清除阿富汗地雷 明星發起基金會

Actor Jeremy Renner, who played a bomb disposal expert in the Academy Award-winning 2009 war thriller "The Hurt Locker," was in Afghanistan this week to learn what the United Nations is doing to clear the country of landmines, the ultimate environmental hazard.

"I'm here to be educated," he said, "and then educate people about an issue that can be solved with the proper levels of funding."

Renner toured UN demining projects in Kabul, Bamyan and Bagram, took part in a mine risk education session with high school students, spoke with survivors of explosions and ventured onto a minefield.

"I'm a man of action and that's why I like what the United Nations is doing here, action - mine action," he said. "We are not just talking about it, but taking action to solve this problem."

Renner said he saw first-hand the benefits of the UN's activities, particularly in former minefields where farmers are now growing wheat, potatoes and other crops.

For the year starting in April, the Mine Action Programme of Afghanistan has set a funding target for mine clearance of US$242 million. To date, only $94 million has been secured against this target, leaving a shortfall of $148 million.

If the planned projects are completed, some 157 square kilometers of contaminated land could be returned to communities in a safe condition.

Throughout the country as of June 22, there were nearly 6,700 known landmines and other explosives in 2,127 communities spread across 654 square kilometers, according to UN figures.

So far this year, UN deminers have cleared or canceled 63 minefields and three battle areas. They destroyed more than 11,000 anti-personnel mines, over 400 anti-tank mines and nearly 400,000 explosive remnants of war in the process.

In Afghanistan, site of the world's oldest and largest mine action program, the number of casualties dropped from more than 100 per month in 2005 to less than 60 per month at the end of 2009, due to the destruction of large numbers of landmines, including 84,000 mines in 2008 alone, according to the United Nations Mine Action Service.

Yet new hazards continue to be found each year.

And on April 11, four deminers were killed and 17 others injured in an attack in Kandahar in the southern part of the country. The demining team was working with the Demining Agency for Afghanistan, a nongovernmental organization based in Kandahar.

"Mine action is a neutral humanitarian activity, which should not be confused with military operations in the country," said Haider Reza, program director of the Mine Action Coordination Centre of Afghanistan, which is supported by the government and the UN and provides planning, management and quality assurance for all mine action activities throughout the country.

The Ottawa Mine Ban Treaty bans all anti-personnel landmines and requires total clearance of mines from Afghanistan by a target date of 2013, but at this stage only 39 percent of the hazards have been removed.