United Nations Mine Action Center for Afghanistan UNMACA

United Nations Mine Action Centre for Afghanistan (UNMACA)
House 95, Chaharahi-e-Zambaq,
Wazir Akbar Khan P.O. Box: 520 Central Post Office
Kabul – Afghanistan
Tel: +93(0)70-043 447/+93(0)798-010 460email: mapa@unmaca.org

GSD Helpline generously donated 260 microchips, two chip implant guns and six chip scanners to the Mine Action Programme for Afghanistan (MAPA), an umbrella organization comprised of national and international agencies that have been working to rid Afghanistan of mines and unexploded ordnance since 1989.

The United Nations Mine Action Center for Afghanistan (UNMACA), the UN body that oversees the MAPA on behalf of the Government of Afghanistan, is using the microchips and related equipment to ensure that MAPA agencies use only fully trained and capable mine detection dogs for the dangerous job of sniffing out explosives that lie underground.

For the first time in the 18-year history of mine action in Afghanistan, UNMACA is requiring that all mine action organizations pass a stringent accreditation test in order to operate in Afghanistan. Mine action organizations that employ mine detection dogs are subject to additional scrutiny.

UNMACA uses an accreditation center, essentially an open field of 135,000 square meters in the province of Kabul, to accredit the organizations’ dog handlers and mine detection dogs. The field contains dozens of 10 x 10 meter boxes planted with anti-personnel and anti-tank mines that have been rendered harmless. The dog handlers and their dogs must demonstrate to UNMACA that they can safely and efficiently locate the hidden mines at the field.

A quarter of the more than 200 mine detection dogs employed by MAPA agencies have passed the accreditation test in Kabul since the GSD Helpline shipment of microchips and related equipment arrived in mid-May 2007. UNMACA has chipped the accredited dogs and deployed the dogs and their handlers to contaminated areas throughout Afghanistan to search for mines and UXO.

The remaining dogs working across Afghanistan are scheduled to return to Kabul in coming months to take the annual accreditation test and will be chipped after passing the test. UNMACA expects that all of the MAPA’s mine detection dogs will be chipped by 2008.

UNMACA ordered four additional scanners from PetCode, the supplier of the original four scanners from GSD Helpline. UNMACA is keeping two scanners at its Kabul headquarters and has sent seven to its regional offices in Kunduz and Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan, Kandahar in the south, Gardez in the southeast, Kabul in the central region, Herat in western Afghanistan and Jalalabad in the eastern part of the country. UNAMA is lending the remaining scanner to the Mine Detection and Dog Center (MDC), an Afghan non-governmental organization that has the largest number of mine detection dogs in the country.

UNMACA staff members at the headquarters and the regional offices are using the chips and the related equipment donated by GSD to ensure that only dogs that have passed the stringent accreditation test in Kabul are working on contaminated land, thereby ensuring that all mine detection dogs in the field have received correct training and produce reliable results.

Mine detection dogs have been a valuable asset to the MAPA since it began in 1989. The dogs are useful for areas without a high degree of mine and UXO contamination and for areas where metal fragmentation, mineralized soils or minimum metal mines limits the use of manual demining teams. Dogs can work fast in areas with a low density of mines and are ideal for detecting the boundaries of minefields.

Mine detection dogs have helped the MAPA has cleared more than 1.25 billion square meters – or about 60 percent of all contaminated land thought to exist in Afghanistan – since 1989. During that clearance, more than 300,000 anti-personnel mines, more than 17,000 anti-tank mines and more than eight million pieces of UXO since 1989.

On behalf of the MAPA and the people of Afghanistan, UNMACA thanks GSD Helpline for its generous donation that will help to safely rid Afghanistan of landmines.