Insurgency: Federal Govt Launches Humanitarian Mines Action Committee

Following the directive by President Muhammadu Buhari, the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development has inaugurated Humanitarian Mines Action Committee (MAC) to save citizens in the North East from the threat of explosive devices.

The minister, Sadiya Umar Farouq, while inaugurating the committee yesterday in Abuja, said it was set up to come up with an action solution to the threat of explosive ordnances and also handle the impact of mines on the affected communities.

Umar Farouq said the National Humanitarian Mine Action Committee would eventually transform into National Mines Action Centre which would develop national capacity for humanitarian mines action.

She said: “When an armed conflict is over, the battlefields are often littered with explosive debris. Much of this debris is still dangerous, in particular stocks of weapons left behind by combatants and explosive munitions that were fired but failed to go off as intended.

“As seen in other parts of the world, long after conflicts have ended, explosive ordnance could continue to kill, injure and impact the daily life of affected communities.”

Each year, she lamented that large numbers of civilians were killed and injured by “explosive remnants of war”.

She said the ministry had trained 1,830 master crafts persons across the 36 states of the federation for six months.