International Trust Fund for Demining and Mine Victims Assistance
The International Trust Fund for Demining and Mine Victims
Assistance (International Trust Fund - ITF),
was founded as an agency for assistance in demining BiH and has extended its activities
to other interested countries within the framework of the Stability Pact
- in 1999 to Croatia and last year to Kosovo and Albania.
Through the Stability Pact, ITF has obtained the role of the
central agency for humanitarian demining in Southeast Europe.
To date, ITF has collected more than 102 million USD from 24
countries and the EU. The donors are Austria, BiH, Belgium, Canada,
Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, EU, France, Germany, Hungary,
Ireland, Japan, Korea, Kuwait, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Norway,
Qatar, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom and
USA.
To date, ITF has thus demined more than 31.4 million square metres
of contaminated land in the region of Southeast Europe. In BiH alone,
it has cleared more than half of all the land cleared to date, in
Croatia the ITF is among the most important foreign partners, in
Albania the leading agency for demining, and it has also done much in
demining Kosovo, which has now been declared as a territory cleared of
known minefields by international standards. The programme of demining
in Macedonia is similarly taking place successfully, and in recent
months also the demining of the Yugoslav-Serbian border by Vukovar and
Dubrovnik, and removing unexploded bombs in Belgrade and Subotica.
ITF strengthens the principle of building national structures in
mine affected countries, capable of gradually taking over
responsibility for demining. The ITF provides training and joint
projects and is thus developing cooperation among countries in the
region. Mine affected countries from other regions have also expressed
interest. The donors thus recently supported the commitment of ITF to
the Caucasian countries: Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and
cooperation is also set up with some of the programmes of anti-mine
activity in Afghanistan.
A smaller percentage of donations is also directed to mine
victims. Rehabilitation in Slovenia takes place in the Centre for
Rehabilitation of Mine Victims. To date, 689 patients from the SEE
region have been included through ITF rehabilitation programmes.
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