EU continues to support the demining process in BiH

On the occasion of marking the International Mine Action Day, the central event was held on April 4 2014 in Visoko with participation of officials, donors, international organisations and non-governmental organisations.

This year the International Mine Action Day was marked with the message “One step further to a safe environment, to development and prosperity of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) on its path towards the European Union”.

In BiH about 157 square kilometres have been risk-freed by technical methods, and 65,000 mines and 51,000 pieces of unexploded ordnance (UXO) have been found. Unfortunately, 19 years after the war, BiH is still facing a very severe problem of mine contamination, and ranks among the most vulnerable countries in the world.

Head of Operations Section for Social Development, Civil Society and Cross Border Cooperation in European Union (EU) Delegation to BiH, Nataila Dianiskova highlighted EU readiness to continue support the process of demining in BiH.

„Right now the EU have outgoing projects in the amount of about 7 Million EUR“ stressed Dianiskova, emphasizing that since 1996 EU had allocated 64 Million EUR to finance 61 project of anti-mine action that have been implemented across the country.

Director of the Centre for Mine Action in BiH (BHMAC), Dusan Gavran pointed out that in BiH International Day Against Mines is celebrated traditionally, for the ninth year in a row, and in order to speed up mine action in the country BHMAC has engaged in a new project of reduction of risk areas with targeted technical survey, which is being implemented with the support of the EU, which for this purpose has provided 1,2 Million EUR.

Visoko mayor, Amra Babic addressed the participants stating that in the past year in this municipality with the support of the EU one of mine action projects was realized.

Participants were also able to attend the demonstration of humanitarian demining, which was performed by members of the Armed Forces.

The seriousness of this problem confirms the data that since 1996 in BiH mine injured 1,710 people, of which 245 children. When carrying out humanitarian demining 114 deminers were injured, 46 of them fatally.

Only in 2014 to date 11 people were injured, three of them fatally.

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