There are millions of mines and munitions buried worldwide – a lethal risk to people’s health and livelihoods. In the wake of the Sri Lanka conflict, Kate Wiggans reports on the work of the Mines Advisory Group (MAG).

In late 2005 12-year-old Kokulan was playing with his sister and a friend in Pulipanjakal, a village in eastern Sri Lanka. With the curiosity typical of young boys he saw something buried in the ground and picked it up. In his hands was a deadly P-4 landmine.

A few seconds later it exploded, taking Kokulan’s hand with it. His eight-year-old sister Puvitha lost an eye in the explosion, and their friend Nevetha, also eight, is now blind.

Landmines and explosives remain hidden long after the conflicts have ended. It is believed that at least one million landmines have been laid in Sri Lanka alone during the 27-year-long civil war. It took just one of them to do a lifetime of damage to Kokulan and his friends.

This situation is repeated worldwide. No one knows exactly how many are left buried in former conflict zones, but experts number them in millions. In the late 1990s, 122 countries signed the Mine Ban Treaty banning the manufacture and use of anti-personnel landmines. Today, 156 countries have ratified the treaty but their use has not stopped.

Kokulan’s story is just one that Manchester- based humanitarian landmine clearance charity Mines Advisory Group (MAG) came across in its work clearing landmines and explosive remnants of conflict throughout the world. In 2007 at least 1,400 people were killed and 3,939 injured by landmines and other explosive remnants of conflict (such as mortars and grenades) – the overwhelming majority of these were civilians.

No-one will probably ever fully know how many mines were laid during the long conflict in Sri Lanka. “The trouble is there is no way of knowing the full extent of the problem,” reported Phil Halford, MAG’s technical adviser, recently returned from the area.

“In defence of their positions the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) carried out ‘nuisance mining’,” he explained, “which means they used no pattern when laying mines, so they inflicted the maximum amount of terror as nobody ever knew if the land they were treading on was safe or not”.

A local rice mill owner Mr Soosai Marathin, 60, had to flee Marathanmadhu village in Mannar almost two years ago as fighting between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan army intensified. In April, he returned to his village with MAG’s teams to show them the areas he believed had been mined. MAG – with support from the Department for International Development (DFID) – has recently upscaled operations in the Vavuniya and Mannar regions of Sri Lanka, employing teams of experts to conduct careful surveys of huge areas of land.

If a dangerous area is found, it is marked out of bounds. Any safe land is immediately declared, and returned to the local authorities. Using this survey, MAG removes the unknown nature of the threat, and the terror that goes with it.

Just over a week after the visit to Marathanmadhu MAG had determined that, despite Mr Marathin’s fears, contamination in his village was actually very low. So on 9 June 2009, 70 families, including Mr Marathin’s, returned to the village.

Hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans have not been as lucky, and remain in displacement camps. Demining remains one of the obstacles to a safe return home.

Now in its 20th year, MAG was one of the original members of the Nobel peace prize-winning International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which lobbied for the Mine Ban Treaty to be written and ratified. Its experienced teams know communities that survive war will take risks in order to develop and rebuild their disrupted lives.

Alfredo Ramos Shimishi from Angola is testament to this. Although conflict ended in 2002, up to 2.4 million Angolans remain affected by land contaminated by landmines or other explosive remnants. In 1986 the then 43-year- old teacher had been collecting firewood close to his village near Luena, when, walking back through the bush, he stepped on a landmine. First, he lost his right leg. Then he lost his job.

Alfredo’s story illustrates the shadow of dread cast by landmines. Because he had been injured his wife and eldest son Antonio had to help collect charcoal to sell at the market for their survival. In 2004, as they walked through the bush, heavily laden Antonio, then 14, stopped to rest, and he too triggered a landmine. He also lost his leg, and his mother’s sight was irreversibly damaged. Despite this, Alfredo continues to collect charcoal from the bush to support his family. “I have no choice but to go and grow food and make the charcoal, but I am very afraid,” he said. “I found mines right where I was working. When that happened, I was so afraid I even started to cry. I thought I was going to die. I had to stop working for two weeks. I reported the mines to MAG and they came to check the area where I work. They found three landmines and a grenade. It was only after MAG came to me and told me that my plot of land was safe that I could go back there.”

The work of clearance charities like MAG is therefore critical not just to safety, but also to people’s economic and social development. In recognition of this, MAG has received more than £18m in funding from the Conflict, Humanitarian and Security Department (CHASE) at DFID for emergency and development assistance in 11 countries affected by conflict.

In June of this year alone, MAG cleared almost 214,000 square metres of land in Angola, but the sheer numbers of returnees to the country makes it hard for the painstaking process of clearance to keep up (see An Accident Waiting to Happen on page 29). More than half a million Angolans returned to their country in the last nine years. Anxious to restart their lives, they have begun building on contaminated land.

Under these circumstances education and local community liaison are crucial to reduce the risk. MAG’s community liaison teams are made up of trained local people, and are the first into suspected contaminated areas. They find out where and why people put themselves at risk, and their reports form the basis of technical clearance operations that follow. This way, areas that pose the most risk are cleared first.

“One thing we can be sure of at MAG is that without removing the threat of landmines or other deadly remnants of war – whether that threat is real, or perceived – communities cannot properly develop,” said MAG’s chief executive Lou McGrath. “Our operations are essential to communities’ long-term development, but they are vital in the short term too. For example, just after conflict ended in Gaza in January, MAG was approached for details of contamination in the region by Save the Children, UNICEF and Oxfam, among other NGOs. [Without this] they could not get in safely to do their work.”

For millions, surviving war is followed by another struggle – surviving peace. As a result, international demining organisations constantly strive for more efficient ways of reducing the threat, incorporating satellite imaging technologies to examine contamination levels. This hi-tech approach is combined with speaking and listening to the people living on the land.

The MAG team are optimistic that this struggle can be overcome, community by community, metre by metre.

Stories like those of Mr Marathin in Sri Lanka are the reason. “It was very important for MAG to do the survey and I am grateful, as people are afraid of mines and need to know if their villages are safe. I am very happy to be back here with my old neighbours,” he said.

“ANGOLA”

POPULATION 17 million
AVERAGE LIFE EXPECTANCY 42 years
AVERAGE PER CAPITA INCOME $4,400

After a long civil war, Angola must rebuild its economy, society and infrastructure. It has the potential to be a thriving economy in western Africa – with the third largest GDP in the region, it could become an economic hub in western Africa. In 2007/8 the UK provided £4.75m to support reconstruction and reduce poverty.

Find out more at www.dfid.gov.uk/angola

“SRI LANKA”

POPULATION 19.4 million
AVERAGE LIFE EXPECTANCY 75 years
AVERAGE PER CAPITA INCOME $4,581

Over the last five years, the UK has provided £41m for development assistance and conflict prevention projects in Sri Lanka. In the past year £12.5m in humanitarian assistance has been channelled through the UN, Red Cross and other agencies.

Find out more at www.dfid.gov.uk/srilanka

www.maginternational.org