MOZAMBIQUE

Français

By the end of 1992, with the signing of the General Peace Agreement, UNHCR requested Handicap International to develop the first program on Education regarding the dangers of land-mines on the rural population of Tete Province. This program appears to be indispensable to the security of the returnee population.

This program has been extended to Inhambane an Zambezia provinces.

Within 3 programmes, 800.000 people have been directly informed on how to protect themselves from the dangers of landmines and other explosive devices.The agents of these programs have collected the first information on the localisation of places suspected to have land mines.

Until 1994 UNHCR had been co-ordinating the Education activities of UNOHAC when they requested Handicap International to take over this co-ordination.

The work conducted during these three (3) programmes appeared to be indispensable to the security of the civil population. Nevertheless, the needs of the population facing these problems were not restrained to the 3 provinces. It is on this basis that an Education Program me on the danger of land mines was immediately elaborated and implemented.

Project Objective :

1. To provide technical support and methodology to all partners interested in developing activities on prevention of the dangers of land mines.
2. To organise co-ordination and communication with diverse partners.
3. To help in the development of national capacity co-ordination through the support of the CND (National De mining Commission).
4. To develop awareness techniques adapted to problems of land mines through radio and theatre.
5. To develop all initiatives aimed at prohibiting the production, selling and use of land mines in Mozambique.

1. To provide more technical support to the programme partners; give autonomy to stronger partners considering an eventual withdraw from Handicap International; Improve the system of collection and analysis of information. The information collected through the program should be more reliable and of multiple use (databaseof CND, demining agencies etc…)
2. To carry out intensive education campaigns in the priority districts to upgrade the level of knowledge in the population, to identify and to mark the places suspected to be mined.
3. To improve sensitisation material and education according to internal assessment with partners in the previous phases.
4. To improve the techniques/ contents of sensitisation methods( radio and theatre).
5. To continue providing technical support to the National Demining Commission.
6. To continue providing technical support to the Mozambican Campaign against land mines.
7. To restructure and reinforce the National Co-ordination Team for a better follow-up of programs carried out by program partners.

Phase I: July 1995 to July 1996.

Phase II: July 1996 to December 1997.

Phase III: January 1998 to December 1999.

Main donors are, for the period covering 1 January 1998 to 31 December 1999.

Suede Embassy : 708 136 US$
Norway Embassy: 276 467 US$
Finish Embassy: 142 693 US$
USA Embassy (defence): 120 949 US $
French Embassy: 167 000 US$
Swiss Co-operation: 231 806 US$
UNICEF: 118 000 US $
Aus Aid: 50 000 US $(1998 only).
UNDP: 110 227 US $

Handicap International: 86 257 US $.

Links between educational project and social environment(nature of links, role of project, effects expected…)

1. The rural population, particularly in areas most heavily mined.
2. Students, at all educational levels.
3. The National Demining Commission, benefiting from advice and technical support to its Civic Education Department.
4. The Demining agencies, who profit from the information gathered by the program.
5. The Mozambican campaign to ban land mines.

A minimum of awareness level reached in all the provinces of the country where the program is being implemented. Rural communities know that mines and other explosive devices exist, that they are dangerous, and that there is ways to prevent this danger.

Significant reduction of the number of mines accidents these last two years.

A popular program towards rural communities allowing a good involvement of these communities.

Insufficient level of knowledge on the part of population on the specific behaviour to prevent mine accidents.

Imperfect social-cultural adaptation of our messages and working methods.

A minimum level of education of rural communities, exposed to the danger of mines and other explosive devices will be reached in all dangerous areas nation wide. The number of accidents will also decrease.

A network of actors, covering all the provinces in the country, will be able to develop this awareness level, through actions, on the medium and long term, mine risk education and gathering of data regarding accidents and new locations suspected to be mined.

Concerning public institutions(National Education, Health, Social Welfare, Police, District Administrations) working with persons trained by the program, these actions developed will have no specific cost and will not need to be financially supported.

Regarding private institutions, specifically local NGOs, they will be able, if necessary, to develop education action with low costs.

The de-mining agencies operating in the country will benefit from better support for their operations, through better knowledge of problems raised by mines in the areas where they are working, and receiving better logistical support of populations living in the areas where they are working, and receiving better logistical support of populations living in the areas where they will be operating.

The CND will be able to furnish a capitalisation document for education actions to prevent mine accidents to all institutions involved in this kind of activities.

A database, organised and managed by CND, will provide information about who does what, where and how in Mozambique, in the scope of education to prevent mine accidents and who the competent institutions are in the country to implement the actions.

209 radio programmes, 10-15 minutes each, in 18 languages on mine risk education will be available in CND and at the Mozambican Red Cross, to be re-used at low cost if necessary. The Portuguese version of these programmes could be used in Angola, or be used as capitalisation tools for a similar action in this country.

A diversified range of education tools will be available, in the form of model, in Coopimagem, a press enterprise, to be re-used if necessary. The Portuguese version of these tools could be used in Angola or to be used as capitalisation tools for a similar action in this country.

At the end of the project, documentation will be submitted to all our partners (programme actors, CND, Donors), in the form of analysis of the mine risk education, methodology of work for a mass education programme which was designed to work with over 100 different partners and which covered 4 million persons. We should like to think that this form of methodology could be transferred to other forms of mass education(e.g. AIDS education).

Difficulties to be Faced:

Structure

Follow up of the activities: we noticed that it was quite difficult to follow the work done in each province, district and ZIP’s from our central office in Maputo- our National Technical Trainer was unable to follow and give regular technical support directly to the Technical trainers in the 10 provinces.

Use of material

The material arrived late in the provinces due to logistic difficulties.

Create conditions for the maximum of autonomy on the part of our partners in the provinces.