The international campaign to fight landmines - famously championed by the late Princess Diana who crossed a minefield in central Angola - has been forced into acute need due to an 80 percent cut in funding by the British Government. The UK funding of almost 125 million will drop to just 25 million over the next three years, in a disaster that humanitarian organisations called the collapse in support of People in South Sudan, Zimbabwe, Myanmar, Iraq, Lebanon and Vietnam.
After Diana's footsteps, Harry, 37, visited Angola two years ago and spoke about the role that the UK played in clearing landmines through funding and the expertise brought by UK specialist organisations such as the HALO Trust and Mines Advisory Group. He also said that he believed Diana would have continued fighting to rid the world of landmines if she was still alive. According to the annual Landmine Monitor report, Darren Cormack, CEO of Mine s Advisory Group MAG believes that while pragmatic and taking into account fiscal challenges, 80 percent of the cuts feel disproportionate. Fifteen people are killed or injured by landmines every day and at least half of all civilian casualties in 2020 are children. Support from the British Government allows people to build houses on safe land, have safe routes to schools and allow land to be used productively for farming which communities depend on to feed their children and earn a living. In Lebanon, 150 people will be redundant.
The Landmine Monitor report, released in November, said there were exceptionally high numbers of deaths in 2020, with more than a 20 percent increase on the previous year - with 2,492 killed and 4,561 wounded. These innocent deaths are a result of mines that were laid decades ago. For example, in Iraq, an area of contaminated land larger than London is awashed with mines from the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, the Gulf War, the 2003 US-led invasion and the Isis occupation of 2014. Cormack said it was not right that children are being burned on the way to school. That shouldn't be the kind of deadly equation that people have to calculate. He added that we want to make places where people don't feel like they have to flee abroad, and I think our work contributes to that, which can be a concern for the public. A Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office spokeswoman told Express.co. Over the last three years, UK investment has cleared mines from 406 million square metres of land, but the far-reaching effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the UK s economy forced them to take tough but necessary decisions, including aid reductions. Andrew Mitchell, the former Secretary of State for International Development and Tory MP, told Express.co. It feels like a political rather than an economic decision. He believes the amount for borrowing was one percent of the borrowing last year for Covid. Mitchell described mine clearing as the finest tradition of British humanitarian aid and is an important part of making Britain safer and more prosperous. The UK was one of the founding signatories of the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty. He added that many ex British military people were building new lives and careers with their expertise provided by the British government. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss is expected to be reviewing the decision on cuts taken by her predecessor, Dominic Raab. Since the review was announced two months ago, no word has been given. Mr Cormack said: "We have seen more open listening from this Foreign Secretary than the previous one, and I think that the charitable sector has seen a more open listening posture." South-eastern Asia is a huge area where post-Brexit trade partnerships are being developed and complement trade partnerships in places like Vietnam aid cuts need not happen, according to Cormack.