In 1995, Operation USA was determined to help the world realize the importance of urgently developing a safer and more effective way to remove landmines - particularly in poor countries ravaged by warfare and civil conflict. We promoted de-mining as a crucial part of sustainable development in war-torn countries. In 1995, it was reported that up to 25,000 people a year were killed or maimed by anti-personnel landmines in 65 countries. Of particular importance to Operation USA was the fact that many of these countries were heavily mined with non-metallic mines that are difficult to detect further complicating the removal by countries trying to recover.
The goal of Operation Landmine was to advocate the transfer of advanced technologies from military and industrial use to humanitarian de-mining efforts. The advent of rapid detection could have made complete mine clearance viable in years rather than the decades or centuries currently estimated. For example, Cambodia has 1600 square miles of land under landmines yet only de-mines 10 square miles per year. At current rates, it will take 160 years to de-mine.
As a result of our advocacy efforts, research budgets in many of the world’s governments increased and barriers to the transfer of sensitive technology were lowered. These efforts also earned us the highest humanitarian acknowledgement: we shared the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for our work as part of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.
How our advocacy changed policies…
While visiting NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Cal Tech University in California, Operation USA learned about a radar device used to map the surface of Venus. That radar, when mounted on a small plane from 1500 feet can penetrate the earth up to 8 inches and possibly detect buried munitions.
Armed with that knowledge, we then visited Alamos and Lawrence Livermore and persuaded them to send delegations of scientists to Cambodia to appraise the engineering challenges inherent in finding small non-metallic landmines, 10 million of which were buried in Cambodia. Their mission was to bring to bear each laboratories’ technology to help solve this problem.
When word spread of these Operation USA visits, there was a great deal of commitment from both Congress and other Government departments, thus research budgets were increased. If it were not for our advocacy and these field visits, the budget increase would very likely not have happened.
While we were focused on our advocacy efforts, in the field countries began to organize landmine action centers to tackle the problem in a more organized fashion. What had been an exclusively military activity was transformed to a key element of a country’s development. Obviously, if land is littered with landmines, it is impossible to produce crops.
From advocacy to financial support …
Having successfully launched many research efforts, Operation USA turned our attention back to mine victims’ prosthetic programs and light agricultural development. Operation USA served as a consultant to the Cambodia Landmine Action Center in its development of livelihoods for landmine victims so they could reintegrate into the economy. We also made small grants to local organizations like Cambodia Trust and the King Sihanouk hospital, a surgical hospital that was redoing the stumps of mine victims to better fit prosthesis to their legs and arms.
Today, Operation USA is continuing our focus of supporting prosthetic and livelihood programs in rural areas in Cambodia, Vietnam and Indonesia. For more information about these programs, click the above-listed country names.
The information learned at NASA was not only applicable to landmine detection, but was even more useful to help locate scarce water sources deep inside the earth. For more information about Operation USA’s water resources program, please click here. |
