Due to drastic budget cuts UXO/Laos has announced that it is laying off 200 employees, out of a total workforce of 1,200.

[Please note that the original article stated that 500 employees would be laid off. Later, UXO/Lao stated that the correct number is 200]

“These employees are having to leave UXO Lao because there is no money to pay them,” he said.

According to the meeting, on the fourth anniversary of the Entry into Force of the Convention on Cluster Munitions last August, it was reported to international donors that UXO Lao would face shortages in funding and contributions towards the clearance of unexploded ordnance from contaminated areas by the end of last year.

International donors were requested to provide more funds to UXO bodies in Laos so clearance work could continue in the provinces.

The National Regulatory Authority then reported at a two day sector policy forum on the UXO survey in target development areas and UXO victim assistance in October that the number of UXO victims was within the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) No. 9 limit for 2015, but was still too high.

Many people are still being killed or injured by the deadly devices each month.
Mr Saleumsay said it was a challenge to source more funding from international donors for clearance operations.

So far this year, donors have not confirmed they will support UXO clearance in Laos.
Donors may want to know the plans for UXO clearance from now until 2017 as they may want to propose funding support from their governments.

However, UXO Lao and other non-government organisations are set to undertake technical surveys of each area before starting any clearance work.

It is hoped these surveys will show which areas of land need to be cleared and which others are free of UXO.

This preliminary work will result in much faster clearance of large areas, releasing land more quickly for use or development. In the past clearance has been quite slow as they have been following a policy of clearing all areas m arked red on the map, which signifies the areas where UXO is thought to be.

According to the National Regulatory Authority last year, over 44,000 hectares of land have been cleared since 1996.

Up to 37 percent of the country’s total land area, about 87,000 km2, may be contaminated with various types of UXO.

This young man survived oral facial gangrene as a child but was left disfigured. Through the efforts of Interplast, the Woman's International Group of Laos and We Help War Victims he was able to receive corrective surgery.

Some 88 people suffering from severe burns or other disfiguring conditions have received free surgical treatment, thanks to the support of the Interplast Australia and New Zealand medical team .
Surgeons from Interplast and Mahosot Hospital met yesterday to evaluate their surgical achievements during their10 day working stay in Laos from February 18-28.

Director General of Mahosot Hospital, Associate Prof. Dr Bounthaphany Bounxouei, thanked the seven surgeons, nurses and anaesthetists from Interplast Australia and New Zealand led by Dr Philip Slattery for providing the opportunity for poor people to receive effective treatment for their disfigurements.

“The programme has not only helped the patients, but also provided much needed training and hands-on experience for local medical staff,” said Dr Bounthaphany. In addition, he thanked the Women’s International Group (WIG) for their team support and financial support to the patients and their care-takers. Present at the evaluation was Australian Ambassador to Laos, Ms Lynda Worthaisong, who said the project not only strengthened the relationship between the Australian and Lao medical teams, but also the relationship between the respective countries.

The Interplast team is funded by the Rotary Club of Australia. Their doctors, nurses and anaesthetists volunteer their time to come to Laos and work with their Lao counterparts on a regular basis, coming to the country every six months and working for two weeks at a time. They provide assessment support and surgery for patients, many of whom are children, with some of the most complex surgical problems including severe burns and other disfiguring conditions. In the past, the Interplast team has travelled to rural areas to conduct operations on people from remote villages, but more recently the surgery has been performed in Vientiane.

While the Interplast Australia and New Zealand team has been in Laos, the Women’s International Group, based in Vientiane, has helped patients with transport and other costs during their stay in the capital, aiming to ensure that treatment can be accessed by those who need it most. Mahosot Hospital and the Interplast team have been working together for over a decade now. In the past there was a focus on cleft lip and palate surgery. Interplast Australia and New Zealand signed a new three-year agreement in 2011 to continue to treat patients in Laos.

During Interplast’s last visit to Mahosot Hospital in 2012, the team met with more than 100 patients, more than 60 of whom required surgical intervention. The Interplast team first worked voluntarily in the Pacific Islands during the 1960s and this programme was expanded to other countries in the region. They are now working in many developing countries in the Asia-Pacific region. The Interplast team was first invited to Laos by the government in 1996.

Mosinee resident Jim Harris works in Laos clearing unexploded weapons, such as the cluster bombs he is holding that were dropped by U.S. fighters during the Vietnam era. / Gannett Wisconsin Media File Photo

He’s still teaching, though, and has developed a significant relationship with one D.C. Everest Middle School seventh-grader. As part of his efforts to clear Laos of bombs, Harris often gives presentations in local classrooms. After speaking to students at D.C. Everest Middle School, he impressed them so much that the school’s Leadership Institute raised more than $4,000 by selling lollipops to fund Harris’ efforts, putting the students at the top of the list of donors for the organization.

“We say we’re clearing Laos of bombs, one sucker at a time,” Harris said.

He is grateful for the support, so he wanted to involve them in his work. He began calling one of the student leaders, Jack Collison, 13, of Schofield, to talk about his mission. Harris called him about six times over the past couple of months, often from the field where he was removing bombs.

“When I was small, I thought things like this didn’t really happen,” Collison said. “But when you look at the world, then you see the bad things.”

One of the highlights for Collison was that he got to do the countdown for blowing up a bomb with Harris and his crew via cell phone. Collison heard the explosion, which, of course, was cool.
The incident was significant for Harris, because a Lao boy Collison’s age found the bomb and reported its presence.

“It’s so heartwarming for me to see two kids in wildly different environments, but both are really responsible young men,” he said. Collison is learning more about the world than he imagined, and it’s having an impact.

“I might actually go to Laos one day and do what Mr. Harris does,” he said.

British and American officials colluded in a plan to hoodwink parliament over a proposed ban on cluster bombs, the Guardian can disclose.

According to leaked US embassy dispatches, David Miliband, who was Britain’s foreign secretary under Labour, approved the use of a loophole to manoeuvre around the ban and allow the US to keep the munitions on British territory.

Unlike Britain, the US had refused to sign up to an international convention that bans the weapons because of the widespread injury they cause to civilians.

The US military asserted that cluster bombs were “legitimate weapons that provide a vital military capability” and wanted to carry on using British bases regardless of the ban.

Whitehall officials proposed that a specially created loophole to grant the US a free hand should be concealed from parliament in case it “complicated or muddied” the MPs’ debate.

Gordon Brown, as prime minister, had swung his political weight in 2008 behind the treaty to ban the use and stockpiling of cluster bombs. Britain therefore signed it, contrary to earlier assurances made by British officials to their US counterparts.

The US had stockpiles of cluster munitions at bases on British soil and intended to keep them, regardless of the treaty.

When the bill to ratify the treaty was going through parliament this year, the then Labour foreign ministers Glenys Kinnock and Chris Bryant repeatedly proclaimed that US cluster munition arsenals would be removed from British territory by the declared deadline of 2013.

But a different picture emerges from a confidential account of a meeting between UK and US officials in May last year.

It shows that the two governments concocted the “concept” of allowing US forces to store their cluster weapons as “temporary exceptions” and on a “case-by-case” basis for specific military operations.

Foreign Office officials “confirmed that the concept was accepted at highest levels of the government, as that idea had been included in the draft letter from minister [David] Miliband to secretary [of state Hillary] Clinton”.

US cluster munitions are permanently stored on ships off the coast of the Diego Garcia airbase in the Indian Ocean, the cables reveal. The base is crucial for US military missions in the Middle East. Diego Garcia, still deemed British territory, has been occupied by the US military since its inhabitants were expelled in the 1960s and 1970s. The British concept of a “temporary exception” to oblige the US does not appear to be envisaged in the treaty. But the British arranged that “any movement of cluster munitions from ships at Diego Garcia to planes there, temporary transit, or use from British territory … would require the temporary exception”.

Nicholas Pickard, head of the Foreign Office’s security policy unit, is quoted as saying: “It would be better for the US government and HMG [the British government] not to reach final agreement on this temporary agreement understanding until after the [treaty] ratification process is completed in parliament, so that they can tell parliamentarians that they have requested the US government to remove its cluster munitions by 2013, without complicating/muddying the debate by having to indicate that this request is open to exceptions.”

Lady Kinnock subsequently promised parliament that there would be no “permanent stockpiles of cluster munitions on UK territory” after the treaty as the US had decided it no longer needed them on British soil.

There is no suggestion that Kinnock or Bryant were aware of a plan to mislead parliament.

Tonight, a Foreign Office spokesman said: “We reject any allegation that the Foreign Office deliberately misled parliament or failed in our obligation to inform parliament. We cannot go into specifics of any leaked documents because we condemn any unauthorised release of classified information.”

David Miliband declined to comment.

Cluster bombs drop large numbers of “bomblets” over a wide area. Many do not explode at the time but can kill long afterwards. The Americans dropped thousands of cluster bombs in Afghanistan and Iraq. Civilians in Vietnam still die from cluster bombs dropped by the US in the 1960s.

The leaked US state department documents reveal American displeasure at the international project launched by Norway to outlaw cluster munitions. An American arms control diplomat, John Rood, privately told the Foreign Office in 2008 that the US disliked this initiative, called the Oslo process. The Americans denounced it as “impractical and unconstructive” and were urging countries not to sign up.

Mariot Leslie, then director general of defence and intelligence in the Foreign Office, reassured him that the British were only taking part as a “tactical manoeuvre” and cluster bombs were “essential to its arsenal”. “The UK is concerned about the impact of the Oslo process on the aftermath of a conflict, foreseeing ‘astronomical bills’ handed out to those who used cluster munitions in the past,” Leslie is recorded as saying.

But two weeks later Brown defied military opposition and went ahead in banning British cluster munitions.

Afghanistan, which had suffered grievous civilian casualties from the continuing war on its territory, also unexpectedly signed up to the treaty in December 2008 “without prior consultation with the US government” and “despite assurances to the contrary from President Karzai”.

Washington’s reaction was to seek to convince the Kabul government that the US could still legally use cluster munitions on Afghan territory under the treaty, even if the Afghan regime itself could not.

Diplomats recommended a “low-profile approach” at “sub-ministerial level … given the political sensitivities in Afghanistan surrounding cluster munitions, as well as air and artillery strikes in general”.

Bangkok Post
24/4/11
Mercenary turned monk passes away

A former United States soldier of fortune who later became a monk in Thailand and helped hundreds of people overcome alcohol and drug addictions at the world famous Wat Tham Krabok in Saraburi has passed away.

A spokesman for the temple said Phra Gordon, also known as Gordon Baltimore of Harlem or the “Black Monk”, died on April 20 in hospital. He said temple staff were working with the US embassy in Bangkok to locate Phra Gordon’s family, which was difficult as the monk no longer had a passport.

Phra Gordon had lived at the temple for almost three decades, devoting himself to helping people overcome their addictions through a “tough love” rehabilitation programme.

Irishman Paul Garrigan, who wrote Dead Drunk: Saving Myself From Alcoholism in a Thai Monastery, said that with his loud US accent, keen sense of humour and large frame, Phra Gordon was far from a typical monk. To help someone overcome alcohol addiction, check out this alcohol rehabilitation at The Cabin Chiang Mai and see here for more valuable info! On the other hand, if you have cocaine addiction it can be difficult to deal with. It can impact you whether you’re the one with the addiction or you have a friend or family member with cocaine addiction. Why not check out the cocaine detox process here that can help you get away from addiction!

Writing on his website, Garrigan said the story of how Phra Gordon came to be at the temple was “remarkable”, as the monk had once been a mercenary and admitted he had killed many people.
“He was on his way to join another army when he found himself at Tham Krabok temple. This was not a planned visit, but the bus he was travelling on experienced flat tyres right outside the temple,” Garrigan writes.

“While he was waiting for the wheels to be fixed, he went for a walk and met the head monk. To his amazement, this stranger in Buddhist robes informed Gordon that he was expected and that he would now be joining the temple.

“For some reason, Gordon accepted the revelation and ordained. He had no intention of staying there so long but the time never felt right to leave.”

Phra Gordon said in an interview with the Washington Post that growing up in Harlem in the 1950s and ’60s and as a nine-year-old watching a man die from an overdose turned him away from drugs. He said he joined the merchant marines at age 16, and during a stopover in Penang met Bob Denard, a French mercenary who was recruiting fighters. “Being an American black, they think you know everything about guns,” Phra Gordon said, while admitting he didn’t.

He boasted of becoming a soldier of fortune and participating in some major conflicts, but after a brush with death in Namibia he decided to give up the life of a mercenary. Phra Gordon said that after a long journey around the world, he arrived in Thailand and took a bus ride out of Bangkok and just wandered into the grounds of Wat Tham Krabok.

“I’m not crazy,” he said, recalling the day. “But I heard someone say ‘You’ve come here at last.’ After the war and all that, I got a feeling of peace.

“After Harlem and the life of a mercenary,” he said, “this was the last stop for me.”

A cluster bomblet called the BLU 24. Sometimes children in Laos mistake bomblets for fruit or toys.

She was 13 years old, she should not have died and been taken from her family, the girl’s mother, Ms Jone lamented. Her son survived the blast, but was injured.

When the device exploded, it killed or maimed seven children, including Ms Jone’s two children.

The explosion shattered a quiet evening when two groups of children were returning home after playing and tending to their buffalo in nearby fields.

They spent all day with the animals in fields the villagers called Thong Lieng Khuay, meaning “buffalo raising field”.

At about 4 pm the children were walking the buffalo home and were nearing the village when they saw two friends playing with a cluster sub-munition, locally known as a “bombie”, tossing it up in the air.

The others joined in the play, except for two who were afraid and ran away. One later rejoined the group as they continued to play with the deadly device.

A few minutes later the “toy” exploded, killing five children instantly and seriously injuring the other two.

“My daughter was killed because of this, and I often cry when I think of her,” Ms Jone said as tears ran down her face.

“My son was injured and I have had to borrow more than 3,500,000 kip [US $440] from relatives to pay for his treatment.”

She has also paid 700,000 kip [US $87] of her own money.

According to the National Regulatory Authority for UXO/Mine Sectors in Laos, Ms Jone will be given about 3,500,000 kip in compensation.

It is estimated that out of the 2 million [metric] tons of bombs, including 288 million cluster bombs, that were dropped on Laos between 1964 and 1973 during the Indochina War, about 30 percent did not detonate.

During this time, a total of 580,000 deadly bomb missions were conducted by US airforces, equivalent to one bombing mission every eight minutes for nine years.

Just two weeks after experiencing tragedy at home, the government of japan reaffirmed its intent to continue supporting UXO removal in Laos.

KPL Laos News Agency

Government of Japan has agreed to provide a grant total US$744,680 in support of UXO Lao operations in southern provinces of Saravane and Sekong, for 2011.

The grant contract was signed in Vientiane Capital, on 25 March between the Director of Lao National UXO, Mr. Bounpone Sayasenh and Ambassador of Japan to the Lao PDR, Ms. Junko Yokota.
The signing ceremony was witnessed by the Minister of Labour and Social Welfare, Mrs. Onchanh Thammavong, UNDP resident representative a.i Ms. Kyoko Yokosuka and representatives from Lao Government.



Japan is one of the largest donors to the UXO Lao. The Japanese Government has provided more than US$8.7 million to the UXO Lao from 2006, supporting operation in Saravane, Sekong, Attapeu and Xiengkhouang provinces.

Since 1996, the UXO Lao has cleared more than 19,185 hectares of land, including 16,054 hectares of agricultural land with more than US$3.3 million beneficiaries. It has also visited 8,494 villages, conducting community awareness activities on the dangers of UXO to more than 2,153,000 villagers. In the process of conducting operation, it has destroyed more than 973,274 items of UXO, of which 46 per cent are sub munitions from cluster bombs.

The UXO Lao currently receives support from donor countries including Australia, Germany, European Commission, Japan, Ireland, Luxembourg, Norway, New Zealand, Poland, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States of America. It also received support from private foundations of World Without Mines (WWM) and Intrepid Foundation.

Mme Onchanh expressed thanks the Japanese Government and people for providing financial support of UXOs clearance and human saving over the past five years.

The problem of UXOs pose a threat for Lao people and more than 300 Lao people per year fall the UXO victims. The UXOs is also a barrier for agriculture production and socio-economic development.
“This grant is a great contribution to the reduction poverty programme,” she added.

Ambassador of Japan to Lao PDR Ms. Junko Yokota expected that, “today’s grant assistance will enable the UXO Lao to continue to implement their activities such as UXO clearance, survey tasks and capacity building of their staff in Saravane and Sekong provinces”.

“It will contribute not only to reducing the number of human casualties but also increasing the amount of the land available for agricultural production and other socio-economic activities in the two provinces,” she said.

“As you know, the first meeting of state parties of the Convention on Cluster Munitions was held in Vientiane last year. I hope that our grant assistance this time will contribute to the effort of Lao Government in meeting the legal obligations under the Convention, leading to achievement of the Millennium Development Goals until 2015,” she added.

“Although Japan is now facing the unprecedented difficulty caused by the earthquake and tsunami, the government and people of Japan are united to overcome the hard time. On behalf people of Japan, I would like to take this opportunity to extend our sincere gratitude to the government and people of Lao PDR and people of all other nation for their heartfelt inquiries and sympathies which have been a great consolation and encouragement to not only the families of victims but also the entire society of Japan”, she added.

Source: KPL Lao News Agency

British and American officials colluded in a plan to hoodwink parliament over a proposed ban on cluster bombs, the Guardian can disclose.

According to leaked US embassy dispatches, David Miliband, who was Britain’s foreign secretary under Labour, approved the use of a loophole to manoeuvre around the ban and allow the US to keep the munitions on British territory.

Unlike Britain, the US had refused to sign up to an international convention that bans the weapons because of the widespread injury they cause to civilians.

The US military asserted that cluster bombs were “legitimate weapons that provide a vital military capability” and wanted to carry on using British bases regardless of the ban.

Whitehall officials proposed that a specially created loophole to grant the US a free hand should be concealed from parliament in case it “complicated or muddied” the MPs’ debate.

Gordon Brown, as prime minister, had swung his political weight in 2008 behind the treaty to ban the use and stockpiling of cluster bombs. Britain therefore signed it, contrary to earlier assurances made by British officials to their US counterparts.

The US had stockpiles of cluster munitions at bases on British soil and intended to keep them, regardless of the treaty.

When the bill to ratify the treaty was going through parliament this year, the then Labour foreign ministers Glenys Kinnock and Chris Bryant repeatedly proclaimed that US cluster munition arsenals would be removed from British territory by the declared deadline of 2013.

But a different picture emerges from a confidential account of a meeting between UK and US officials in May last year.

It shows that the two governments concocted the “concept” of allowing US forces to store their cluster weapons as “temporary exceptions” and on a “case-by-case” basis for specific military operations.

Foreign Office officials “confirmed that the concept was accepted at highest levels of the government, as that idea had been included in the draft letter from minister [David] Miliband to secretary [of state Hillary] Clinton”.

US cluster munitions are permanently stored on ships off the coast of the Diego Garcia airbase in the Indian Ocean, the cables reveal. The base is crucial for US military missions in the Middle East. Diego Garcia, still deemed British territory, has been occupied by the US military since its inhabitants were expelled in the 1960s and 1970s. The British concept of a “temporary exception” to oblige the US does not appear to be envisaged in the treaty. But the British arranged that “any movement of cluster munitions from ships at Diego Garcia to planes there, temporary transit, or use from British territory … would require the temporary exception”.

Nicholas Pickard, head of the Foreign Office’s security policy unit, is quoted as saying: “It would be better for the US government and HMG [the British government] not to reach final agreement on this temporary agreement understanding until after the [treaty] ratification process is completed in parliament, so that they can tell parliamentarians that they have requested the US government to remove its cluster munitions by 2013, without complicating/muddying the debate by having to indicate that this request is open to exceptions.”

Lady Kinnock subsequently promised parliament that there would be no “permanent stockpiles of cluster munitions on UK territory” after the treaty as the US had decided it no longer needed them on British soil.

There is no suggestion that Kinnock or Bryant were aware of a plan to mislead parliament.

Tonight, a Foreign Office spokesman said: “We reject any allegation that the Foreign Office deliberately misled parliament or failed in our obligation to inform parliament. We cannot go into specifics of any leaked documents because we condemn any unauthorised release of classified information.”

David Miliband declined to comment.

Cluster bombs drop large numbers of “bomblets” over a wide area. Many do not explode at the time but can kill long afterwards. The Americans dropped thousands of cluster bombs in Afghanistan and Iraq. Civilians in Vietnam still die from cluster bombs dropped by the US in the 1960s.

The leaked US state department documents reveal American displeasure at the international project launched by Norway to outlaw cluster munitions. An American arms control diplomat, John Rood, privately told the Foreign Office in 2008 that the US disliked this initiative, called the Oslo process. The Americans denounced it as “impractical and unconstructive” and were urging countries not to sign up.

Mariot Leslie, then director general of defence and intelligence in the Foreign Office, reassured him that the British were only taking part as a “tactical manoeuvre” and cluster bombs were “essential to its arsenal”. “The UK is concerned about the impact of the Oslo process on the aftermath of a conflict, foreseeing ‘astronomical bills’ handed out to those who used cluster munitions in the past,” Leslie is recorded as saying.

But two weeks later Brown defied military opposition and went ahead in banning British cluster munitions.

Afghanistan, which had suffered grievous civilian casualties from the continuing war on its territory, also unexpectedly signed up to the treaty in December 2008 “without prior consultation with the US government” and “despite assurances to the contrary from President Karzai”.

Washington’s reaction was to seek to convince the Kabul government that the US could still legally use cluster munitions on Afghan territory under the treaty, even if the Afghan regime itself could not.

Diplomats recommended a “low-profile approach” at “sub-ministerial level … given the political sensitivities in Afghanistan surrounding cluster munitions, as well as air and artillery strikes in general”.

A 10-year-old girl was killed and her sister injured on Wednesday by a cluster bomb that exploded in Thasala village, Khamkeuth district, Borikhamxay province. The incident happened at about 11am, when Ms Pui, 10, was returning home from school and picked up an unexploded bomb. Her older sister Ms Paeng, 15, saw the bomb and told her sister what it was. Ms Pui threw it away and the bomb exploded when it hit the ground, seriously injuring Ms Pui and also injuring her sister.

The two girls were taken to Khamkeuth hospital and, after initial treatment, transported to Mittaphab Hospital in Vientiane on the same day. Doctors tried their best to save Ms Pui, but the shrapnel had caused serious injuries and extreme loss of blood and she died, Director of Mittaphab Hospital Associate Professor Dr Vanliem Bouaravong told media yesterday.

The accident occurred as Laos hosts the First Meeting of States Party to the Convention on Cluster Munitions from November 9-12 in Vientiane.

Dr Vanliem said the girl’s parents have taken her body back to their hometown for a funeral ceremony. Ms Paeng remains in stable condition at the hospital after receiving treatment for injuries to her knees, body and neck.
Dr Vanliem said doctors will operate to remove shrapnel from her neck.

Ms Paeng cried as she answered questions about the incident. She said that after the explosion she heard her sister coughing up blood and held her until help arrived and they were taken to the district hospital.

Dr Vanliem said this was the first time this year that Mittaphab Hospital has treated a patient involved in a UXO-related accident. Unfortunately, it is unlikely to be the last as Lao people continue to live in fear of UXO three decades after the Indochina war ended.

Last month Mr Ladone of Nhuanthong village in Paek district, Xieng Khuang province, was injured when a UXO device exploded as he lit a fire in his backyard to warm himself. Xieng Khuang is one of the most UXO contaminated provinces in the country.

Mr Ladone was blinded by the explosion. He also sustained injuries to his torso and lost the little finger on his left hand.

Laos is one of the most UXO affected countries in the world, due to cluster munitions dropped during the war of aggression against the three countries of the Indochina Peninsula, said Lao President Choummaly Sayasone at the opening ceremony of the First Meeting of States Party to the Convention on Cluster Munitions on Tuesday.

Although the conflict ended more than three decades ago, the devastating consequences can still be seen. About 37 percent of the country’s surface is contaminated with UXO, preventing people from using agricultural land and making many areas uninhabitable. This situation poses major constraints on socio-economic development, poverty reduction efforts, and the everyday life of the Lao people.

Many provinces are heavily contaminated with UXO, particularly Xieng Khuang, Khammuan and Savannakhet.

By Manichanh Pansivongsay


New Zealand will provide $1.1 million to the Government of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic to help clear unexploded cluster munitions left in the north-east of the country, Disarmament and Arms Control Minister, Georgina te Heuheu, announced today.
“More than thirty years after the end of the conflict in Indochina, cluster munitions and other unexploded ordnance continue to kill or injure people almost every day in Laos,” Georgina te Heuheu said.
“A quarter of all the villages in Laos are affected by the presence of unexploded cluster munitions – posing a real threat to people’s livelihoods and wellbeing and holding the entire country back from development.
“Cluster munitions are an indiscriminate and inhumane weapon; they pose a grave risk to civilians, and in particular children, long after conflict has ended.
“The funding announced today will be used to clear unexploded ordnance in the north-eastern Xieng Khuoang province (the famous Plain of Jars) where New Zealand has already been involved in local development projects including cluster munitions clearance. 
“The clearance work will build on earlier efforts to make the region safer for villagers and develop their economic development opportunities, including tourism.
Minister te Heuheu is currently in Laos leading New Zealand’s delegation to the First Meeting of States Parties to the global Convention on Cluster Munitions. Thirty six states are known to be affected by cluster munitions and 85 states stockpile them. Worldwide stocks are estimated to amount to 860 million bomblets.
“New Zealand has been at the forefront of international efforts to ban cluster munitions. We will continue to play a strong role in making this Treaty effective,” Mrs te Heuheu said. “Our contribution in Laos is a practical demonstration of this commitment.”
While in Laos the Minister will visit cluster munitions clearance operations in the affected Xieng Khuoang province.