Cambodia’s National Centre for Peacekeeping Forces Management Mines
and Explosive Remnants of War Clearance (NPMEC) has obtained significant
achievements since its establishment 10 years ago.
According to
the NPMEC’s statistics, from 1993 to 2014 the centre cleared 416 sq.km
of land contaminated by bombs and mines, and removed and disarmed
180,000 mines and hundreds of thousands of pieces of unexploded
explosives left from the wartime.
Thanks to the efforts, the number of wartime mine victims in Cambodia was reduced to 110 in 2014 from over 4,300 people in 1996.
Over
the past decade, Cambodia has deployed 2,675 soldiers to join the
United Nations peacekeeping force, mainly involving in bomb and mine
clearance in eight African countries. In the mission, Cambodian soldiers
cleared 71 sq.km of land, destroyed over 3,300 mines and thousands of
pieces of unexploded explosives.
Cambodia is one of the countries
in the world most severely affected by bombs and mines left by the war.
An estimated four million to six million pieces of wartime unexploded
explosive ordnances. From 1979 to now, over 19,000 people were killed
and nearly 45,000 injured.-VNA