PUSHING FOR PROGRESS Disability and Mine Action in Cambodia
Youth are often the first in a society to demonstrate resilience in the face of adversity, and nowhere is this as true as in Cambodia. These are the personal stories of youth who, faced with challenges that could be both physically and emotionally crippling, are finding creative solutions that create new opportunities for their generation. Here we read about young emerging leaders who are helping not only their own communities, but who also have best practices to offer their peers in other contexts who are rebuilding their countries.
by Joe van Troost G
rowing up is pretty tough, no matter where you are in the world. But try to imagine growing up with a Danger! Mines!
sign right in front of your house or down the street, or in the forest or mountains near your hut where you go looking for firewood. Try to imagine waking up and seeing your dad or mom, or both, missing a limb or damaged from a landmine or bomb and then watch them struggle to farm, recycle metal or just try to get around. Or imagine looking at yourself when you wake up and your hand or foot is gone, and then have to work in the fields or, if you’re lucky enough, go to school but face the mob of kids that look down on you. The sad reality is that many children and young people around the world live in this kind of situation. But that does not stop some of them from trying to improve their lives and the lives of others.
According to the report of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, the Landmine Monitor 2013, 3,628 casualties due to landmines and explosive remnants of war were recorded in 2012. Most of those were injuries but over 1,000 of them were deaths.[i]
are the lowest levels recorded since 1999. Worldwide, 78% of casualties were civilians, and 47% of those are children – most of them boys.[ii]
contaminated soil Herzegovina, Cambodia, Chad, Croatia,
The countries currently most affected by mine- include Afghanistan, Angola, Bosnia and Iran,
Thailand and Turkey, which are in the “more than 100 km2 category.[iii]
Iraq, Morocco, ”
The Monitor has a comprehensive list of countries
and their various states of progress, or lack thereof, in regards to mine contamination and clearance and set in terms of the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty. This article, however, will focus on Cambodia.
In 2012, I took part in a CIDA-funded International Youth Internship Program (IYIP) through Mines Action Canada. I was deployed to Cambodia with a fellow Canadian to provide support for the Cambodian Campaign to Ban Landmines and Cluster Munitions (CCBLCM), spearheaded by Sister Denise Coghlan of Jesuit Refugee Services.
The good news, if you can call it that, is that these
In the six months I spent in and around the Siem Reap area, I assisted on a variety of projects focused mainly on what is known in mine action circles as victim assistance, working with people with disabilities (PWDs). This included a range of activities such as providing wheelchairs, latrines, emergency food and/or medicine supplies to rural PWDs and advocating local and state-level officials to improve the lives of PWDs according to international treaties such as the Mine Ban Treaty and Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The major project we worked on was a pilot project that I’m happy to say is on-going. We developed surveys to interview PWDs and their village leaders to find out where PWDs were living, what their social, economic and health status was like, and if they had access to services like education and health centres. We also wanted to find out what the village leaders were doing to comply with Cambodian and international laws regarding the rights of PWDs and their access to society and the economy. I should note that while we looked for and assisted people who acquired their disability due to a landmine or ERW incident
(explosive remnants of war, which includes
grenades, bombs, rockets and other explosive items), we did not discriminate against someone who was disabled in any other way - birth, workplace or motor vehicle accident. In other words, we helped whomever we could however we could, regardless of their type of disability or how they got it.
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Youth as... Allies
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