Jordan has long suffered the negative impacts of landmines. Landmines were planted in Jordan during the 1948 partition of Palestine, during the 1967-69 Arab-Israeli conflict and during the civil war of 1970. Rich agricultural lands have remained uncultivated, irrigation and hydro projects delayed and historical and world heritage sites unexplored. It is estimated that roughly 500.000 (8%)* of the population are effected by the presence of landmines, the majority whom are women and children.
With a $1 million funding from the Norwegian government, the NPA established a mine action program in south Jordan, which started in February 2006. The objective is to help Jordan fulfil its commitments to the Ottawa Convention and become mine free by 2009. NPA is assisting the National Committee for Demining and Rehabilitation (NCDR) in clearing the minefields in Wadi Araba, a continuous minefield stretching from the Dead Sea down to the Red Sea along the Israeli border. As of January 2008, 50.000 mines have been claired in the Wadi Araba region, which is believed to be totally free of mines by February 2008.
The focus now turns to the Jordanian-Syrian border area, where there has already been conveied a technical survey, mapping out the area that needs to be cleared of mines.
As a signatory to the Ottawa Convention, Jordan seeks to be the first Arab country to be declared free of mines by 2009. The primary object of the mine project is to eliminate the impact of landmines from the lives of Jordanians and safeguard their future livelihoods.
The Norwegian People's Aid has specialised in humanitarian mine action activities since they started their first mine action project in 1992. It has worked with mine action in 16 countries around the world, and has become one of the leading NGOs in the field of humanitarian mine action.
For more information on this project, please visit the website of The Norwegian People's Aid.
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*Based on data collected from the Government sources and the Royal Engineering Corps.