CAMBODIA: Learning platform

Students play in front of the new school building, constructed on land that had been cleared by MAG. (Photo: Nicolas Axelrod / MAG)

20 Apr 2010
Source: MAG (Mines Advisory Group)

Until March 2008, Veal village school in Pursat province had no proper building - because nobody dared to build one. There had been accidents involving landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXO) in the village, and community members suspected there must be more in the ground.

The school director, Meak Hun, got on with his job as best he could, but says: "Teaching was extremely difficult. I had to teach students under villagers' houses."

Eleven-year-old Buor Seiha recalls what those lessons were like: "Each time it rained, we almost got soaked. We didn't have chairs and tables. I had to put my chalkboard on the mat and crouch over it as I wrote."

One of MAG Cambodia's all-female teams came to the village in July 2007. It took more than six weeks to clear the land needed for the school. During the process, six items of UXO were found and destroyed.

Once the land was safe, a school was built with the support of two international non-governmental organisations, Sustainable Cambodia and Save the Children Norway.

Today, about 300 students attend classes there, a notable change from the way things were.

"The number of students [before the school was built] was only around 30 to 40, as the learning environment was not good," says Meak Hun. "Students faced a lot of hardship. Many students went fishing, cutting wood or picking bamboo shoots instead of coming to classes."

The local authorities and parents now cooperate to make sure that all children are now sent to school.

Another student, Phan Hoeurm, is happy to have the opportunity to study in a proper classroom. She says, simply: "Now we have a good school."

For more information on MAG's Cambodia programme please go to www.maginternational.org/cambodia.

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MAG thanks the following donor for funding the work mentioned in this article: Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement, US Department of State.

CAMBODIA: Mine accident survivor becomes deminer

"[My work] has a lot of benefits. One, we receive salary from MAG to feed ourselves and families and two, we can rid our villages of landmines." - Chea Sia

18 May 2009
Source: MAG (Mines Advisory Group)
Website: http://www.maginternational.org

MAG Cambodia Chea Sia, a 48-year-old amputee, has worked for MAG for 14 years as a deminer. He lost his right leg to a landmine explosion in 1982, when he served a soldier for the Khmer People's National Liberation Front, led by the late former Prime Minister Son Sann.

The accident took place in Batttambang province whilst patrolling the area around his camp.

"I stepped on a landmine laid by the Khmer Rouge. We didn't realise [they] had laid mines in the area," he says.

His fellow soldiers fired a few times into the air as a distress signal, and other soldiers came to assist them.

"They arrived and sent me to the camp where I received first aid from the paramedics," he recalls.

After receiving first aid, Chea Sia was put on a tractor and sent to a French hospital in Thailand near the Cambodian border, and was then transferred to a hospital in Khao-I-Dang refugee camp run by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

He stayed at the hospital for about three months and was then sent to a refugee camp in Thailand, where he lived for the next decade.

Along with many other refugees, he was repatriated to Cambodia in 1992.

"During the first four or five months [back] in Cambodia, I didn't do anything but depended on some money I had left from the camp," he says. "When I returned to Cambodia, we had big problems....we needed everything, unlike life in the camp where we were given food."

Chea Sia and his wife struggled to survive and eked out a living by buying and selling small items and farming. Then he heard about MAG.

"Initially, I wasn't aware that MAG recruited amputee deminers. My friend asked me to join. Frankly speaking, at that time I knew nothing about demining. While I was a soldier, I only knew that mines are dangerous. But I was assured that I would be sent to be trained."

Currently, Chea Sia carries out demining tasks in Pailin province, the former stronghold of the Khmer Rouge.

He says that it is difficult for disabled people with little education to find good jobs, and that he is lucky to work for MAG.

"I don't have any knowledge or education, so I depend on my physical strength to get a job. It would be difficult for me to find a better-paid job than the job I have with MAG."

As a deminer, Chea Sia has to wear a special prosthetic leg, which will not affect or disrupt a metal detector.

"Prosthetic limbs usually have a metal bar inside but those provided for amputee deminers contain no metal," he explains.

Chea Sia says that amputee deminers sometimes find it difficult when they have to walk up or downhill to get to a minefield, and said that they may work marginally slower than able-bodied persons.

"But it's not a big deal at all. We can perform our job. We are not asked to work where disabled people find it difficult to perform their tasks."

Chea Sia says that he is very happy to work with MAG, an organisation which has benefited people from the communities affected by landmine contamination.

"It has a lot of benefits. One, we receive salary from MAG to feed ourselves and families and two, we can rid our villages of landmines."

For more information on MAG's work in Cambodia, please visit
www.maginternational.org/cambodia

Tackling Cambodia's landmine legacy

Supervisors clear the area before detonating any landmines they find

Wednesday, 11 June 2008
By Philippa Fogarty
BBC News, Pailin

On a wooded hillside above a village in north-west Cambodia, a man speaks into a radio.

Figures in body armour and visors head downhill to shelter from the sun under some trees.

A whistle sounds and then a siren. A few minutes later a loud crack echoes around the countryside. Grey smoke floats into the air.

The first landmine of the morning has been destroyed.

It was a Chinese-made type 72A - a small, green object that blows off the leg that treads on it or the arm that picks it up.


The team head back up the hill. There are many more mines to go.

This is a scene that is repeated day after day across Cambodia, one of the most heavily mined countries in the world.

Between four and six million landmines are thought to have been laid during the country's three decades of civil war.

Khmer Rouge fighters, Vietnamese troops and government forces all planted devices, but did not record where or how many. Huge areas of land were contaminated, particularly in western border regions where the fighting was fiercest.

Across the country, victims of landmine blasts are a strikingly visible presence. More than 40,000 people are thought to have lost limbs.

Work to remove the mines has been going on ever since the conflict ended, and a great deal of progress has been made. But there is a lot still to do.

"Cambodia still has a significant landmine problem," says Rupert Leighton, Cambodia country director of the Mines Advisory Group. "They are not starting to dry up yet."

Casualties have fallen significantly in recent years, from more than 2,000 annually in the early 1990s to less than a quarter of that in 2006.

This is because the movement of displaced people has subsided, people know more about landmines and more clearance has been carried out. There are also fewer people facing acute hunger, meaning fewer people foraging in the forests.

The key issue now, says Mr Leighton, is the fact that so much land still cannot be used - at a time when competition for it has become fierce.

Ten families

Boeung Prolite lies 6 km ( 4 miles) from the Thai border, not far from the former Khmer Rouge stronghold of Pailin.

For more than two decades a guerrilla conflict raged in this area - and both sides laid mines extensively.

A red triangle marks a landmine which must be blown up

People began settling in Boeung Prolite in the 1990s, when the fighting wound down.

About 30% of villagers are former Khmer Rouge fighters, the rest are new arrivals from other provinces. They live in simple wooden houses and grow crops for subsistence and sale.

On high ground above the village lies a mine field about the size of 19 football pitches.

This one was laid mainly by the Khmer Rouge and, as well as 72As, contains type 69s - small grey mines which spring upwards to explode at waist height.

Nine casualties have been recorded on this minefield over the years. The last was in 2002, a farmer who wanted to plant more crops.

Roeu Sokhom heads the team that is clearing the site. He, a deputy supervisor, a medic, a driver and 12 deminers began work there in early March after the initial site survey was complete.

Using metal detectors to examine every inch of ground, working in high heat and humidity, they have already destroyed dozens of mines. They expect to complete the job by the end of June.

When it is done, 10 local families, comprising a total of 59 people, will be able to farm there, Roeu Sokhom says.

Some have already moved in to plant up earth cleared only days before, such is their hunger for land.

'Finish line'

One of the mine clearers is 26 year-old Khoeun Sokhorn. She lives with her family in a village near Pailin and has been a deminer for two years.

Khoeun Sokhorn demonstrates how she checks the earth for landmines

In 2002, she went into the forest to gather firewood. The area had been classified as "suspect", but people had been going there for years and everyone thought it was safe. A landmine blew off her right leg.

She wants to clear mines so that no-one else gets hurt the way she did, she says. She is proud that the number of casualties is continuing to fall.

But when she finds a mine, there is no flash of triumph - she just reports it to her supervisor and moves on to the next one.

She says she will clear mines as long as there is work for her. She does not need to look for another job yet.

"We will never clear all the mines out of Cambodia, but in 10 years we have a reasonable chance of saying that the worst areas have been cleared," says Mr Leighton.

"It depends on funding and also on how we define the finish line - are we talking about impact-free or casualty-free?"

"We could go on working in Cambodia forever, but the law of diminishing returns would mean that we become more and more expensive."

In Khoeun Sokhorn's village there are several mine fields that need to be cleared.

She is married and she has a three-year-old daughter.

The little girl does not know what a landmine is yet. But, Khoeun Sokhorn says, she is old enough to know that she must not go into certain parts of the forest.

Like swords into plowshares

Thanks to Lutheran support for clearing land mines in Thmey, Kampong Speu Province, Cambodia, Khan Trang (right) and her husband, Yoy Yon (left), safely grow vegetables to sell at market and feed their five children.

February 2008
Story by Chham Rivann and Margaret F. Sadler
The Lutheran (USA)

In Cambodia, Lutherans help replace land mines with vegetables, fruits

Morm Saveurn, 46, his wife, Mou Ly Viseth, and their six children live in Kam Prong, a remote village in northwest Cambodia’s Battambang Province. Saveurn and Viseth (both former soldiers) left the capital, Phnom Penh, and returned home a little more than 10 years ago. Saveurn still works part time as a soldier (10 days a month) but also depends on farming for the family’s income.

Home is the site of a former battlefield, where Khmer Rouge troops fought those of the Vietnamese and Cambodian governments. Battambang is the most heavily mined province in Cambodia. From January 2004 to August 2005 alone, Battambang recorded 458 casualties from undetected land mines. Current estimates place 4 million to 6 million land mines and unexploded ordnance (UXO) scattered across Cambodia—threats to lives, limbs and economic recovery. Since hostilities ceased in 1997, some 40,000 people have lost limbs to mines in Cambodia.

A Lutheran World Federation partner, the U.K.-based Mines Advisory Group, is one of the country’s main
de-mining operators. The group has spent the last five years clearing nearly 4 million square yards of land in Battambang. In the first half of 2007, the Cambodia Mine/UXO Victim Information System reported 232 victims—a 28 percent decrease from the same period in 2006.

Since 1979 the LWF Department for World Service has worked in Cambodia, taking an approach to sustainable development that empowers vulnerable groups such as poor farmers, female-headed households, landless families, returnees, internally displaced people, rural youth and people affected by HIV/AIDS in remote and isolated areas.

Farmers risk death, maiming

Like Saveurn, 85 percent of Cambodia’s 13.9 million people depend on subsistence farming. Undetected land mines threaten their survival. “All of us in this village do not feel safe,” he said. “When I came here for the first time I found mines. As a soldier, I knew what they were.”

So far Saveurn’s family has been lucky. “Over the last few years eight people in the village have had land mine accidents, with seven of them becoming amputees because of their injuries,” he said.

De-mining is a consultative process between villagers and mine-clearance partners. After village proposals for land clearance have been accepted, the Department for World Service selects and trains community members to help clear the mines, said Mey Sarun, the agency’s project manager in Battambang. The work can involve clearing brush, using various detection devices and detonating smaller explosives.

During the work, LWF staff help build the confidence and capacity of mine-affected households and communities, empowering people to exercise their civil rights. Staff also help residents plan and carry out projects that address issues such as food security, education and 
HIV/AIDS.

In Kam Prong alone, Mines Advisory Group, with funding from FinnChurchAid through the LWF, cleared 70,272 square yards of land from April to June 2007, freeing it for resettlement and making it safe for 29 families comprising 142 people. From January 2003 to mid-2007, the mine clearance work of the LWF and MAG in
 Battambang had benefited 8,380 families consisting of around 41,900 men, women and children.

Fruits and vegetables

Saveurn hopes workers will soon be able to clear additional mines from his land. “My plan is to grow some fruits,” he said. “I plant soya beans from July to October and other beans from January to April. I also grow cabbages, cucumbers, chilies and eggplants. But I still really worry about mines on the rest of the land, which [has yet] to be cleared.”

To the community-based work of groups like LWF and Mines Advisory Group, he would like “to say thank you. After the [land] has been cleared it is safe to cultivate. Then we can plant some fruits and vegetables without the fear of land mines that could kill or injure us.”

Saveurn’s wife, Viseth, said clearing the mines makes a world of difference for the children too. “They are so happy now—they know that some of our land is safe for them to play on. ... It makes me happy to see that they are happier.”