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Sri Lanka

NoneSri Lankan Women Clear Land Minesonline video

AFP/Getty Images

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One year after the defeat of the Tamil Tigers by government forces, a 2010 report on women deminers in Sri Lanka, who risk their lives to clear the former battlefields of land mines.

Transcript
Strapping in and gearing up for one of the world’s most dangerous professions, these ladies are literally walking into a minefield in Northern Sri Lanka. Their job: to disarm thousands of explosives, one at a time.Rameshkumar Koneswary joined the Swiss Foundation for Mine Action in January. Since then, she has disabled more than 700 mines. It’s a hard way to earn $200 a month, but she says there is no other work.My mother, daughter and other family members are not happy about me doing this job, but I am responsible for them, and I need the money.Vast areas of Vavuniya district are littered with mines laid by government troops and the Tamil Tigers during almost 30 years of war. With the defeat of the rebels in 2009, it’s now a mammoth and expensive task to remove them. The UN estimates that while it takes only $3 to lay a mine, it’s $1,000 to remove it. The human cost is still higher. A French supervisor was killed earlier this year, while others have lost limbs in accidents.Most of the areas – the important areas like residential areas, farmland, cultivation land – has been, most of it has been released, but not all of it. There’s still plenty of mines and there’s a lot of work to be done.But funding is now a major problem. The Swiss de-mining group is already scaling back its operations because donors are pulling out. It’s a scenario that Velu Mohanraj dreads. His left foot was blown off by a mine seven years ago. He fears his two young children may suffer the same fate.There are still things in the ground. They’ll explode and cause problems for people in the future.For now, de-miners continue to risk life and limb to clear the countryside. Many of them live here with their own children, so they know what’s at stake.
Sri Lanka is an island nation off the coast of India in the Indian Ocean. The nation has been subject to outbreaks of civil warfare since the 1980s and has about 460,000 internally displaced people. The population of about 21 million is primarily Sinhalese (73.8 percent), with 8.5 percent Tamil.

Buddhism is the predominant religion (69.1 percent), with minorities including Muslims (7.6 percent), Hindus (7.1 percent), and Christians (6.2 percent). Per capita gross domestic product was $4,500 in 2009 and is unequally distributed-the Gini index measurement of the inequality of income stands at 49, the 28th highest in the world, with 23 percent of the population living below the poverty line. In 2009, the World Economic Forum rated Sri Lanka as 16th highest (i.e., most equal) out of 134 countries in terms of gender equality. On a scale where one indicates perfect equality and zero means inequality, Sri Lanka got a score of 0.740 overall, with subscores of 0.960 for health and survival (1st in the world), 0.930 for educational attainment (68th in the world), 0.594 on economic participation and opportunity (99th), and 0.169 on political empowerment (6th).

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