Cambodian Red Cross - assisting the vulnerable though the provision of health services, disaster management and promotion of humanitarian values.

BACKGROUND

In country heavily contaminated with mines and unexploded ordnance (UXO), mine/UXO casualty data is seen as an essential element of the effective targeting and prioritization of often limited resources, particularly in the areas of mine/UXO education, mine/UXO clearance and mine/UXO victim assistance.

CMVIS staff member gather data from a land mine victim.

Since 1994, the Cambodia Mine/UXO Victim Information System (CMVIS) collects stores and disseminates information relating to mine/UXO casualties in Cambodia.
Since 2005, CMVIS also provides victim assistance and mine/UXO risk education services to affected communities.

The project is managed jointly by the Cambodian Red Cross and Handicap International Belgium.

In 2006, the project was supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland, the Belgian Development Cooperation, the British Department for International Development (DFID) and UNICEF with a total budget of $ 119, 546.

PROJECT NETWORK
The system covers all provinces of Cambodia utilizing 15 full-time data gatherers and 3 half time data gatherers in 17 provinces/municipalities and volunteer data gatherers in the remaining 7 provinces/ municipalities.

GOAL
To maintain and develop a sustainable national mine/UXO victim information system to support a reduction in mine/UXO casualties in Cambodia.

SPECIFIC BJECTIVES
The specific objectives of CMVIS are:

•	To maintain and coordinate a sustainable information-gathering and referral network for mine/UXO casualties in Cambodia;
•	To analyse and disseminate mine/UXO information nationally and internationally;
•	To support the capacity and development of the Cambodian Red Cross in undertaking the activities independently ofHandicap International.

OUTPUTS
Information provided by the project has facilitated:

•	The discovery and location of new or unknown mined areas, through the village level identification of mine/UXO accident sites
•	The design of appropriate mine/UXO risk education, through the identification of behavior leading to mine/UXO accidents, and the type of device causing the incident.
•	The ability to better help determine priorities for different mine action programme components in different locations (mine/UXO risk education, survey, clearance, explosive ordnance disposal)
•	The improvement of Humanitarian Mine Action project cost-effectiveness through closer targeting.
•	The monitoring and evaluation of mine/UXO action activities.
•	Increased awareness of the mine/UXO problem facing the Cambodian people, amongst the national and international communities.
•	Fundraising amongst mine action and victim assistance agencies throughout Cambodia in the interests of mine victims and mine affected communities.
•	Involvement with emergency assistance to mine/UXO casualties.

To date, the primary end users of the data have been:

•	The Cambodian Mine Action Centre (CMAC)
•	The Cambodian Mine Action and Victim Assistance Authority (CMAA)
•	Disability Action Council (DAC)
•	Mine Advisory Group (MAG)
•	Handicap International (HI)
•	Veterans International (VI)
•	American Red Cross (ARM)
•	World Vision International
•	UNICEF
•	UNDP/UN Agencies
•	The Halo Trust
•	The European Union and Commission
•	The Mine Action Planning Unit (MAPU)
•	The Cambodian Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL)
•	Children Affected by Mines
•	Various diplomatic embassies
•	Various government Ministries
•	Various Donors.

The map above shows that the most accidents were along
the border between Cambodia and Thailand.

2006 MAIN FACTS
CMVIS has added two new activities as follows::

1-	To provide Mine/UXO risk education messages to the community where there are new acident occur
2-	To provide shot term assistance to mine/UXO victims (in the two provinces of Preah Vihear and Otdar Meanchey) during the most difficult living condition.

Over the 4 first months of 2006, a sharp decrease of more than 50% of the number of casualties has been noticed compared to previous years. Some possible explanations for this important decrease are:

a.	The rainy season has been longer than during the previous years, therefore people were longer busy with their farm business until early 2006. Fewer people therefore had to go to the forest to find food or scrap metal and therefore fewer people took risk.
b.	Since the middle of 2005, the local police are more and more involved in trying to ban people from making business with scrap metal coming mines and UXO. This might also explain why fewer people were involved in deliberate handling of mines/UXO.
c.	The Mine Risk Education teams extended their activities to also address UXO issues, the EOD activities were extended and Deming Operators have concentrated their deployments in the northwest provinces where the majority of accidents occurred.
d.	CMVIS data gatherers started mine/UXO risk education activities: - Provide direct mine risk education messages to affected communities, - Better collaborate with mine action agencies.

Contact Person
For information related to CRC Mine-UXO strategy, please contact:
Mr. Sok Long
Director of the Health Department
Cambodian Red Cross
Mobile:+855 (0)12 688 081
Tel:   +855 (0)23 362 876 / 212 876
Email: longsok@online.com.kh

For information related to the Mine-UXO situation in Cambodia, please contact:
Mr. Jean Francois Michel
Coordinator Operations Handicap International Belgium
Mobile: +855 (0)12 217 427
E mail: jeanfrancois.michel@hib-cambodia.org

For information related to the overall CMVIS management, please contact:
Mr. CHHIV Lim
Project Manager Mine Victim Information System
Tel:    +855 (0)23 216 075
Email:chhiv.lim@cmvis.org

For information related to the technical management of CMVIS, please contact:
Mr. Hugo Hotte
CMVIS Advisor
Tel:    +855 (0)92 817 414
Email:h.hotte@cmivis.org

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