The work of the non-governmental National Association for Humanitarian Demining has been launched in Ukraine, its head Meri Hakobyan said on Monday during the presentation of the association.
“The key mission of the association will be to promote the rapid and professional clearance of Ukraine’s territories of explosive hazards with the involvement of all interested stakeholders, including mine clearance equipment manufacturers, accredited demining operators, and government agencies,” she said.
Among the main directions of Hakobyan’s activity she singled out joining efforts and communication with state authorities on humanitarian demining, development of recommendations on improvement of normative-legal support in the sphere of humanitarian demining, assistance in improving the quality of professional training of industry specialists, development, discussion and making proposals on reasonable types of classifiers, standards, operational reliability and safety of demining, raising public awareness,
The primary task of the Association will be the preparation of the state professional standard of the new profession “Humanitarian Demining Deminer”, as well as the creation of a system and methodology for training such deminers, preparation of amendments to the law of Ukraine on “Mine Action” and communication with the media.
As Deputy Minister of Economy Ihor Bezkaravaynyy emphasized, the National Association for Humanitarian Demining is an initiative coming from business and civil society and may become a precondition for the formation of a demining market in the state.
In particular, he said, there are currently 32 humanitarian demining operators in the country, of which about 20 are Ukrainian in the status of Limited Liability Companies.
“This shows that the Ukrainian business goes into the sphere of demining, is ready to invest resources, money, to develop in this direction and develop the market,” – said the Deputy Minister.
In turn, the Ambassador of Japan in Ukraine Kuninori Matsuda said that one of the priorities of the Japanese government is precisely the provision of assistance to Ukraine in the field of humanitarian demining.
“We have been working with the Cambodian demining center for 25 years. We have developed many methodologies and will share our own developments and technologies with Ukraine … Japan will support the entire Ukrainian demining sector until the last mine in Ukraine is cleared,” he said.
He recalled that the Japanese government has already transferred to Ukraine 30 special tractors, dozens of wagons and pickup trucks to locate mines and another 22 special mine clearance vehicles will be transferred in June this year.
Ruslan Beregulya, head of the Main Directorate of Mine Action of the Defense Ministry, said that 950 people have been affected by explosive objects since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. Of these, 289 have died and 661 have been injured or maimed.
