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Immediately after the Kosovo crisis in 1999, the Albanian Government responded swiftly in conducting a rapid surface clearance, which drastically reduced civilian casualties. This was, however, not done to International Mine Action Standards (IMAS) and all the areas have to be re-cleared. Shortly after, the AAF conducted a Level 1 Survey, which indicated virtually the total border area to be contaminated. As a result, 102 areas representing 15,250,000 m2 along 120 km border between Albania and Kosovo were identified as mine/UXO contaminated.
During 2000-2001 demining organizations as RONCO and HELP conducted demining in North-ern Albania with US State department and German funding by releasing some 2,000,000 m2 of
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previously contaminated land. With increased coordination and more efficient utilization of demining assets, more than 7,000,000 m2 of formerly contaminated land was released through survey and clearance during 2002 by the Danish Church Aid (DCA-ACT) and Swiss Foundation for Demining mostly with Danish, EC, USA, Luxembourg, Swiss, Czech Republic and German funding.
Since 2004 there is only one demining organization operating in the country (DCA-Act) implementing Humanitarian Mine Action Projects funded by Germany, DfID, Canada, EU and US State Department through ITF.
As end of 2008, more than 14,39 million m2 of the originally 15.25 million m2 of contaminated land has been released through survey and clearance by the above mentioned demining organizations and handed over to the community. All mine and UXO clearance operations have been carried out in accordance with the priorities set by local Government Authorities and approved by AMAC.
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Battle area clearance by Swiss Federation for Mine Action (FSD) |
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Mine/UXO Clearance strategy
As part of the National Mine Action Strategy formulated in June 2002 and revised 2008 the specific objective for mine/UXO clearance is:
Clear and release all landmines and UXO from the remaining areas and hand them over to local communities by end of 2009.
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Manual Clearance |
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