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UN / MINE ACTION AWARNESS ADVANCER
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STORY: UN / MINE ACTION AWARENESS ADVANCER
TRT: 2.07
SOURCE: UNTV
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 3 APRIL 2007, NEW YORK CITY
1. Wide shot, exterior, United Nations headquarters
2. Wide shot, press conference
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Jean Marie Guehenno, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations:
"We strongly believe these munitions really inflict a lot of damage on civilian populations and we see it first hand as peacekeepers."
4. Cutaway, journalists
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Jean Marie Guehenno, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations:
" There's some fifty percent in casualty rates, which has enabled millions of people in mine affected countries to resume their normal lives by making land safe and by allowing children to walk safely to school, by cleaning roads to transportation and commerce."
FILE - UNICEF - DATE UNKNOWN - LAOS
6. Zoom out, mine clearance team scanning for antipersonnel landmines
7. Med shot, landmines in ground
8. Wide shot, landmine exploded
FILE - UNTV - TAJIKISTAN - JUNE 2006
9. Various shots, victims of landmines at the National Orthopedic Centre
FILE - UNICEF - LEBANON - FEBRUARY 2007
10. Wide shot, olive trees
11. Med shot, cluster bomb underneath olive trees
12. Close up, cluster bomb
13. Med shot, demining team clearing olive field
Landmines and explosive remnants of war continue to kill or injure 15,000 people a year. The overwhelming majority are civilians who trigger these devices years or even decades after a conflict ends. In some countries, such as Afghanistan, the majority of victims are under the age of 18.
According to the UN Mine Action Service, mine action programmes and the anti-personnel mine-ban treaty or "Ottawa Convention," contributed to a reduction in the annual number of casualties from an estimated 26,000 10 years ago to between 15,000 and 20,000 today. The current casualty rates are dramatically lower, but are still unacceptably high.
Fourteen United Nations agencies, programmes, departments and funds provide mine action services in dozens of countries.
Mine action includes finding and destroying landmines and explosive remnants of war, assisting victims, teaching people how to remain safe in a mine-affected environment, advocating for universal participation in international treaties like the Ottawa Convention, and destroying stockpiled landmines.