Bombs in the backyard a constant for many

2-MIN READ2-MIN

Published: 12:00am, 23 Feb 2000

On Monday a metre-long WWII bomb was found near my office in Kowloon. The area was evacuated. Police, ambulances and fire engines abounded.

As I write this, I know that at least 65 people will be hurt or killed today by a landmine or other unexploded ordnance somewhere around the world. Most will be civilians and children. Many will not get the medical treatment they need, as they will most likely be a poor person in a poor country. Probably no ambulance, fire services, police or bomb disposal units will be on hand.

March is the first anniversary of the date that the Mine Ban Treaty went into force, a treaty which 137 governments have signed and 90 have ratified. Governments signed and ratified this treaty more quickly than any other of its kind in history - much to the efforts of the Nobel Prize winning International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) - and each government and each member of the ICBL are to be congratulated. But there are 47 countries yet to ratify and others yet to accede, such as the United States, Vietnam and China.

As an ICBL member organisation that has been working against landmines for five years, Oxfam Hong Kong sees a direct link between poverty and the legacy of landmines. They render cultivable farmland unusable. They drain the resources of a poor community. They cripple the development of a nation.

Oxfam Hong Kong has had petition drives and marches, supported landmine activists (some of whom are victims themselves) to lobby at UN conferences and funded awareness programmes in several countries to prevent people from stepping on landmines in the first place. We have helped re-train Cambodian landmine victims in new skills, funded demining training with local men and women in Laos and rebuilt roads and bridges destroyed in the civil war in Mozambique, one of the world's poorest countries. And we have launched the Web site www.landmine.oxfamhk.org.vn to educate people on the problem and to encourage people to join the campaign.

The ICBL urges states to accede to or ratify the treaty by March 1. Those that ratify or accede by March 1 will be able to participate as full states parties at the Second Meeting of States Parties in Geneva in September. For more information about the landmine campaign, please visit www.icbl.org. For information on Oxfam Hong Kong, visit www.oxfam.org.hk MADELEINE SLAVICK Communications Officer Oxfam Hong Kong