UK allocates more funds for mine clearance in South Sudan
November 10, 2010 (JUBA) – The UK coalition government remains committed to supporting for mine clearance in Sudan, with specific focus on high impact zones, Andrew Mitchell, the UK’s Secretary of State for International Development announced Wednesday.
Mitchell, the first British cabinet Minister to visit Sudan since July 2008, was on a three-day visit to the country, during which he toured Khartoum, El Fasher and Juba, the capital city of Southern Sudan.
Mitchell said the UK government, through its Department for International Development (DFID), has announced funding for mine clearance programme, targeting 2.5 million square meters of land.
In addition, he said, a minimum of 30,000 explosive remnants of Sudan’s north-south civil wars are expected to be destroyed as part of this project. Mitchell said that 75 local people will also be trained on technical areas relating to demining and about 81,000 people have been earmarked to benefit from mine risk education.
“We want to fund work in areas where demining will not only save lives, make journeys to schools and hospitals safer, but also ensure the largest areas of land can be used to benefit local economies,” Mitchell told journalists during a press conference held in Juba.
According to Mitchell, DFID has also committed more than £30m over the next 3 years to mine action in selected countries where the benefit is likely to be greatest, saying this reflects the UK’s commitment to both the anti-personnel Mine Ban Treaty and the Convention on Cluster Munitions.
In 2008, approximately 100 people were reportedly killed or injured by landmines or other unexploded ordinance, majority of whom were men working on the mines and children.
In October a British national working for the Mine Action Group
was killed while overseeing a demining operation in Eastern Equatoria state of southern Sudan.
The UK Secretary for International Development also called for urgent actions to ensure the peaceful and full implementation of Sudan’s 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA); the accord that ended over two decades of a bloody civil war between the north and south of the country.
More specifically, he reiterated, was the need to conduct a peaceful and credible referendum, which he said should reflect the will and decisions of the people of the semi-autonomous region.
Mitchell openly called for cooperation between the north and south of Sudan, regardless of the outcomes of the January 2011 referendum, and advocated for the lifting of restrictions on humanitarian aid agencies operating in Sudan’s troubled western region of Darfur.
The event was climaxed with the official opening of the new British Embassy office in Juba, which he said was to help bring infrastructure, security and prosperity to South Sudan.
Attendees included; Dr. Barnabas Marial Benjamin, the Information and Broadcasting Minister in the southern government, Lise Grande, South Sudan’s Deputy Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator, UK Ambassador to South Sudan, various heads of diplomatic missions, representatives of development partners, government officials, among others.
(ST)