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WHAT’S NEW? SOMETHING GOING BANG
DEV.TV’S FILM ON THE CLUSTER BOMB HEROES OF LEBANON FEATURED IN UN REFUGEE AGENCY VNR.
In the week (December 3rd) before world leaders sign the Dublin treaty banning cluster bombs, BBC World News airs Something Going Bang. The film, shot mostly in South Lebanon, shows just how lethal the unexploded bomblets still are two years after being dropped. 100 countries have signed the treaty that the world’s main military powers – Russia, China and USA – still refuse to sign. Determined to see their war-torn country rebuilt, young Lebanese deminers risk their lives daily in South Lebanon. Theirs is arguably the worst job in the world - finding and defusing the cluster bombs, shells, mines and other unexploded ordnance left over from the 2006 conflict with Israel, which displaced a million people. Fourteen mine clearers have been killed, while a further 38 have suffered cluster bomb injuries from the hundreds of tiny metal shrapnel contained in a typical drop of about 200 canisters. Over 200 civilians have been killed or injured by the canisters which are about the size of a soft drink can. “I work for my country and for my people – I am so happy that I found one cluster and saved many people” – Ali Hamzeh, a deminer, tells our crew in a Lebanese minefield. Ali Hamzeh and nearly a thousand Lebanese working for UNMACC – the UN Mines Action Coordination Centre, southern Lebanon – clear about a thousand bombs a day. To date, 150,000 out of the estimated one million deadly cluster devices have been defused, enabling the return of hundreds of thousands uprooted by the conflict. Head of the UNMACC team is a 45-year-old former British army officer, Christopher Clark. Clark is a veteran of mine clearance in Sudan and Kosovo. Clark told our crew that bringing normality to ordinary people is what the dangerous job is all about: “Our priority is to enable those people to go back to their houses and live in the vicinity of their houses without fear of something going bang.” In recognition of their achievement in allowing the people of southern Lebanon to return to their olive and lemon groves, Clark and the deminers of the UN Mines Action Coordination Centre, southern Lebanon, will receive on October 6th in Geneva the coveted UN refugee agency Nansen Refugee Award. It’s named after the Norwegian 19th century Arctic explorer – and first High Commissioner for Refugees – Fridtjof Nansen. Clark and the deminers are in distinguished company - previous winners of the $100,000 award started in 1954 include Eleanor Roosevelt, Médecins sans Frontières, the ‘people of Canada’ and Luciano Pavarotti.
For video news release enquiries, call UNHCR Video Unit:
For all enquiries concerning the documentary Something Going Bang, contact:
June 03, 2010
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