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Swiss
Rotarian Leaves Behind Anti-land-mine Legacy
According to United Nations estimates, some 2,000 people are killed or maimed by land mine explosions each month. More than 110 million active mines – many of which remain active for 50 years – are still scattered in 68 countries.
Most land mine victims receive little help or therapy, and face a life of pain and poverty.
In 1995, Stirnemann, along with Walter Limacher, then governor of District 1990 (Germany), and fellow members of the Rotary Club of Burgdorf, Switzerland, founded Mine-Ex to address the threat and problems caused by these weapons.
Stirnemann drew many Rotarians and Rotary clubs to the cause. Today, Mine-Ex carries out numerous service projects, including providing medical and orthopedic care for land mine victims, training local prosthesis technicians, supporting a worldwide ban on the production and distribution of mines, and helping with the removal of land mines.
It also provides annual financial support of SwF 500,000 (US$457,000) to assist approximately 30,000 land mine victims and support other relief efforts.
“Anti-personnel mines are not designed to kill people, but to seriously injure and to permanently disable,” says Gerhard Selmayr, Mine-Ex chair.
The organization pursues four goals: 1. Medical and orthopedic care of mine victims (production and fitting of implants, artificial limbs, and so forth) 2. Training of local prosthesis technicians 3. Support of activities for a worldwide ban of the production and distribution of anti-personnel mines 4. Support for the removal of land mines
Since 1997, Mine-Ex has worked closely with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to equip thousands of injured people with artificial limbs and to train local technicians, many of them amputees themselves.
While the Swiss Rotarians concentrate their work in Cambodia, German Rotarians provide help in Georgia and Central Asia.
“Wissen gegen Minen” (Knowledge against Mines) is another association fighting against land mines. This group, also supported by Rotarians, concentrates on knowledge transfer, which they do by using the Internet to teach mine removal methods.
One focus of the organization is to provide information in regional languages. In cooperation with the Institute of Technology in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, for instance, the information is distributed in the country’s main language, Khmer.
Despite extensive mine removal programs, says Selmayr, it will take decades to clean up the soil in war and post-war regions, a tedious – and dangerous – task carried out with metal detectors, search dogs, and removal devices.
There is still a lot of work waiting for Mine-Ex
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Rotarian
and surgeon Hans Stirnemann, who died in November 2007 following a
traffic accident, devoted his life to promoting the ban of land
mines and was an advocate for the innocent people injured by them.
He had witnessed the devastation caused by land mines while working
for the International Red Cross in the 1990s in a Cambodian refugee
camp in Thailand and at Red Cross hospitals in Sudan and Pakistan.