DUSHANBE, April 4, Asia-Plus – Tajikistan today marks an International Day Against Landmine Threat.
Jonmahmad Rajabov, director of the Tajik Mine Action Cell (TMAC), said that activities dedicated to the International Day Against Landmine Threat will be organized today at the engineer battalion, which is stationed in the Rudaki district.
According to him, representatives from the government and international organizations will attend the event in the Rudaki district.
According to TMAC director, 600 Tajik nationals have become victims of landmine explosions since 1992. “More than 300 of them were killed and others were injured and became disabled for life,” the TMAC director said. He noted that almost a half of them had become victims of landmines laid by Uzbek authorities on some stretches of the Tajik-Uzbek border.
“Tajikistan cannot start demining operation along Tajikistan’s common border with Uzbekistan because a process of delimitation and demarcation of the border between the two countries has not been yet completed,” Rajabov stressed.
The TMAC director noted that under the project launched to tackle Tajikistan’s deadly landmine crisis, demining teams have cleared 500,000 square meters of land and detected and neutralized more than 3,000 landmines and unexploded ordnances (UXOs), which were a legacy of the country’s civil war in the Nineties, over the past five years.
Specialists from the TMAC believe thousands of landmines and other explosive devices still remain scattered over an area of some 25 million square meters.
Over the past several years, with support of the government of Tajikistan and international organizations more than $8 million have been provided to carry out mine action. “In order to complete the program by 2010 we need much more funds,” Rajabov said.
Some 300 anti-personnel mines that were stockpiled in ammunition dumps of the Tajik ministry of defense (MoD) were destroyed at the Lohour training ground in 2004.
Tajikistan signed the Convention on the Prohibition on the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Antipersonnel Mines and on their Destruction (the Ottawa Convention) in 2000. All signatory states undertook to ensure the destruction of all anti-personnel land mines they possess, as soon as possible but no later than 10 years after signing the convention. In the case of Tajikistan, this means that the country should be mine-free by 2010.
