Panel 2 Mine action on the ground: placing the people in the centre - - PDF document

Mine action on the ground: placing the people in the centre

The history of arms control and disarmament is marked by a succession of various treaties focusing on the weapons, trying to reduce the number of assets or the damages directly provoked by their use. But, unfortunately, the sequels of the presence of landmines are not limited to the physical and psychological injuries inflicted to the victims and their families, as painful as it can be. The human consequences of the death of a member of a family as those of the loss of an arm or a leg are obvious. Beyond that, landmines are a threat for the fragile economy of the affected families, communities and countries. In this matter, the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction marks an important step for the international humanitarian law. Its special achievement lies in the attention it pays to the affected populations. The treaty has induced actions that are not limited to what is described in its title: it includes among other campaigns related to the demining of the affected areas, medical assistance to the victims and support to the communities. These actions can be conducted by various actors like international organisations, national governments and NGOs. The panel will highlight a few aspects of the activities inspired by the so-called spirit of

• Ottawa. The challenges of the demining operations will be illustrated through the

experience of the Belgian contribution to UNIFIL and the removal of the minefields on the Blue Line, between Israel and Lebanon. Ban Advocates and Handicap International will focus on the needs of the victims, with the testimony of a mine survivor from Tajikistan, and will explain the comprehensive and cooperative approach needed to support the

• victims. But, as already explained, the societies (local communities, countries) are also

affected by the landmines, whose presence worsens the situation of already war-battered

• areas. This aspect will be set out by the Implementation Support Unit of the Ottawa

Convention.

Panel 2

Subsequently, he was transferred to the Infrastructure Management Service attached to the Belgian Forces in Germany where he assumed the responsibility to hand over all existing Belgian Infrastructure in the western sector to the German authorities. After a period of seven years with the Belgian Forces in Germany, he returned to his home country Belgium where he joined once again the operational side of the military and he was appointed to the 68th Combat Engineer Company in Helchteren. He accomplished the functions of Operations Officer and subsequently he became the deputy commander. Following his formation as a senior Officer in the Royal Higher Institute of Defence, he was assigned to become the Commander of a Combat Engineer Company within the 11th Engineer Battalion. Subsequently, in this same battalion, he was appointed to the function of officer responsible for operations and training for a three-year term. During this time he participated in a four-month NATO operation in Kosovo as commander of the engineer detachment attached to BELUKOS 7. In 2006, after graduating as a master in Political and Military Sciences from the Defence College at the Royal Military Academy, he stayed in the institute in order to teach engineer support to land operations to all officers attending advanced formation courses. From May till November 2012 Lieutenant-Colonel Philipsen was the Belgian National Contingent Commander attached to UNIFIL, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon. The Belgian contribution to this UN mission, BELUFIL, executes a demining mission within the framework of the Blue Line Marking process. Apart from being the National Contingent Commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Philipsen also worked in the Joint Headquarters UNIFIL, situated in Naqoura (South-Lebanon) in the J3 Combat Engineer Section. In this section he was responsible for the planning and monitoring of all demining activities alongside the Blue Line in South- Lebanon. On 14 December 2012 he was inaugurated as battalion commander of the 11th Engineer Battalion in Burcht in the vicinity of Antwerp (Belgium).

Lieutenant-Colonel Peter PHILIPSEN

Lieutenant-Colonel (GS) Peter Philipsen was born on the 30 March 1966 in Balen (Belgium). He graduated from the Royal Military Academy in 1989 with the 125th promotion ‘All Branches’ and received a master’s degree in Social and Military sciences. After completing his professional formation as an engineer officer in the Engineer School in Jambes (Namur) he was appointed to the unit of his choice, the 1 Engineer Battalion in Westhoven (Germany) where he stayed for four years executing different operational functions in a Combat Engineer Company.

Suddenly he heard a big explosion and when he woke up, he was in a bed at the hospital. He felt pain in his legs and saw they were covered with white stripes. The doctor advised him to stay quiet for a long while and not to carry any heavy things: it took him almost one year to recover. One day, at school, he argued with one of his classmates who hit his injured leg. The pain was so bad that he had to then go back to Dushanbe where he went through several surgeries. Unfortunately he could not be cured and the doctor said that amputation was needed. This was a traumatic experience and Umedjon felt really isolated; even his family was depressed when thinking about his future. After almost three years of treatment and recovery, Umedjon went back to school joining his old classmate in grade 9 and is now studying in Branch Technology University. In 2010, he met Mrs Reykhan Muminova in a summer camp for people with disabilities. She encouraged him to continue his education and to stay self-motivated. She also introduced him to Umarbek Pulodov, the executive director of the Tajik Campaign to Ban Landmines (TCBL) and Aziza Khakimova who proposed him to join the Ban Advocates project, which he did in 2011. They are still helping and encouraging him, together with the support of Handicap International, to get the most out of his participation in international and national conferences as well as national events as a member of the Ban Advocates team. “Today, I am advocating for a world free of mines and clusters. This not only means states have to support these conventions but also that they should have a specific focus on victim assistance because this is what really changes people’s lives. Getting medical care and being given the possibility to access education and employment will empower survivors and help them participate actively in society with equal rights and opportunities.”

Mr Umedjon NAIMOV

Mr Naimov, from Tajikistan, is a mine survivor. He was 12 years old when he lost his leg in a horrible accident in Khatlan, a province of

• Tajikistan. At the time he was in grade 5 at school and it was summer

holidays, which he was spending with his family at his grandmother’s. There, he met some other children on a football playground who were

• f the same age. The playground was near contaminated areas but no
• ne knew about it. He started playing with them but next to them there

were 3 other children who were playing with what happened to be a mine.

Besides advocacy, she also reaches out to Belgian and international media for groundbreaking reports published by Handicap International on the human impact of cluster munitions on civilians such as “Fatal Footprint” “Circle of Impact”, “Voices from the Ground”, “Armed Violence and Disability: The Untold Story”. As Handicap International she advocated for strong victim assistance provisions during the negotiating conference on cluster munitions in Dublin in 2008. Her advocacy work has included victims of cluster munitions, known as the “Ban Advocates”, a team of victims built, trained and supported by Handicap International since 2007, thanks to the support of the Belgian

• government. In 2011 mine survivors were included in the Ban Advocates project and in her

lobby work around the Mine Ban Treaty. Advocating with the survivors themselves required a specific strategy which she believed had to be personalised and strength-based. Still working towards the universalisation of these treaties, her lobby work also includes the implementation, in particular victim assistance, mine action support, reporting and disinvestment, in order to bring sustainable changes for the people on the ground. Her work as advocacy officer with Handicap International benefited from her experiences as communication officer within organisations working with people in the South, as spokesperson in the Belgian House of Representatives and as journalist. Her studies of Dutch and German languages and literature had brought her first to the cultural redaction of a Flemish newspaper, but her interest in politics encouraged her to switch to politics, in particular Foreign Policy and Development, Social Changes and Education. It was her experience as a teacher in pedagogical high schools and at the university that paved the way for her work as a journalist. At the Catholic University of Louvain her focus was Analysis

• f Literary Texts, European literature and Symbolism. She studied at the Catholic University of

Louvain (KU Leuven) and the Catholic University of Brussels (KUB).

Ms Hildegarde VANSINTJAN

Hildegarde Vansintjan has been working with Handicap International in Brussels since 2005. Her main task as advocacy

• fficer is lobbying towards a ban on cluster munitions in Belgium

and internationally within the framework of the Cluster Munition Coalition, for which Handicap International is a founding member.

Mr Kerry BRINKERT

Since January 2002, Kerry Brinkert has served as the Director of the Anti- Personnel Mine Ban Convention Implementation Support Unit (ISU). The ISU is the secretariat of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction. The ISU exists to support the States Parties to the Convention by doing the following: providing support to all States Parties through support to the Convention’s implementation machinery and

• ffice holders; providing support to individual States Parties, including by providing advice and

technical support on implementation and universalisation; communicating and providing information about the Convention; keeping records of the Convention’s formal and informal meetings; and, liaising and coordinating with relevant international organisations that participate in the work of the

• Convention. The ISU is directly accountable to the States Parties while being hosted by the Geneva

International Centre for Humanitarian Demining. The ISU is funded on a voluntary basis by the States Parties. Between 1998 and 2002, Kerry worked for the Mine Action Team of Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade where he served as the Section Head of Research, Policy and

• Communications. Kerry’s background is in policy analysis, having received a Master of Arts in

International Affairs from Ottawa's Norman Paterson School of International Affairs and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Calgary. Prior to commencing with work in the international arena, Kerry worked in the Office of the Premier of the Province of British Columbia (Canada) and for the Leader of the Official Opposition in the Province of Alberta (Canada). Kerry was born and grew up in Greater Vancouver.

After having followed the Candidate Senior Officer's Course, he is appointed to the staff of the 1st Mechanised Division as engineer operations officer. Following a mission at the SFOR Headquarters (Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina), he served as interim commander of the Engineers Section of the 1st Mechanised Division Staff. In January 2001, he became the 19th commanding officer of the 67th Engineer Company. In June 2002, he joined with his unit the 4th Engineer Battalion, where he served as

• perations officer. In May 2003, he participated as detachment commander in the B-FAST

assistance intervention after the earthquake that struck northern Algeria. At the end of the Advanced Staff Course (119th division, 2004-2005), he joined the Air Deployment Support Centre (ADSC) as second-in-command in order to transform this unit of the Air Component into a new inter-services unit, the Field Accommodation Unit (FAU). He commanded some detachments of the FAU during the deployments of the Belgian contingents of EUFOR in the Democratic Republic of Congo (May-June 2006), of UNIFIL in South Lebanon (September- October 2006) and of the headquarters of the EUFOR Tchad operation in 2008. In August 2008, he became commanding officer of the FAU. In October-November 2010, he oversaw the dismantling of the Belgian facilities of the Camp Scorpion (South Lebanon) by his unit. At the same period, he was entrusted with the function of national contingent commander

• f the Belgians within UNIFIL.

He was appointed to follow a training course in security policy from October 2011 to June 2012 at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy. He was subsequently appointed to the RHID as director of the Centre for Security and Defence Studies.

Lieutenant-Colonel Jean-Albert LEGROS

Lieutenant-Colonel Jean-Albert Legros was born in Namur on 29 November 1962. He began his military career in 1980 and after graduating from the Royal Military Academy (Master of Military and Social Sciences), he joined the 67th Engineer Company in 1987, where he held several functions. He then joined the School

• f Engineers, where he trained cadets before taking over the

command of a company.

• Prof. Em. Yvan BAUDOIN

Professor Emeritus Yvan Baudoin was the former head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Polytechnic Faculty

• f the Belgian Royal Military Academy. His educational

background includes studies in Electro-Mechanical Engineering (Polytechnics, Brussels), a Post-Master in Automatic Engineering (Free University, Brussels) and a Post-Master in High Statistical Studies (University Paris VI). He was also conferred a Doctor Honoris Causa from the Technical University of Iasi, Romania. He held, and still holds, several functions in a number of associations, working groups and projects, to which he contributes actively. As such he was president of the Belgian Society

• f Mechanical and Environmental Engineering and he is the general secretary of the

Belgian Committee for Theoretical and Applied Mechanics. More importantly in regard to today’s colloquium, Professor Emeritus Baudoin is the head

• f the International Advanced Robotics Programme Working Group on Robotics for

Humanitarian Demining and Risk Applications. He currently acts as coordinator of the FP7 Cooperative Project TIRAMISU (Toolbox Implementation for Removal of Antipersonnel Mines, Submunitions and UXO).

Closing Remarks