Farmers look forward to regaining their mine-free land
JABER VLLAGE/RAMTHA - For the past 35 years, Salman Awad has been unable to cultivate his land as it is heavily implanted with landmines, but he hopes to transform it into a flourishing farm in two years time.
Although he owns 77 dunums of land in Jaber village located near the border with Syria, the 68-year-old farmer has been renting a nearby plot for more than three decades to raise livestock and grow crops to make a living and feed his extended family of 50 members. read more
Mine Action Milestone in Jordan
The NPA Mine Action program in Jordan has set a record in mines recovery and disposal by surpassing 100 000 mines in November 2009. This is the single largest number of mines found and recovered by any NPA MA program worldwide. read more
One year anniversary for NPAs all-female demining team in Jordan!
12th of October 2008, a group of women in Jordan began what seemed at the time as an impossible task. read more
Jaber / Mafraq. 67 new recruits from the Mafraq Governorate have joined the ranks of NPA deminers on 4 May 2009 after successfully completing a training course in manual demining.
The new recruits are the third group of deminers to join NPA’s North Border Project which employs more than 200 people from the local population. “Our initial selection procedures are quite strict,” says NPA Project Manager Heinie Truter says, “involving medical and psychological checkups to ensure the candidates’ medical and mental fitness to do the job at hand.” The course started with 70 trainees, but only 67 successfully graduated and were offered employment by NPA. read more...
AMMAN - The Kingdom was granted a three-year extension of its mine-clearance deadline after stating earlier this year that it would be unable to meet the May 2009 target and requesting a new deadline of May 1, 2012.
Jordan, a signatory of the Mine Ban Convention, was granted approval for its request during the 9th Meeting of State Parties to the Ottawa Convention (9MSP) in Geneva, which concluded on Friday.
Besides Jordan, Britain, Chad, Croatia, Denmark, Ecuador, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Peru, Senegal, Thailand, Venezuela, Yemen and Zimbabwe were also granted extensions.
States Parties to the Ottawa Convention were asked to consider Jordan’s request and vote to approve the request based on the recommendations made by a 17-country analysing committee. read more...
30 November 2008
MAFRAQ - The silver four-wheel drive makes its way along the road into Jaber, an impoverished border town of featureless homes, olive groves and children playing in the streets. A middle-aged woman hanging her laundry and another puttering about in her garden glance at the car whizzing past, but get on with their business.
Residents of this neighborhood have seen an unusual level of activity recently. Busloads of women have been passing through early each morning to a normally nondescript field down the road. But they are not there to pick olives or gather crops, as is normal for many working women. They are doing something far more challenging and perhaps even a little controversial for this traditionally conservative community. read more...
MAFRAQ - It was supposed to be a day filled with fun when the school bus arrived at the Dead Sea on that fateful morning in 1988. Enjoying the beach with his schoolmates, Bilal Momani recalled standing on the shore when things took a tragic turn.
“We were on the beach when we heard a tremendous explosion and the ground shook beneath our feet,” Momani said.
“All I can remember is fear and confusion… later I realised that I had lost my foot in the explosion,” he added.
At a time when landmines were barely a blip on the national radar, the accident was beyond anything the then-13-year-old Momani could have ever imagined. Before the accident, he did not even know what a landmine was. read more...
AQABA - It has been a tough 18 months for Adnan Salem, labouring in the blistering heat of the Wadi Araba desert to remove the area’s deadly remnants of war.
Clad in a protective blue vest and visor, the 34-year old, however, is undeterred as he gazes at the parched plains envisaging the possibilities ahead.
“This is our home, our land,” Salem said, wiping beads of sweat from his forehead.
“We’ve worked long and hard to remove landmines from this area and the job is as good as done. It is a blessing.” read more...
AMMAN (JT) - Programme and operation managers as well as senior technical advisers from several Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA) programmes all over the world are meeting in the Kingdom this week to discuss best practices and challenges faced by their respective programmes.
HRH Prince Mired Ben Raad, chairman of the National Committee for De-mining and Rehabilitation (NCDR), who opened the NPA’s 4th Global Operations meeting in Jaber-Mafraq on Monday, highlighted the NCDR’s close working partnership with the NPA.
“With the support of many donor countries, NPA has assisted Jordan in dealing with its landmine problem over the course of the last two years and will continue to do so for some years to come. We are very pleased that the NPA operations meeting is taking place in Jordan and hope that the success that has been achieved here in Jordan can be replicated elsewhere,” the Prince said in his opening address. read more...