Cambodia Needs 138 mln USD to Achieve 2025 Mine-free Target: Official
Ly Thuch, first vice president of the Cambodian Mine Action and Victim Assistance Authorities technical working group meeting on mine action in Phnom Penh. Photo: CMAA
- By Xinhua News Agency
- April 5, 2023 9:45 AM
PHNOM PENH -- Cambodia needs 138 million U.S. dollars for the next two years to achieve its mine-free target by 2025, Ly Thuch, first vice president of the Cambodian Mine Action and Victim Assistance Authorities (CMAA), said on Tuesday.
"Of this sum, if the Cambodian government provides 30 million U.S. dollars for each year for 2024 and 2025 as it did in 2023, we will have 60 million dollars of the 138 million dollars," he said during a technical working group meeting on mine action in Phnom Penh.
Thus, he said, the Southeast Asian country is looking to international donors to contribute another 78 million dollars for this humanitarian work for 2024 and 2025.
"To this end, we welcome any announcements regarding fresh funding," Thuch said. "With your generous support, we can achieve our National Mine Action Strategy vision of 2025 as well as the Ottawa Treaty obligation to make Cambodia mine-free."
The official said the above-mentioned budget is for clearing the remaining landmines on an area of 563 square kilometers only, as the kingdom still needs other funds to remove 1,322 square kilometers of land contaminated with cluster munitions and other explosive remnants of war (ERWs).
Cambodia is one of the countries worst affected by landmines, cluster munitions and ERWs. An estimated 4 million to 6 million landmines and other munitions had been left over from three decades of war and internal conflicts that ended in 1998.
According to Yale University, between 1965 and 1973, the United States dropped some 230,516 bombs on 113,716 sites in Cambodia.
Thuch said from 1992 to 2022, roughly 2,579 square kilometers of explosive hazard-contaminated land has been released for productive use such as agriculture, resettlement, roads, schools and other social infrastructure.
According to the CMAA, from 1979 to 2022, landmine, cluster bomb and ERW explosions had claimed 19,818 lives and either injured or amputated 45,187 others in Cambodia.
