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Mozambique |
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Mozambique’s prolonged civil war ended in 1992,
but ten years on, some
residents are still living in fear of getting maimed or killed by landmines,
planted at the height of the civil war
The landmines have been haphazardly planted — so much so that former fighters say they cannot remember where they have put them, or they choose not to reveal their location so they can’t be removed.
People and organisations working on the demining exercise, estimate there are at least 1,374 areas must still be considered as landmine danger-zones, with Inhambane, Zambezia, Sofala and Nampula provinces said to be the worse areas. Unfortunately, most of these zones are ideal for agricultural purposes and so they are densely populated. People are obviously afraid of stepping on the landmines, so this impedes their farming activities.
Rita Antonio, 42, lives in Inhassoro district, Inhambane Province, about 800 kilometres north of the capital, Maputo. In 1997, she stepped on a mine and lost her left leg. She says: «I was going to clear a new site for my field when I stepped on a mine. I still remember that the force of the explosion shot me into the air and then I hit the rock-hard ground. I realised I’d lost my left leg». Rita now has to walk with the aid of some wooden crutches. She says life has not been the same for her, as now she cannot afford to do many things she used to do before stepping on the landmine.
People in Rita’s district (as elsewhere in the country) have designated some places as «no-go areas» because they fear there could be mines.
In some areas such as Mukumbura in the southwest, where Mozambique shares a common frontier with Zimbabwe, some villagers allege the mines there were planted by the former Southern Rhodesia rebel government of Ian Smith. He was fighting the nationalist guerillas who were using that area as their supply lines to and from Mozambique. This was way back in the early 1970s and thirty years on, these mines still lie silently in the ground, waiting to claim more victims.
De-mining
Some Non Governmental Organisations have accused the government of slowing the pace of destruction. Defending its position, the government says the destruction of the mines is a gradual process. The fact is, Mozambique had been at war almost continuously from the 1960s when the nationalist struggle against the Portuguese erupted, until 1992 when the government and the Renamo rebels signed an cease-fire agreement. And during this period, combatants on all sides used landmines. Mines have claimed more than 10,000 victims, and continued to do even when the war ended.
It’s against this background that in 1993, the Mozambican government initiated the demining exercise in some of the places known to be littered with landmines. Ten years on, the exercise has not achieved its desired results, and it’s estimated that over one million anti-personnel mines still remain in the ground.
Arthur Verissimo is National Director of the Instituto Nacional de Desiminagem (IND) (the National Institute for Demining). He acknowledges that some people are still being maimed or killed by the mines. He’s hopeful the complete demining of the country can be achieved but notes it’s a mammoth task, as the government is completely at the mercy of donors to finance the exercise. Verissimo says: «During the conflict, landmines were not mapped so nobody knows where they are. We have to talk to the local communities for further information. We then mark the areas and get support from the donors to clear the area».
In a Landmine Report for the year 2001, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines noted that landmine casualties in Mozambique had continued to decline from 133 reported deaths and injuries in 1998, to 60 in 1999, and in the year 2000 some 25 cases were reported. However, Mozambique’s campaign for a landmine-free-community is proving difficult to achieve, as the country does not have its own reserves to finance this and it has to put out the begging bowl. These days, there’s a lot of «competition» from countries such as Angola and Afghanistan which are now desperate to clear mines from their own territories.
A landmine is cheap to buy — anything from US $3 to $30. However, the Canadian Landmine Foundation states that to remove an antipersonnel landmine can cost as much as $1,000. The Foundation estimates that, currently there could be about 60 to 100 million landmines in the ground world-wide, and an average of 26,000 people are killed or injured each year by the mines.
Situation to-date
The Ottawa Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Mines, came into effect on 1 March 1999, and calls for the total destruction of mines. In line with the Ottawa Convention, the Mozambican government said that in August 2002, it would destroy more than 15,000 anti-personnel mines stockpiled in the central and the southern parts of the country. On 24 August, half of these were destroyed in Beira.
(The Ottawa Treaty prohibits the production, selling, use and stockpiling of landmines). After signing the Ottawa Treaty on 3 December 1997, Mozambique had received over US $500,000 destined for the rehabilitation and assistance of landmine victims. It should be recalled that at the height of both the wars of liberation and the civil war, Mozambique was estimated to have in excess of 2 million anti-personnel mines hidden in the ground.
Although the Convention is a step in the right direction in doing away with the mines, it still lacks sufficient weight, as major mine-producing nations such as the United States, Russia and China are among manufactures still to ratify the Convention.
If there is no commitment to stop producing landmines, then people such as Rita will still have to live haunted lives, knowing that the mines which brought about their present condition, are still being manufactured somewhere.
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