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Al-Ahram Weekly 20 - 26 April 2000 Issue No. 478 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 20 - 26 April 2000 Issue No. 478
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Heritage Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Encounter with a deadly heritage
By Rasha Saad"The pain that I felt at that moment is beyond imagination," Khaled Rashid told participants in a seminar on land-mines held by the Arab League last week. Rashid, a Jordanian, lost his leg when he was 12 years old after stepping on a buried anti-personnel mine while playing in a village near the Jordanian-Israeli border.
Rashid's plight and that of thousands of other victims of land-mines were the focus of the three-day seminar attended by a number of Arab and foreign specialists on this issue.
Co-sponsored by the National Centre for Middle East Studies, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Middle East Centre for Research and Studies (MECR), the Land-mine Resource Centre and the Land-mine Struggle Centre, the seminar emphasised that the consequences of land-mines have been particularly dire for developing countries, including Arab ones.
According to reports presented at the seminar, there are an estimated 110 million land-mines worldwide, most of which are in the Arab world. Egypt alone has about 23 million land-mines, located mainly in its Western Desert which witnessed major battles during World War II. The Arab-Israeli conflict has also left Arab countries bordering Israel with thousands of land-mines.
Shawwan Jibril of the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq gave an example typical of how land-mines have impacted on civilians in the occupied Golan Heights. In the village of Majdal Shams, where Jibril's organisation has been researching the land-mine problem since 1999 in cooperation with the International Campaign to Ban Land-mines (ICBL), there are land-mines in the village itself due to the presence of an Israeli camp in the midst of a populated area. "With the rain and shifting of sand these mines slide right into the village endangering the lives of its people. I saw mines that came to rest right in front of the doors of the houses," Jibril said.
Al-Haq has documented the existence of 10 land-mine fields in the Golan Heights. These, according to Jibril, have been the cause of 16 deaths and 50 injuries. Of these victims, 50 per cent were under 17 years of age.
Part of the menace of land-mines is that they continue to wreak havoc in times of peace. Jibril noted that in the event that Israel withdraws from south Lebanon, the Lebanese people will be faced with the problem of many land-mine fields the locations of which are unknown.
Along with the ever-present fear that people will be maimed or killed by the mines, their presence can act as a physical obstacle to the implementation of urban and agricultural development programmes. With the cost of removing land-mines at an estimated $300-$1,000 per mine -- compared to the mere $3 needed to lay a mine -- the attempt to eradicate these physical barriers to development in turn presents economic hardships.
In light of these dangers and the moral responsibility borne by the countries which laid the mines, seminar participants were united in asserting that these countries have an obligation to provide financial and technical assistance to the affected countries. A resolution issued at the end of the seminar called on countries that laid mines and UN organisations to take such measures.
While many seminars were conducted in the Arab world during the past three years failed to establish a clear-cut strategy to tackle the problem, at the very least this seminar did succeed in putting the issue of land-mines on the Arab League's agenda, which means that it will be addressed during meetings of its ministerial council.
According to Fouad El-Makhzoumi, president of the MECR, creating a strong lobby for the case under the banner of the Arab League increases confidence of NGOs that "this time things [the eradication of land-mines] will be tackled in a more serious way."
El-Makhzoumi added that pushing the issue of foreign financial and technical assistance to remove land-mines to the forefront public awareness is critical in the context of preparations for a peace settlement in the Middle East.
