THE MINES ADVISORY GROUP

I would like to thank MAG, the Mines Advisory Group, and other de-mining organizations for helping me in Angola and showing me their operations. De-mining is long, slow, laborious and frustrating work, not some of the time, but all of the time. Maps of some minefields do exist but even then some of them have been overlaid with new minefields as the battlefields have changed over the 25 years of war. Mine detecting dogs and mechanical aids are being used more and more, but manual de-mining remains the primary and most effective method. I left Angola with one simple thought and fact: every mine out of the ground saves a limb or a life.

The Mines Advisory Group is a British registered charity that works to ensure a tangible response to the problems faced by conflict-affected people. Through its own operational teams, and through specialised capacity-building projects, MAG clears land of mines and ordnance.

MAG's programmes integrate mine/unexploded object survey, demarcation and clearance with awareness raising activities to reduce the risks taken by affected populations. Through close liaison with these people, MAG can focus its work on the priorities that conflict-affected populations have identified for themselves. This work is carried out by people from the mine-affected communities. By training and employing people from mine-affected countries, MAG is transferring technical and management skills that can sustain this work in the future.

MAG currently has field programmes in Angola, Cambodia, Lao PDR, northern Iraq, Kosovo and Vietnam and continues to assess the potential for assistance in other countries.

The product of MAG's work is safe land on which people can live and work with confidence.

To learn more about the excellent work MAG does, visit their website on www.mag.org.uk

Donations to MAG can be made by writing to MAG, 47 Newton Street, Manchester M1 1FT, by telephone on Freephone 0800 0723 999 or on-line using their website address.