Mozambique declared free of land mines

Baloi said Mozambique had become the first of the five most severely mined countries in the world to comply with the mine clearance obligations of the Ottawa Convention on the outlawing of anti-personnel land mines (the other four are Afghanistan, Cambodia, Angola and South Sudan).

“This is a significant contribution to the global efforts for eradication of anti-personnel land lines, and brings prestige to international humanitarian disarmament”, he said.

The government’s demining programme had been a success, he declared, “because we achieved the target of freeing all known mined areas in the country, so as to ensure freedom of movement throughout our entire national territory”.

In 1998, Mozambique ratified the Ottawa Convention. The treaty took effect in March 1999, and Mozambique had a ten year period to clear all mines from its territory. The government agency in charge of this effort, the National Demining Institute (IND), was set up in June 1999, and the first national survey of mined areas was done between 2000 and 2001.

This showed that there were minefields in all ten provinces. An estimated 556 million square metres were affected, directly impacting on the lives of 1.5 million people in 791 villages.

The ten year deadline proved unrealistic. Mozambique asked the Permanent Committee of the State Parties to the Ottawa Convention for a five year extension, bringing the deadline to March 2014. 

When, in late 2013, it was found that the work could not be completed by then, a further extension, to the end of 2014 was requested and granted.

The demining in fact continued into 2015, but now the task is regarded as essentially complete. 

Although no one imagines that every last explosive device has been removed from Mozambican soil, the residual problems will be dealt with, not by international assistance, but by the Mozambican police.

According to the director of the IND, Alberto Augusto, since 2000 about 214,700 land mines have been removed and destroyed. 

The final push was given in the National Mine Action Plan for 2008-2014 under which 77,893 anti-personnel mines, 8,499 anti-group mines, and 136 anti-tank mines were destroyed.

Over this six year period, 3,330 areas covering 55.49 million square metres were cleared of mines.

The United Nations interim resident coordinator in Maputo, Bettina Maas, congratulated Mozambique for clearing the entire country of mines much earlier than many had thought possible. 

Just 20 years ago, she recalled, there were voices predicting that the demining of Mozambique would take 50 or 100 years.

“The declaration of Mozambique as a country free of land mines is a monumental conquest”, Maas declared. “It is a victory not only for Mozambique, but for the international community and particularly the movement working to outlaw anti-personnel land mines acress the globe.”