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On 9 December, UNMAS supported the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) with deactivation of weapons collected by UNMISS in Juba since 15 December 2013, from internally displaced persons (IDPs) who have sought refuge in UNMISS IDP Protection of Civilians (PoC) sites. The weapons and ammunition were confiscated over the past year either from IDPs entering the site or during subsequent searches.

The event, which took place inside the UNMISS base in Juba, was followed by a demolition in Kit, Central Equatoria State (90 minutes south of Juba), on 10 December.

The Juba weapons cutting was attended by the Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG), Ellen Margrethe Løj, ambassadors and local and international media.

This was the first in a series of weapons and ammunition destruction exercises, with others taking place in Malakal, Bentiu, Wau, Nassir and Bor throughout the month of December.

In Malakal, for example, over 10,500 rounds of ammunition were destroyed on 12 December at a controlled demolition site. The destruction was completed by UNMAS, with the Indian Battalion providing Force Protection.

An UNMAS Emergency Route Verification and Clearance team (ERVCT) worked throughout December on the Pariang and Mayom routes.  

Their work in the Bentiu area was in response to the Mission's requirement for rapid assessments and verification of roads suspected of having anti-tank mine threats.

UNMAS tasked the ERVCT with the clearance of three priority locations, on the Pariang and Mayom routes where antitank mine incidents had occurred. The team deployed to the first suspected area, located on the Pariang route, on 2 December.

Flooding in some sections slowed their progress (as shown in the photo above - Photo credits: Willie Borman/TDI); however UNMAS worked through the challenges with the help of UNMISS Engineering and finished operations.

On 24 December, after finalization, the team escorted the Mission on an assessment to the Unity Oil Fields Airstrip.

Also in Bentiu, UNMAS teams worked throughout January to clear the Rubkona airstrip extension of unexploded ordnance and other explosive remnants of war prior to the commencement of road engineering work.

UNMISS requested clearance of the airstrip to allow freedom of movement for the Mission and Humanitarian actors to deliver necessary support and supplies. The airfield serves as the sole logistics point during the rainy season for aid deliveries to 40,000 IDPs in the UNMISS Protection of Civilians (PoC) site.

The clearance work started with mine protected vehicles equipped with rollers to ensure the route is efficiently covered. This was then followed by the use of a large loop mine detector and for further accuracy a handheld locator was then employed to determine the exact position of the signal and a ground penetrating radar to detect non metallic items as well.

The clearance has now been completed and the teams moved onto survey of the PoC site extension.

Ayii is a village which borders Central Equatoria and Eastern Equatoria along Juba-Nimule road.  The Boma is divided in two by the Ayii River. During the 1983-2005 war, intensive fighting took place with the area changing hands on several occasions. As a result the area is heavily contaminated by unexploded ordnance (UXO) and landmines further reducing the total land available for agriculture. 

Owing to inadequate coordination, weak infrastructure and communication, there is no reliable data on the dispersal of landmines.  There are almost no minefield records, which makes mine clearance even more difficult.

A number of commercial and Non-Governmental Organisations have worked in this area which is littered with abandoned explosive remnants of war (ERW), UXO and landmines. They have all done clearance combined with the important task of community liaison and mine risk education. All the community has benefitted a great deal from the mine risk education sessions and they are now aware and understand the reality of the threat in their area.

One example is Morjan Richard, 35, who lives in Ayii with his family, after returning from Uganda in 2012. Morjan (shown in photo above pointing at a mortar found in October 2014, when he was renovating a shelter), had benefited from mine risk education and took the initiative to report the item and asked for a team to come and clear his land. When the team arrived in the village, they discovered that the item was not only on Morjan’s land but also 10 meters away from a road and a football field where more than 500 school children play football on a weekly basis. The explosive ordnance disposal team destroyed the item and carried out a non-techincal survey on a further 30 square meters of land that Morjan feared to be contaminated.

Thanks to ongoing clearance operations, land has been and will be handed back to local communities to be utilized for growing crops and herding cattle as effectively as possible.
Local land owners and farmers are welcoming the efforts made to clear the threat and appreciate the risk education presented to the community.

Story and photo by Mines Advisory Group and G4S.

The above map, generated from the Information Management System for Mine Action database, shows where mine action teams were at the end of January 2015.

Please note UNMAS can supply other maps upon request, including a map of all hazardous areas in our database, maps of accidents and maps of hazards cleared. You can also see them at the following link: http://www.unmas.org/southsudan/useful-links/maps/

For further information, please contact Iulia Toma at iulia.toma@unmas.org, iuliat@unops.org, or (+211) 959 002 709.

We would also like to hear any suggestions you may have on our reporting and let us know if there are any issues you would be interested in reading about in these updates.