Mine Risk Education

Despite the threat of landmines hidden in the ground, children and adults in mine-contaminated areas still must live their lives. They have to fetch wood and drinking water, walk to school, conduct business, farm land, visit neighbors and play with friends. They need to know how to take the proper precautions.

Mine risk education (MRE) is a key component of mine action. UNICEF defines mine risk education as “a process that promotes the adoption of safer behaviors by at-risk groups and links affected communities and other mine-action components.”

MRE differs from advocacy to ban landmines because it specifically targets people in mine affected areas with the goal of educating them to avoid becoming victims of landmines. Most mine clearance organizations that Adopt-A-Minefield supports are informally involved in MRE as part of their demining activities. Prior to clearing a site, they must explain to the local community what they are doing, to ensure the safety of the community during clearance. At times they can not clear all mine-affected land within a given community so they must mark remaining mined land and educate the community that while some land has been cleared, some land still remains “off limits.” Adopt-A-Minefield’s support for demining operations includes this kind of MRE.

The following components are essential for Mine Risk Education:

Community Liaison Activity

Community liaisons make sure that the people in the communities know about demining activities and are involved in the process.

Community liaisons act as the information conduit between the local community and the deminers. They get information from the local community about the affected areas to help humanitarian deminers with their surveys. They also make sure that the people in the communities know about demining activities and are involved in the process. Merely handing over post-clearance documentation to a community when an area has been cleared is not enough.

Public Education

Target audiences for MRE include

• the “unaware” (people who do not know about the danger of mines),
• the “uninformed” (people who know about mines but do not know about mine-safe behavior),
• the “reckless” (people who know about mine-safe behavior but ignore it)
• the “intentional” (people who have do not have any other option but to intentionally adopt unsafe behavior).

Depending on the knowledge base of a particular community, people are informed about the dangers of landmines and UXO, shown safe behavior, or taught mine-safe skills. Educational methods are employed according to age, gender, literacy, and the scale of the awareness campaign.

Public Education can take place in intimate settings between friends and family or more broadly with health professionals, religious and community leaders, women’s and youth organizations, development workers, and government officials.

 Small media, such as posters, cassettes, leaflets, brochures, slide sets, video, flip charts, flash cards, T-shirts, badges and loudspeakers, and mass media, such as newspapers, magazines, comic books, and cinema are used to support larger communication initiatives. Traditional media such as performance arts are used to illustrate and convey information in an entertaining way, often aimed specifically at children.

More information on MRE can be found at the UNICEF site.