"We can't farm the land that we own," Ouy said.

Mine-removal hopes remain; aid needed

Earlier this year, an acting assistant secretary of state noted in a report that worldwide estimated casualties from land mines and explosive remains of war have dropped from the 26,000 four years ago to perhaps under 10,000.

Although estimates are difficult to verify, he said, it shows that mine-removal efforts "have made the land-mine problem surmountable in our lifetime." The United States banned the export of anti-personnel mines in 1992.

But much work remains in Cambodia.

Nearly half of Cambodia's 13,908 villages remain plagued by land mines, and reaching the national goal of removing them by 2015 isn't likely, said Chea Sarim, a regional Mines Advisory Group manager.

And since international donor countries and groups funded about $30 million worth of mine clearing in 2007, compared with the Cambodian investment of $1.5 million, there is a critical need for more funding to speed removal, he said.

Some experts say that public awareness of the problem spiked in the 1990s with the involvement of Princess Diana and the signing of the 1997 land-mine ban but has waned somewhat since.

"You get donor fatigues and loss of attention," said Suzanne Fiederleine, a researcher at the Mine Action Information Center at James Madison University in Virginia. She noted that the United States has given $1.2 billion to land-mine removal worldwide since 1993.

In 2006, Cambodian deputy prime minister Sok An said that removing mines was crucial to lifting affected residents out of poverty, including those such as Sim Ry, who said he hopes that the Mine Advisory Group's efforts will help his family's financial standing.

"I am happy they are clearing the land, because I want to plant more corn," he said.

Reporter Chris Kenning can be reached at (502) 582-4697.

Former Untac Commander Returns on (Land) Mine Business

John Sanderson file photo during the UNTAC period
Takeo, Cambodia - Cambodia's U.N. Military Chief Lt. Gen. John Sanderson, left, and Director general of the Japanese Defense Agency Sohei Miyashita, shovel sand on national route 3 during a ceremony marking the beginning of the Japanese U.N. engineering battalion's repair of the road last fall. (Photo: AP)

Heng Reaksmey, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
10 August 2007

Former Untac commander Lt. Gen. John Sanderson arrived in Cambodia Thursday to work as a volunteer on land mine issues for an Australian aid agency.

Sanderson was the commander of the military component of the UN transition force in the early 1990s.

Sanderson will observe and update the operations of Austcare's Integrated Mine Action and Community Development Program and "witness personally Cambodia's continued path to development made possible as a result of the peace process in which he played such an important part," according to a statement.

Australia contributes to Cambodia for landmine action

July 31, 2007

The Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) has contributed a further 1 million Australian dollars (AUD) to Cambodia for the mine action-related Clearing for Results (CFR) project, a press release said Tuesday.

This is part of Australia's 12 million AUD commitment to the project, made on International Mine Action Day, to be disbursed from 2007 to 2010, it added.

Since 1996, Australia has committed approximately 56 million AUD to mine action-related activities in Cambodia, including 3 million AUD to Clearing for Results in 2007, according to the press release.

CFR is funded by a group of donors, currently including Australia, Canada, Adopt-a-Minefield, Spain and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and provides resources for demining and for capacity building of the Cambodian Mine Action and Victim Assistance Authority (CMAA), it said.

Cambodia remains one of the three countries in the world most affected by landmines and unexploded ordinance, it added.

Source: Xinhua

Charlton steps out of comfort zone to help find safer ground

July 28, 2007

Landmines are part of the Khmer Rouge’s awful legacy in Cambodia. Now football is playing a leading role in the quest to save lives

Owen Slot, Chief Sports Reporter, in Cambodia
Times Online (UK)

Tuesday

Ninety minutes after checking into his hotel in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, Sir Bobby Charlton’s welcome was complete when he was whisked down the road to S-21, a former security prison, to see where 16,000 Cambodians were tortured by the Khmer Rouge. The exact number of S-21 victims in the late Seventies is unknown, but what is certain, as he discovered, is that almost every one of them went straight from there to the Killing Fields to be executed.

To save time and space, babies arriving at S-21 with their mothers would be held by their feet and swung and smashed against the trunk of a tree in the prison’s forecourt. Alternatively, they would be slung in the air like a clay pigeon and shot. Usually with the mother watching.

This was the start of two harrowing days in Cambodia. The chief reason for Charlton’s visit was awaiting him on the exit from the prison gates. As you come out of S-21, two groups greet you. The quickest are the young men selling with unrestrained enthusiasm a lift in their motorbike taxi, and they are followed by three beggars, each of whom have lost part of a leg, only one of whom is lucky enough to have a prosthetic replacement.

Every year in Cambodia, these three are joined by another 850, all victims of landmine blasts. Each tragedy here seems interconnected: the Khmer Rouge regime begat a long and bloody civil war, and that begat a murderous maze of landmines planted in the outer, rural reaches of the country.

Another frightening statistic: nearly 40 per cent of landmine victims here are young boys. The figure is so disproportionate because some are under the misconception if they see a landmine that it might be fun – a big firework. They spend long hours tending their family’s cattle and have been known to play with landmines or poke them with a stick. In short, Charlton has come here to tell them not to.

“I really would do absolutely anything I can,” Charlton said, “to help any young child who is unfortunate enough to lose a limb to a landmine.” This was just part of his address to a reception at the British Embassy. Just recently, to celebrate the Queen’s birthday, they had thrown a party complete with ice sculptures of a London bus and Tower Bridge: just one of many incongruous images here.

Another is Charlton working here alongside Tony Hawk – the venerable World Cup-winner alongside the best skateboarder of the past decade. Another is that we have a Briton and an American pitting their disparate reaches of celebrity to give air to a landmine problem to which their own nations so heavily contributed. Cambodia in the 1970s was a mess precipitated by the United States and Vietnam. And it is written, though never acknowledged by a British government, that SAS servicemen in the mid-Eighties trained Khmer Rouge rebels in their Thai border camps in landmine-laying techniques.

It just so happens that funding for antilandmine agencies, much of which comes through the UK and the US, is petering out. In a decade since the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, landmines have ceased to be a sexy subject. The footballer and skateboarder may not quite add up to a princess, but their efforts must be applauded.

Wednesday

Vanntha Thoeun is a 14-year-old, one of the oldest boys at Roka Poeune school in the northwest territory, not far from the Thai border, a long-term Khmer Rouge stronghold. Thoeun has just had a football coaching session from Charlton, he has kicked balls with Hawk and been presented with a T-shirt with Wayne Rooney on it holding up a sign preaching landmine awareness. He has had a great time.

He does not have a clue who Charlton is. He does not know Hawk either and had never seen a skateboard. Neither did he know whose picture was on his T-shirt. He had never even seen football on television.

Five times, though, when out tending his family’s cow, he has seen landmines. He could not possibly guess at the number of times he has trodden near mines that he has not seen. Only three months ago, a cow’s hoof turned over and unearthed a mine 50 metres from the school.

By the time Charlton and Hawk have packed up and gone, they hope that the younger kids at Roka Poeune will be as savvy as Thoeun. The reason why belongs to Scott Lee, a 41-year-old hyperactive Paul Gascoigne look-alike who is a qualified football coach.

In the 1990s, Lee worked as a volunteer, driving trucks and taking food parcels in and out of Croatia and Bosnia. One day in 1995, he was near by when three boys playing football were killed by a landmine blast. He was staggered to discover that there was no landmine awareness education programme, so he put football and landmine education together and came up with Spirit of Soccer.

After Bosnia and Kosovo, Cambodia is Spirit of Soccer’s third programme. In Bosnia, Lee trained 20 coaches, here so far he has a mobile unit of five, all Cambodians, two of them women, a nonstop road trip taking their expertise to 120 schools in the area and, in the past year, getting their message to 25,000 children.

What they bring is the first sports coaching session the children have had. The football is followed by a lesson in mine awareness. The repeated message is simple: “Don’t play with landmines, play football.”

“I want to give them the dream,” Lee said, “that if they listen, they could become the next David Beckham.”

Whether they have heard of Beckham is questionable in itself. And the dream? This part of Cambodia is so hand-to-mouth agrarian that football barely features. There are no pitches; nearby Battambang, the country’s third-largest town (population 140,000), has just one. Organised football does not exist and the only competitive football below the national semi-pro league is a tournament organised between orphanages and homeless groups. When Scott O’Donell, an Australian, took over as national coach, his first match was away to Thailand. Finances forced them to go by coach and the 16-hour drive to Bangkok was delayed at the border when O’Donell had to write out visa forms for half of his team – they could not write themselves.

What is clear, though, is that there would be more football if there were less mines. Fifteen minutes from Roka Poeune, where a mine-clearing agency is at work, this becomes obvious. Each clearer has a metal detector and, in a day, will cover just 60 square metres. In football terms, that is a month to reclaim a decent-sized pitch. “As far as you can see,” Hawk said, “the landscape is beautiful jungle. But it’s inaccessible and that’s hard to understand.”

For Charlton, it was the blast that rammed it home. Two mines side by side were uncovered, one a Type 72 Alpha containing 51 grams of TNT, the other a 40-metre rifle grenade with 40 grams of high explosive. The power in the controlled explosion to destroy them left no doubt as to how each could take, at a minimum, a foot off a grown man.

Yet, after school, most of the children at Roka Poeune go to work. And the demand for land to farm is such that some people cannot afford to wait for the landmine-clearing teams to come though and clear their area. Their hunger forces them to start farming areas clearly marked as landmine risks. The job of Lee and his five coaches is simply to lower the odds.

Behind them, they leave reminders of the message: ten footballs per school and for each child, the T-shirt, a school book and a poster of more Manchester United players – whom they haven’t heard of – bearing the awareness message.

For Charlton and Hawk, their power is in spreading the word to those who have heard of them. Outside the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh, Hawk pulled tricks on his skateboard in the hope that the pictures might help him to tell people that stats show falling casualty rates among young boys since Spirit of Soccer arrived.

Charlton, meanwhile, is fixated with the painstaking pace in which Cambodia is reclaiming its mined territories and the fact that there is technology available that will help them to work 15 times more quickly but that the landmine-clearers cannot afford.

At the end of two days, the expression on Charlton’s face conveys his point: “You just can’t make sense of this.” Why make funding worse when technology gets better? Why make this effort for a nation whose own Prime Minister, Hun Sen, was formerly with Khmer Rouge and has spoken, with some pride, of the days when he personally helped to lay landmines?

But for the footballer and the skateboarder, this project is beyond politics. For them it is about celebrity, that intangible of which we are normally so negative, and flogging it for every positive they can find.

*Sir Bobby Charlton and Tony Hawk were in Cambodia as representatives of Laureus. Laureus’s “Sport for good” foundation is one of the main funders of Spirit of Soccer.

Grim statistics of life in Cambodia

• 3 Cambodia’s world ranking in the list of countries with the most landmines. Only Afghanistan and Colombia have more
• 21,552 Landmines and unexploded devices removed last year
• 3,000 Deminers working in Cambodia
• 35 Types of explosive devices they are looking for
• 850 Landmine casualties annually in Cambodia
• 8 Percentage of amputees and landmine victims on the staff of MAG, one of Cambodia’s three landmine-clearing agencies
• 28 Years since the Khmer Rouge was pushed from power
• 5 Khmer Rouge leaders whose names were submitted last week to judges for prosecution. Before this, not one Khmer Rouge leader had been brought to trial.

Cambodia blames landmines on its inability to resolve border disputes with Thailand

Mines Remain Obstacle to Border Solution, Official Says

Cheab Mony, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
26 July 2007

Border officials consider the legacy of landmines the main obstacle to the settling of border disputes with Thailand.

Cambodia should be able to solve these problems, a border official said Thursday, in a way similar to that in 2006, when Cambodia and Vietnam began demarking their borders, marking their shared border with 370 poles so far.

"The landmine issue is serious with Thailand," said Var Kimhong, chairman of the Cambodia-Vietnam Joint Border Commission, who attended a hearing at the National Assembly Thursday. "In 1999 we started talks with Thailand to mark our border. The government does not prolong the issue, to have peace, but the landmine issue has not been changed. We have to be careful. We have difficulty with Thailand with the landmine issue."

Cambodia's border with its neighbors is a rankling issue for many politicians and citizens, who fear encroachment from both Vietnam and Thailand. Meanwhile, Cambodia remains one of the most heavily mined countries in the world, despite years of efforts by the government and other agencies.

Opposition lawmaker Son Chhay, who is head of the National Assembly's committee for foreign affairs, said following Var Kimhong's statements to the press that Cambodia will push demining agencies to rid the western borders of landmines.

Khem Sophoan, director of the Cambodia Mine Action Center, said he could not predict when all the mines might be cleared from the 800-km Thai border.

Pitt wants Cambodian property de-mined for family's safety sake

Monday 4th June, 2007
ANI

London, June 4 : Brad Pitt's main concern when he and lady love Angelina Jolie stay in Cambodia with their kids is not snakes or the wildlife, but all the landmines buried across the country.

The couple have a home in the country from where Jolie adopted her oldest son Maddox, now 5, and often like to visit along with their kids.

However, Angelina revealed that Brad gets the jitters just thinking about all the landmines that have been buried in the countryside.

He has now asked authorities if the couple's property can be swept for mines once again.

"He's asking if the property can be de-mined again," The Sun quoted Jolie, as saying.

The Jolie-Pitts, after a pit-stop in France for the Cannes film festival, were back in Prague where the actress is shooting her new movie 'Wanted' in which she plays an assassin.

They recently also celebrated the first birthday of their youngest, and only biological child so far Shiloh.

Brunei students donated $2,000 to CMAC for demining

JIS Donates $2,000 To Cambodian Mine Action Centre

By Amin Hosni
Borneo Bulletin (Brunei)

Bandar Seri Begawan - Students of Jerudong International School (JIS) yesterday donated $2,000 to the Cambodian Mine Action Centre in a ceremony at the school's hall.

On, hand to receive the donation was the Cambodian Ambassador to Brunei, His Excellency Mr Nan Sy.

In his speech, Mr Andrew Taylor, JIS Acting Principal, discussed the role of charity in an international education. He spoke on the importance of an ethical life and the need to think about our place in the world.

"There are more important things than the pursuit of material self-interest - for example, helping the poor or conserving the primary forests of Borneo, or removing land mines from an Asean country such as Cambodia", he said.

The Head Boy and Head Girl of Jerudong International School, Mr Hannan Bahrin and April Oo, spoke about the role of the Student Council and the significance of world peace to young people.

Following the participation of JIS students in World Peace Day, the Student Council chose the Cambodian Mine Action Centre because of its tireless work to find and remove thousands of dangerous landmines still remaining in the countryside of Cambodia after decades of conflict.

The decline in casualties caused by landmines over the last nine years showed the success of the programme by the Cambodian Mine Action Centre.

In his address, the Cambodian Ambassador to Brunei, Mr Nan Sy, conveyed his sincere and deep appreciation to all the students of Jerudong International School in Brunei for their support of the Cambodian government. He even invited a delegation of students to accompany him to visit Cambodia to learn first hand about the work of Cambodian Mine Action Centre.

Norwegian People's Aid Helps Clear Landmines in Cambodia

2007-05-16
By Kittisak Siripornpitak
ScandAsia.Norway

With around 840 landmine victims annually, Cambodia has the third highest number of casualties worldwide and projects have been carried out by the Cambodian Mine Action Center (CMAC) which are supported by the Norwegian People's Aid (NPA) to reduce this problem.

NPA has been supporting CMAC's development projects since 1993 to help with the development and implementation of technical survey project and is currently providing two technical advisors to the CMAC Mine Detection Dog Program.

With aims to clear mines and ensuring fair distribution of land, the NPA gives funding and is monitoring the CMAC Demining Unit 1 in the Beantey Meanchey province.

Landmine Monitor Report for Cambodia: www.icbl.org/lm/country/cambodia

Hun Sen's call for the observation of the Ottawa landmine Convention falls on China's deaf ears

Why Land Mines Won't Go Away

Strategy Page

April 9, 2007: The 1999 Ottawa Convention was supposed to have reduced land mine casualties among civilians. It hasn't worked, because the largest manufacturers of land mines, Russia and China, refused to sign. Chinese land mines are still available on the international arms black market. China is believed to have a stockpile of over a hundred million land mines (mostly anti-personnel). The old ones are often sold before they become worthless. But even these mines, which go for $5-10 each, are too expensive for many of the criminal organizations that buy them. In Colombia, leftist rebels are losing their four decade war to establish a socialist dictatorship. So they have been using more land mines against soldiers and police, as well as civilian populations they want to control. This was how land mines were widely used in Afghanistan and Cambodia. In Colombia, the rebels find it cheaper to build their own landmines. Labor is cheap, as are the components. Thus land mines, competitive with the factory built ones from China, can be built for less than three dollars each. You can find all the technical data you need on the Internet.

Anti-vehicle mines are increasingly popular, and are particularly popular in poor countries where there are still a lot of dirt roads, traveled by busses and trucks carrying dozens of passengers each. While these mines are usually intended for military vehicles, mines can't tell the difference. As a result, in this year or next, Colombia will have the largest number of annual mine casualties in the world.

Australia gives $12m to clear landmines

April 4, 2007
AAP

Australia is to provide $12 million to help clear landmines and unexploded ordnance in Cambodia.

Parliamentary secretary for foreign affairs Greg Hunt, Australia's special representative on mine action, said this announcement was to mark International Mine Action Day.

He said the money would help to clear explosives from millions of square kilometres of land across affected areas in Cambodia.

"Cambodia is one of the world's most heavily mined countries with up to six million landmines estimated to be scattered throughout the country," he said in a statement.

"According to the United Nations, close to six million of Cambodia's rural poor are affected by mines. A third of all victims are children.

"We will allocate $12 million through the Australian Agency for International Development, (AusAID) to the United Nations Development Programme's Clearing for Results program."

Mr Hunt said Australian aid, plus that from other countries, had helped to reduce mine and unexploded ordnance casualty rates from 3,000 to 450 a year.

He said Clearing for Results had proved its effectiveness, exceeding its land clearance target for 2006.

In 2006, 8.7 million square metres of land were cleared of mines, well in excess of the annual clearance target of 5.9 million square metres.

Mr Hunt said the program had also helped to combat the devastating effects of unexploded ordnance which now caused more casualties than landmines in Cambodia.

"Our additional funding to be disbursed over four years will help to continue the good work of the program and allow de-mining teams to continue clearance work," he said.

"Since 1996, Australia has committed around $50 million to mine action-related activities in Cambodia, including $2 million to Clearing for Results last year.

"Australia has pledged $75 million over five years to 2010 for global mine action activities."

Hun Sen Calls on Four Neighbors to Ban Mines

Children play near a newly built Buddhist shrine along the Thai border in 2005.

Sakada Chun
VOA Khmer
Phnom Penh
12/03/2007

Prime Minister Hun Sen appealed Monday for four fellow Southeast Asian countries to sign the international Mine Ban Treaty.

At the opening of a regional conference on landmines, Hun Sen called on Burma, Laos, Singapore and Vietnam to add their names to the list of those that completely ban the use of anti-personnel mines.

Cambodia, which signed the treaty in 1997, has between 4 million and 6 million landmines left over from 30 years of conflict, according to the demining agency CMAC. As many as 60,000 people in the country are disabled from contact with unexploded mines or ordnance.

At the three-day conference in Phnom Penh, Hun Sen asked the countries, all of whom belong to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), to set an example for other Asian countries and the world.

“Cambodian Red Cross reports show that landmines and unexploded ordinance caused 60,000 casualties and counting,” the prime minister said. “While 70 percent of the victims are without limbs, 30 percent of these incidents resulted in death.”

An estimated 539,129 tons of ordnance were dropped on central and eastern Cambodia between 1968 and 1973. After three decades of war, Cambodia is still one of the most heavily mined nations in the world.

Canadian Ambassador Monica Pottie welcomed the Cambodian leader’s appeal but said agreement “depends very much on these countries themselves.”

The Ottawa Treaty has been signed by 155 of the world’s 195 countries since 1997. The US is not a signatory.

Landmines hinder Cambodia's development, PM tells Ottawa conference

Hong Kong action film star Jackie Chan (R) looks on as a Cambodian girl makes a presentation with a landmine sign during the movie star's 2005 visit to a landmine zone in the city of Pailin. Landmines remain one of the biggest obstacles to Cambodia's development, Prime Minister Hun Sen said Monday at the start of a conference marking the 10th anniversary of the international Ottawa Treaty mine ban treaty.(AFP/File/Khem Sovannara)

PHNOM PENH (AFP) - Landmines remain one of the biggest obstacles to Cambodia's development, Prime Minister Hun Sen said Monday at the start of a conference marking the 10th anniversary of the international mine ban treaty.

Hundreds continue to be killed or maimed each year in Cambodia, where millions of mines or pieces of unexploded ordnance remain scattered across former battlefields.

"Landmines are still one of the biggest issues for us and they are threatening Cambodian security and development," Hun Sen said, adding the government would continue to destroy its stocks of mines.

Landmines were a key weapon in Cambodia's decades-long civil war which ended in 1998, and were often laid indiscriminately in large swathes of forest or field.

"We don't need any more weaponry. We need to clear these from our country," the premier said.

Delegates from Southeast Asia, Europe and the Middle East are also attending the three-day Ottawa Treaty conference, which will focus on how landmines affect development.

"Landmines are a development issue, and cultivating partnerships in mine action is vital in order to overcome the challenges mine-affected countries face," said Canada's ambassador to Cambodia Donica Pottie.

Several foreign demining groups have worked with the government's own ordnance agency since 1992 to clear Cambodia's minefields.

But the work is extremely slow, and roughly 2,900 square kilometres (1,119 square miles) of mine-infested land remains.

Cambodian demining officials say they hope to have Cambodia largely cleared of mines by 2020, but add donor disinterest is threatening their efforts.

Last year, the government's Cambodian Mine Action Centre (CMAC) lost a fifth of its foreign funding, which has been decreasing steadily since 2004, CMAC director general Khem Sophoan told AFP earlier.

Six of the Association of South East Asian Nation's (ASEAN's) 10 members, including Cambodia, are among the 153 countries worldwide to have signed the Ottawa treaty.

Hun Sen stresses urgency to solve mine problem [- Unfortunately, land-grabbers come in right after the deminers departure]

March 12, 2007
Cambodian PM stresses urgency to solve mine problem

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen emphasized on Monday the urgency to contain the disaster caused by millions of mines within the kingdom.

While addressing an international mine action conference co-hosted by the Cambodia Mine Action Authority and the Embassy of Canada, Hun Sen said "Landmines are still one of the biggest issues for us and they are threatening Cambodian security and development."

He called for all the concerned parties to clear the disaster for Cambodia, which might otherwise constitute a major obstacle for the development of Cambodia.

The dire consequences that landmines have on a country's economic and social development is a significant topic of discussion during the three-day conference, which is entitled " Mine Action: Implications for Peace and Development."

Delegates from across Southeast Asia, as well as participants from Europe and the Middle East, joined the participants from Cambodia's mine action community at the conference to discuss experiences of mine-affected states, the needs of survivors and international cooperation on mine action.

The conference is one of many worldwide activities to mark the 10th anniversary of the Ottawa Treaty, the international agreement that bans anti-personnel landmines.

Since 1997, Canada has contributed over 225 million U.S. dollars to mine actions worldwide, over 60 million U.S. dollars of that in Southeast Asia, including a recent pledge for Cambodia of over 6 million U.S. dollars.

According to official statistics, there were more than 400 human casualties over mine and UXO explosions in 2006 in Cambodia, or 50 percent decrease over the average number of the previous six years.

Due to 30 years of armed conflicts, Cambodia has become one of the world's most heavily mined countries with an estimated 4 to 6 million of such "hidden killers" buried underground in areas as extensive as 2,900 square kilometers.

All the mines and UXO may take another 150 years for the kingdom to clear out, according to the statistics.

Source: Xinhua

Cambodia calls on ASEAN to present a united front on land mines

Mar 12, 2007
DPA

Phnom Penh - Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen Monday called on four Association of South East Asian (ASEAN) nations which have so far not signed the Ottawa Treaty banning land mines to conform and help the bloc set an example to Asia and the world.

Speaking at a three-day conference on mine action in the capital, Hun Sen said ASEAN should form a united front and all member governments should sign and ratify their entry to the treaty, the signatories of which agree to prohibit the use, stockpiling, production and transfer of anti-personnel mines and support their destruction.

He said Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam and Singapore were the members of the 10-nation ASEAN bloc which had so far resisted signing, adding that if Asia was to become land mine-free, ASEAN should set the example for the continent.

'ASEAN has already declared Asia should be free of nuclear weapons and has asked other nations to sign on this, so ASEAN should also be the leader on the prohibition of the use, production and stockpiling of landmines,' he said.

He said land mines were a serious obstacle for the development of Cambodia and other Less Developed Nations and were a hidden killer that ordinary Cambodians had been forced to live with for too long.

Cambodia remains one of the most heavily mined nations in the world after 30 years of civil war. Hun Sen said Cambodian Red Cross figures put the number of land mine casualties in the country at 60,000 and counting, with 30 per cent of these fatalities and the rest forced to live as invalids for the rest of their lives.

'Of course, this is the right of each country to decide, but I believe ASEAN should unite on this issue,' Hun Sen told the conference.

Cambodia recently sent a demining team to Sudan and Hun Sen said that his country was happy to help another nation which would struggle to meet development goals because of the insidious factor of mines.

Canadian Ambassador to Cambodia Donica Pottie agreed, and used the opportunity to urge the United States, arguably the most significant nation to so far refuse to join the treaty, to relent and lead by example.

'Canada welcomes the Cambodian appeal ... however, it depends very much on these countries themselves,' she said in an interview after Hun Sen's address.

'The US has a huge commitment to demining programmes around the world,' she said. 'We would definitely welcome the US to join (the treaty). We appreciate US demining efforts and ... the US spends a lot of resources on demining, including Cambodia.'

ASEAN consists of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

UNICEF donates 140,000 USD for demining in Cambodia

March 08, 2007

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has donated more than 140,000 U.S. dollars for demining and landmine education in the western provinces of Cambodia for this year, an official said on Thursday.

The fund will be used for demining, education about danger of landmine and UXO (unexplosive ordnance), organizing spots for broadcasting on TV, building network to educate villagers in communities of landmine areas, Khem Sophoan, head of the Cambodia Mine Action Center (CMAC), told Xinhua on phone.

The money is for 26 districts in the western provinces of Cambodia, including Battambang, Preah Vihear, Oddar Mean Chey, Banteay Mean Chey and Pailin, where mines pose great danger for the communities, he said.

UNICEF has donated over one million U.S. dollars for CMAC since 1995, he said.

In the past two months of this year, mines killed over 10 people, including seven deminers of CMAC, he added.

According to official statistics, there were more than 400 human casualties over mine and UXO explosions in 2006 in Cambodia, or 50 percent decrease over the average number of the previous six years.

Due to 30 years of armed conflicts, Cambodia has become one of the world's most heavily mined countries with an estimated 4-6 million of such "hidden killers" buried underground in areas as extensive as 2,900 square kilometers.

It may take the kingdom another 150 years to clear out all the mines and UXO, statistics say.

Source: Xinhua