CONTENTS | ANB-BIA HOMEPAGE | WEEKLY NEWS
by Mwana Bwalya, Namibia, January 1999
THEME = HUMAN RIGHTS
When the National Society for Human Rights (NSHR)
criticised
a joint US/Namibian government landmine awareness campaign as being ineffective,
many people saw this as a sign of ungrateful arrogance
Now, less than half a year on, Namibia's NSHR is being proved right and this has effectively ended the heated debate it has been having with the American Embassy in Windhoek.
Although the Namibian government has not taken sides in this landmine debate, its recent relaunch of the landmine awareness campaign, shows the government realises the war against these deadly devices is far from over.
The new campaign is basically targeted at young people. Elias Halyondjaba is Police Commander for the three northern regions of Omusati, Oshana and Ohangwena. He says a community awareness team will go from village to village, from school to school, showing the danger of land-mines and unexploded ordnance (UXO). He says "the community awareness teams will be given vehicles displaying a special logo intended to encourage the public to come forward and report the whereabouts of landmines and UXOs. This will not only help us to go out to people in need, but also to overcome a backlog of more than a thousand uninvestigated reports of UXO throughout the northern region".
Information about mines and UXO has for a long time been disseminated over the Namibia Broadcasting Corporation's radio and television services. The reception, however, is said to be either too poor or non-existent in remote parts of northern Namibia - the very areas where unexploded mines are to be found. Phil ya Nangolo is NSHR's executive director. He says: "Broadcasts do not reach all areas affected by the landmine menace. Also, they ignore those directly involved in the menace - both victims and survivors - when it comes to planning and implementing the programmes. There's no mention of what educational, physical and psychological help is available to those who have been injured. As well as what jobs they can undertake".
Namibia's landmine problem in no way approaches that of its northern neighbour, Angola, which is still said to be littered with millions of land-mines. However, even the few thousands of uncleared landmines in Namibia are enough to give headaches to the authorities. And this, in spite of announcements made by the government that "the landmine problem is easing".
The NSHR collided head on with the US Embassy in October 1998, when the US ambassador to Namibia, George Ward, announced that Namibia had become a "de-mining success story". Lives have been saved and over 100,000 dangerous explosive devices have been removed out of harms way".
The Ambassador continued: "Since the United States' partnership with Namibia in the present de-mining operation began in 1994, deaths and injuries from land-mines and UXOs have declined by over 90%. At the same time, hundreds of hectares of minefields have been cleared, and over 100,000 landmines and UXOs have been destroyed".
Ambassador Ward had statistics from the US embassy in Windhoek which showed that deaths resulting from contact with mines, decreased by 88%, and injuries from the same cause by 91%. There were nine deaths and 24 injuries in 1995, and only one death and two injuries in 1997.
Ward also said that in Namibia, the last known death resulting from contact with a landmine, was in December 1996, when six adults died after their vehicle detonated an anti-tank mine near Onekwaya, situated in the north of the country.
But this was met with an immediate rebuttal from Phil ya Nangolo who said the menace posed by landmines in Namibia is still great. "The current flurry of publicity about the successful mine awareness campaigns/mine-clearing operations to make this country free from mines, is misleading, as more people are still falling victims to the dangerous devices".
While landmine injuries and fatalities might have gone down in some areas, in other areas it is quite the contrary. Ya Nangolo gives the example of what happened in November 1998, "barely a month after it was announced that the battle against the scourge of landmines was being won and that nine out of ten known minefields had been cleared of anti-personnel mines. Two children were killed in the Ohangwena region". Ya Nangolo and his team also visited Kaokoland (northern Namibia) where they saw a number of anti- personal mines. He even provided slides of these as proof, saying that today, the Kaokoland area is probably the most mine-infected in the whole of Namibia.
In all, 105 people have been killed and 246 injured by landmines and UXOs between June 1989 and November 1998. The US government has a multi-million dollar assistance programme aimed at clearing Namibia of all landmines. Under the programme, 23 Namibians from the Ministry of Defence and one police officer received training on Mine/Unexploded Ordnance Clearing, and Emergency Medical Training in the USA during the course of 1995.
These in turn, trained 53 members of the Namibia Defence Force and together they subsequently cleared all but one of the ten known minefields in the country. According to Ambassador Ward, the last minefield at Eenhana is almost cleared.
Besides training, the USA has provided millions of dollars in equipment to the Namibia Defence Force and the police, and that a considerable sum of money has already been spent by the USA on Namibian de-mining operations. But Phil ya Nangolo warns : "While this assistance is highly appreciated, we must warn against what appears to be sweeping and unqualified public pronouncements to the effect that the battle against the scourge of landmines is being won in this country". Ambassador Ward had little to say by way of reply, apart from commenting: "The United States strongly supports the concept of open public debate on key issues. At the same time, the statement that "in practice little seems to have been done to contain the landmine menace" is false and misleading".
END
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