US firm offers to clear landmines
AN AMERICAN organisation, Roots of Peace, has offered to assist Zimbabwe clear landmines that were laid during the country’s struggle for Independence in the 1970s.
Roots of Peace founder Mrs Heidi Kuhn on Saturday indicated they would visit Zimbabwe, possibly as early as October.
On Saturday in New York, she met Zimbabwean Government officials — including Finance and Economic Development Minister Professor Mthuli Ncube (representing President Mnangagwa) and Harare’s top diplomat to the United States Ambassador Amon Mutembwa — to discuss the possibility of assisting the country to clear its entire territory of landmines.
Roots of Peace was presented with the inaugural Earth Ethics Award ahead of this year’s UN General Assembly Ordinary Session.
Its model is to remove landmines, restore the economic vitality of the cleared land by supporting agriculture and linking the newly-empowered farmers to markets.
Roots of Peace has conducted similar programmes in at least 11 countries, including Afghanistan where it has been credited with a jump in exports of high value crops from that country to India by over $450 million.
Zimbabwe has some of the densest minefields in the world, with thousands of landmines laid along the borders with Zambia and Mozambique by Ian Smith’s settler regime in the 1970s.
Removing landmines is slow work, usually conducted by teams of deminers using metal detectors, though mobile rigs are now being increasingly used across the world to roll over the mines and detonate them.
There are around 813,3 square kilometres of land with an estimated 2,6 million anti-personnel mines remaining; an area estimated at 60 percent of that mined by Rhodesian forces during the Second Chimurenga.
Areas in need of mine clearance include Musengezi-Rwenya (435,5 square km), Sheba Forest-Beacon Hill (65 square km), Rusitu-Muzite Mission (97,5 square km), Burma Valley (3,9 square km), Sango Border Post-Crook’s Corner (182 square km).
Despite limited resources, Zimbabwe has continuously strived to clear landmines, opening up 202sq km without donor support.
Since Independence, an estimated 1 550 people have been killed by landmines, as well as cattle, sheep and goats.
Tourism, too, has not been spared, with the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park being a case in point of a tourist attraction with limited access because of mines.
Zimbabwe is removing mines in line with the 1999 Anti-Personnel Mine-Ban Treaty and in March this year Government launched the 2018-2025 Zimbabwe National Mine Action Strategic Plan to clear the remaining minefields to make land safe for human habitation.
The Strategic Plan has five main pillars: stockpile destruction, survey and clearance, mine risk education, victim assistance, and advocacy.
Zimbabwe has four accredited demining organisations — Hazardous Areas Life Support Organisation (Halo) Trust, Norwegian People’s Aid, the Mines Advisory Group and Apopo — working alongside the country’s National Mine Clearance Centre.
Roots of Peace hopes to join these organisations in clearing landmines in Zimbabwe.