Delegation visits Sudan to discuss post-war anti-mine action in south

KHARTOUM, April 25 (AFP) — An international anti-landmine delegation met with officials and NGOs in Khartoum on Monday to discuss clearing efforts amid a growing influx of refugees returning to southern Sudan after a peace deal.

A Kenyan soldier brusher sand from a landmine during a de-mining demonstration at the East African International Mine Action Training Center (IMATC) in Kenya’s capital Nairobi, February 17, 2005. (Reuters).

The head of Sudan’s National Mine Action Centre (NMAC), Hamid Ahmed Abdelaleem, told AFP he had briefed the team, which included representatives from European countries, as well as the United States, Canada and Japan.

He explained that the group of donors and experts, who meet every month in New York to review mines-related issues worldwide, usually pay a visit to a different country each year and had chosen Sudan for 2005.

“There is now an influx of returning internally displaced persons and refugees and we should therefore focus on demining the roads to them,” Abdel Alim explained.

Although fighting continues in Sudan’s western Darfur region, a peace deal was signed in January between southern rebels and the government, putting an end to 21 years of civil war in the south.

Some of the estimated four million people who were displaced during a war that killed 1.5 million are now returning to their villages.

Southern Sudan is thought to have more than two million anti-personnel mines and some 2,500 people have been injured or killed by landmines there over the past five years alone.

Both sides used large quantities of landmines and records were rarely kept, requiring a costly demining operation.

Mines and unexploded ordnance make the roads almost impassable in the large area, forcing aid agencies to fly in their staff and supplies, thus exerting extra financial strain on donors.

The team met with UN officials in Khartoum and Sudanese Humanitarian Affairs Minister Ibrahim Mahmoud Hamid.

They are expected to travel to the southern Nuba Mountains area, which saw some of the worst fighting during the civil war, and are due in the southern capital of Rumbek to meet with former rebel leaders.