A campaign against 'blind terrorism.' (UN effort to locate and dispose of land mines)

Tucked away on the ninth floor of the UN Secretariat building, Patrick Blagden, the Un's official De-mining Expert and retired brigadier in the United Kingdom's Royal Engineers, placed two land-mines on a corner of his desk. His visitor, sitting only inches away, pressed back uneasily in the chair as he demonstrated how the palmsized mines open like tins of shoe polish. Missing from inside were the explosives that sever much of a person's leg when the primed mine is stepped on. With the tug of a tripwire, other models explode on the ground or jump up a metre or more to spew out lethal blast and shrapnel over sizable killing and maiming zones.

Made almost entirely of plastic to thwart detection by metal sensors, mines come in colours that obscure them in the terrain where they will be placed. one of Mr. Blagden's mines is dark green, the other buff. They may be scattered from aircraft or by artillery or carefully set in place, often in conjunction with anti-tank mines. "A mine problem is a vast national problem and not only a UN problem", Mr. Blagden said. "Building local capability in de-mining is essential."

Waiting to explode

Finding and removing each antipersonnel mine, which sells for about $3, costs from $300 to $1,000. In more than 60 countries - a third of the world's nations - 8 5 to over 10 million mines of various designs, including those buried during the Second World War, wait ready to explode. They do not discriminate between soldier and civilian or adult and child. Each week, 150 or more people - a fifth to over a half of them children - are killed by mines. Many others are maimed. A former delegate of the international Committee of the Red Cross calls it "blind terrorism".

Mr. Blagden is refreshingly frank when he speaks about the huge demining problems facing the UN and its Member States - problems remote from the lives of most people. The ghastliness of these limb-shredding weapons lurking by the tens of millions has yet "to get home", he said. "Only when it does, and the public puts so much light and heat on the parliamentarians that they fear losing their jobs, will things happen."

Things are happening at the UN. The General Assembly in 1993 adopted resolution 48/7, initiating increased international de-mining assistance, resolution 48/75 K calling for a worldwide moratorium on the export of anti-personnel mines, and resolution 48/79 requesting the Secretary-General to convene in 1994 a review conference of the Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May Be Deemed to Be Excessively Injurious or to Have indiscriminate Effects, with special reference to the Protocol on landmines and booby-traps.

In 1993, Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali launched a coordinated mine-clearance programme through the Department of Humanitarian Affairs and the Department of Peacekeeping Operations. The focus of this effort is the de-mining office with Mr. Blagden and his deputy, Tore Skedsmo, a national of Norway. Mr. Skedsmo worked on mine clearing in Cambodia with Norwegian People's Aid, a non-governmental organization.

UN-sponsored de-mining operations are under way in several countries, including Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Mozambique, Somalia and the former Yugoslavia. Experts estimate 26 million to 31 million land-mines are waiting to be found and destroyed. For Messrs. Blagden and Skedsmo, this is a threshold period for mine clearance. Needed are codes of practice and much more research to advance de-mining technology. Training mine clearers and those who will supervise them is especially important. By sponsoring these activities, the UN helps in the creation of universal de-mining standards and an international network of experts. As Mr. Skedsmo said: "It will take more than one generation."