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TechnoratiUN Appeals For Help To Rid Iraq of Landmines
The United Nations on Thursday urged more efforts to clear Iraq of landmines, which it said threaten the population and complicate reconstruction and development projects.
"In addition to insecurity, Iraqis live amidst one of the greatest concentrations of landmines, unexploded ordnance and other explosive remnants of war in the world," said a joint statement by the UN Development Programme and the UN Children's Fund.
"Explosive remnants of war contamination in Iraq is so widespread that several development programmes are being hampered," it added.
Marking the International Day for Mine Awareness, they warned that unexploded ordnance is "of higher risk to Iraqi children, who often mistake them for toys or harmless objects to play with.
"A quarter of Iraq's 565 unexploded ordnance victims assessed in 2006 were under 18," they said.
At least 55 million cluster bomb sub-munitions were dropped on Iraq in the past two wars, which would make the country "the world's most contaminated country with this deadly unexploded ordnance."
Since 2005, UN-supported activities have cleared millions of square metres (square feet) of southern Iraq, destroying 105,221 explosive items, including 15,793 cluster munitions, the statement said.
David Shearer, deputy special representative of the secretary general and humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, said explosive remnants of war "continue to damage lives and livelihoods.
"They inflict lifelong injuries, deny access to productive land and undermine freedom of movement, including for the delivery of humanitarian relief. We need to increase efforts to reduce the harm they cause, and treat their victims."
UNICEF Representative for Iraq Roger Wright was quoted as saying "the damage they inflict extends beyond the physical, restricting children's ability to go to school safely and enjoy a normal childhood. Comprehensive awareness and risk education is essential as their best defence."
© 2008 Agence France Presse
9 Comments so far
Show AllEveryone bothered by this news: Take 2 minutes to take action to help ensure the U.S. never again uses landmines or cluster bombs. Go to www.uscbl.org and enter your email address (you will receive 2 emails a month: one news you can use and the other an action you can take). Then go to the 'take action' section and fire off a 'click and send' email to your elected reps, urging them to support S.594/HR1755-the cluster munitions civilian protection act. The US govt is sitting out of a global negotiation taking place next month to ban cluster bombs--just as it has sat out from the mine ban--but congressional support for this bill will help show the next administration that it can/should/must join with the majority of the world's governments in banning these horrendous weapons, which leave behind widely dispersed minefields.
Give Iraqi children a normal childhood? I'd say we've pretty well wiped that out. So how about talking about reparations? We can never make up what we've done to them, but we owe them clean water, functioning electricity, hospitals that are supplied, full treatment for all victims of our war crimes. Just as a start. We've spent untold billions destroying their lives and nothing to improve them. I hear the hospital Laura Bush so famously touted as an example of our success is nonfunctioning - another example of Bushco indifference. Can't call it incompetence because that implies they tried. They didn't care and didn't try.
kathyodat
All of the countries that make, design, distribute, and use land mines are responsible for the death and disability caused by these immoral devices.
How about ridding the world of corporate interest criminals?
The landmines are a secondary issue that will disappear when the criminals among us are apprehended, given due process, and hung for their already known to be genocidal crimes against humanity in the interests of ... western corporate majority owner material "profits".
The UN is a criminal hoax, just like the Haig, and just as all western corporate interest manipulated societies are. Move it to Damascus and then we can talk. Who knows? Perhaps the current location is a primary target for obliteration within the nearest future? Who can tell?
God knows.
Three Cheers for Al Sadr!
Stick it to every single western coward willingly serving criminals and God Bless You for your courage.
Lie now, bleed later, you pitiful excuses for "citizens".
That is all.
"An Iraqi mine victim" MORE LIKE A YOUNG VICTIM OF A U.S. MINE.
I assume it's U.S. anyway.
How about ridding the WORLD of landmines? Calls for international treaties to ban landmines are opposed by the 4 largest landmine manufacturers in the world, lead by the US.
Help rid Iraq of the Americans is what I'd like the UN to be saying and doing.
And dfairley you must mean "with our" tax dollars, not "with out."
Another crime committed in our name with out tax dollars.
What we've done to Iraq's children constitutes crimes against humanity. Do you hear me George!
Watch my short video. If you are not already outraged about the suffering we've inflicted upon these children, you will be.
http://nukular-waste.tripod.com/nukular-waste.htm
Here's the link to see the version that YouTube did not ban.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz7iliaJDiI
Take care,
Oscar Lewis