Overall Objective: Contribute to the clearance of high and medium priority mine affected in North east Albania, maintaining zero mine/UXO accidents, and making these areas suitable for development initiatives thus contributing to poverty reduction and due border control by the Border Police.

The Project also aims to establish a sustainable National Clearance Capacity (NCC) - as a national entity to fulfill the clearance of the remaining areas to maintain due level of awareness in at-risk groups and to continue mine victim assistance through improved medical care, physical rehabilitation and socio-economic reintegration.

Specific Objective 1: Coordination and monitoring
1.1 Support the building of the National Capacity for Coordination and Monitoring of mine action activities (Albania Mine Action Executive - AMAE), with the aim to gradually shift the full management over to national authorities.(this component is an extension of the “Capacity Building Project” started by UNDP in 2003 – see relevant project brief in the “Closed Project” section of the UNDP AL website)

Specific objective 2: Clearance
2.1 - Clearing of high and medium priority areas, through international implementing partners.
2.2 - Establishment of a national capacity to deal with the clearance of the remaining low mined areas after 2006.

Specific Objective 3: Mine Risk Education
3.1 - Maintain due level of awareness for “Zero victims,” through mine risk education campaigns
3.2 - Keep 25,000 community members of 39 mine affected villages informed of mine/UXO threats
3.3 - Definition, in collaboration with UNICEF and the Albanian Ministry of Education, of School Curriculum for inclusion in school programme.

Specific Objective 4: Victim Assistance
4.1 - Support the ongoing medical care, physical rehabilitation and socio-economic reintegration of 238 mine/UXO victims
4.2 - Contribute to building a sustainable national capacity to support the needs of mine/UXO victims.

The Project aims to contribute to making Albania free from mines and UXO by freeing mine affected areas in accordance with the National Mine Action Plan. This, in turn, will provide improved security and better living conditions for the 120,000 inhabitants of the Prefecture, allow due border control, and establish a basis for socio-economic development initiatives. A National Clearance Capacity is going to be established to deal with the remaining clearance of low priority areas from 2007 to 2010 to fully meet the obligations of the Ottawa Treaty.

The extent of the mine and unexploded ordinance problem in Albania includes minefields on the Albanian-Kosovo border, laid by the former Republic of Yugoslavia forces during the Kosovo crisis, in the districts of Kukes, Has and Tropoje. Added to this are UXO remnants of Yugoslav artillery clusters strikes up to 20 km inside Albania as well as remnants of ordinance released by NATO aircrafts. Since 1999 there have been 210 mine/uxo accidents in which 238 persons were injured and 34 killed.

Following the emergency phase, the Albanian Government established the structures to implement humanitarian mine action in a coordinated manner and in compliance with international standards. The inter-ministerial Albanian Mine Action Committee (AMAC) was formed in October 1999 as the policy-making and supervisory body for mine action. At the same time the Albanian Mine Action Executive (AMAE) was established to carry out and coordinate the mine action programme under direction of the AMAC, including accreditation, validation and quality management of the mine action activities in Albania.

Mine Clearance
About 12 million - out of the 15.2 million m2 originally contaminated area along the Albania / Kosovo border - have already been released through surveys and clearance. The Impact Surveys (ISs), Technical Surveys (TSs) and Clearance conducted in 2003-2004, significantly improved the knowledge on the remaining mine and UXO threat in the country. AMAE has developed a comprehensive list of mine and battle areas, with detailed information of mine clearance operation. At the end of the 2005 clearance season, about three million m2 remained to be cleared and handed over to community.

The EC has already supported clearance operations with a contribution of 2 million euros from the CARDS Programme to UNDP for Technical Survey and Clearance operations, for the period 2003 /2005.

Mine Risk Education
Most of the 39 directly affected communities are continuously receiving Mine Risk Education (MRE). Immediately after the Kosova crisis various International Organizations such as: UNICEF, Care International and ICRC were involved in MRE. Currently, there are two local based organizations (Victims of Mines and Weapons Association and Albanian Red Cross) implementing MRE activities in the affected villages under the coordination and monitoring of the AMAE by assuring also the necessary collaboration with the clearance operations and the handover of the released land back to the communities.

In the long term perspective, a specific curriculum for mine/UXOs awareness is planned to be introduced into the public school education programme.

Victim Assistance
A broad integrated victim assistance strategy was adopted in 2004 to provide sufficient medical assistance, physical rehabilitation, prostheses, social and psychological support, and socio-economic reintegration for the 238 mine victims in Northeast Albania and eventually building a sustainable Albanian capability in this sector. UNDP-AMAE is coordinating with other organizations točŤX
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A coordinated effort to achieve this aim will be managed by UNDP / AMAE including all the relevant stakeholders such as the national authorities (Ministry of Defense – MoD, Ministry of Health - MoH, Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs - MoLSA, National Prosthetic Center - NPC, Ministry of Education - MoE ), national and international NGOs as implementing partners and a number of international donors supporting with financial resources and in-kind contributions.

Arben Braha
AMAE Director
amaealbania@amae.org.al
AMAE Office Tel/Fax 00355 4 269 280