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In Cambodia, Land mines are Everywhere

Anyone who has travelled to Cambodia since the late 1990s has probably encountered land mine amputees, often more than one. Sometimes, it seems like they are everywhere. Some of them besiege tourists for a handout outside well-known sites such as the Tuol Sleng genocide museum in Phnom Penh, while others have formed small Khmer folk music groups that busk near the temples of Angkor Wat. But the other reason is that they are virtually everywhere. Statistically, Cambodia has a higher per-capita number of land mine accident survivors than any other mine-affected country. One in every 200 Cambodians has suffered injuries from such an explosion.

Cambodia’s reconstruction and development after three decades of war has been severely hampered by the ubiquitous presence of wartime UXO and land mines. Conservative estimates put the number of land mines there at two million, which means there is at least one anti-personnel device for every five Cambodians. In rural communities, the presence of land mines and land mine amputees go hand in hand, compounding the challenges to development. But it does not have to be that way.

Clear Path International has found that targeted development or humanitarian mine action aid for such communities can bring about positive change, turning development challenges into opportunities. After working in Cambodia since 2001, providing vocational skills training for land mine accident survivors in the eastern province of Kampong Cham, Clear Path International and its local partner, Cambodian Volunteers for Community Development, switched their focus to the more heavily mined province of Battambang near the border with Thailand. Here, in the heart of the notorious K5 mine belt along the arc of the long border where Khmer Rouge troops fought government troops long after they were forced from power elsewhere in the country, we met hundreds of amputees struggling to get by as rice farmers in a very fertile but dangerous place.

With the financial support of the U.S. State Department, the McKnight Foundation and the former United Nations Association USA’s Adopt-A-Minefield program, Clear Path International built a rice mill to help pave the way for economic self-empowerment far from the tourist attractions where these farmers’ counterparts could only beg or busk for money. The half hectare for the plant and seven hectares for a planned demonstration farm were co-purchased by Clear Path International and cleared by the Mines Advisory Group of the United Kingdom whose de-miners found dozens of land mines and pieces of UXO on the site.

So, in a tiny village called Seam in the district of Bavel not far from the Thai border, there is now a rice processing factory that buys paddy from an ever-growing cooperative of amputee farmers who also receive training in farming techniques and irrigation, micro loans, storage and crop seeds. The ultimate goal is to generate enough revenue from the sale of rice that there is money left over to support other training programmes for non-farm enterprise, such as mechanics, sewing and electronics. The co-op now has 150 households, representing 750 family members. These households are divided into smaller groups of five that share farming tools, make trips to the market for each other and even cover each other’s loan payments to retain their collective creditworthiness.

Ream Loung is a member of one such group. In 1983, he was 23 when he stepped on a land mine and lost his left leg below the knee. In the quarter century that followed, he started a family, raised three children and lost his wife to sudden illness—all while trying to make a living as a rice farmer in the heavily contaminated K5 mine belt. Until he joined the co-op, Ream was forced to borrow money from loan sharks to invest in his crops or send his children to Thailand to search for work, mostly unsuccessfully. Because he had no place or way to store his crop, he was forced to sell all his rice at harvest time when prices are the lowest. He worked in isolation without any means to share with others the many daily farming tasks, let alone his struggles as an amputee. In 2007, after hearing about the rice mill project benefitting land mine accident survivors in his district, Luon joined its cooperative and began receiving its services, including a $250 springtime loan to prepare his crop. The program let him repay the loan after harvest at a fraction of the interest charged by other lenders. Meanwhile, he stores his rice at the mill after harvest, shares tools with the other families in the co-op, receives training in better cultivation methods and gets much better prices for his rice because its quality is better and he can sell it in the months after the harvest has ended when prices rise steadily. Today, Ream is debt-free except for what he owes the project, whose co-op members have a near-perfect credit history. ‘The program has given me and my children a better future,’ says the 49-year-old disabled farmer from Pau Takeav village.