The National Regulatory Authority’s (NRA) Mine Risk Education (MRE) unit is operating with renewed confidence following almost two years of support from MAG.
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An MRE poster - one of many materials developed by the NRA’s Mine Risk Education unit. |
MRE helps people to safely live, work and travel through areas contaminated with landmines and/or unexploded ordnance (UXO).
More than safety message delivery, the MAG approach to MRE ensures that the target audience has the knowledge and skills required to adopt feasible strategies and take appropriate action which will keep themselves and others safe.
MRE can be delivered in a variety of ways such as through radio and TV broadcasts, participatory face to face discussions, billboards, posters and drama.
The full-time support provided by MAG to the NRA since March 2007 (funded by the Jersey Overseas Aid Commission) has now been phased out to allow the unit staff to operate on their own.
The MRE unit is responsible for regulating and coordinating the MRE sector in Lao PDR. MAG’s MRE Advisor Ruth Bottomley has provided training and mentoring support to the unit staff to enable them to carry out their roles fully, and she says that the unit is now functioning well.
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• Lao PDR is the most bombed country in the world per capita. Throughout the 1963-1974 conflict, more than two million tonnes of weaponry was deployed over the country, with up to 30 per cent failing to explode as designed. • Today up to 25 per cent of all villages in Lao PDR are affected by unexploded ordnance (UXO), which includes big bombs, mortar, cluster munitions and submunitions, and landmines. These weapons continue to kill and maim women and children as well as disenabling communities and disrupting socio-economic development. • Ten provinces in the Lao PDR are still severely contaminated by these unexploded weapons, which injure and kill an estimated 300 people every year. |
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[National Regulatory Authority for UXO/Mine Action in Lao PDR (NRA)] |
“The support has produced a tangible improvement in the standard and scope of work that the MRE unit undertakes,” she said. “The MRE Officer is motivated and confident about his work. Key documents and processes are in place to enable the unit to effectively coordinate and regulate MRE activities.”
During the course of the project, the MRE unit led the development and implementation of both a National Strategy and National Standards for MRE, and produced new MRE materials and messages targeting high-risk groups.
Operators were trained to use the materials and a monitoring system was set up to help measure the progress of the sector towards the objectives set in the MRE Strategy.
Thongdy Phommavongsa, the NRA’s MRE Officer, said that the support has helped him to improve his planning skills.
“Working with the MAG MRE Advisor, I have learnt to be a better planner. For example, for effective risk education I know we need to think carefully about who the at-risk group is, what their risk behaviour is and what we have to do to address this risk behaviour.
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"Because we know that people already understand that UXO are dangerous but they still take risks, we wanted to introduce behaviour change communication." Thongdy Phommavongsa, MRE Officer for the NRA |
"I have also learnt a lot about coordination. I am responsible for coordinating all the MRE operators in Lao PDR and to ensure they are working in line with the MRE Strategy.”
The support has also enabled the unit to introduce a more sophisticated approach to MRE in Lao PDR, as Thongdy explained:
“Most of the MRE operators in Lao PDR have, up till now, simply given out basic information about the danger of UXO. Because we know that people already understand that UXO are dangerous but they still take risks, we wanted to introduce behaviour change communication to help these high-risk groups change their behaviour from high-risk to low-risk.
“During a recent trip to Xieng Kouang province I saw our MRE materials being used by MAG with scrap metal dealers. The dealers educate the scrap metal collectors who come to their yard, explaining that they should not bring UXO to sell.
“The scrap metal trade is an important source of income generation for poor families, so we cannot stop them from doing it. But the objective of the materials and messages is to try to help people to conduct the activity more safely and to keep their children out of the scrap metal trade.”
There are three months’ advisory support available to the project during 2009, which can be requested by the NRA as required.
Links:
- MAG Lao PDR microsite
- NRA website [external link]
- Jersey Overseas Aid Commission website [external link]
- More about Mine Risk Education
- See Tags below for more links
8 January 09
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