Mines Awareness Trust

THE MINES AWARENESS TRUST

Rwanda MDD

Since April 2008, MAT have deployed Mine Detection Dogs (MDD) into the mine fields, manually and mechanically completed in Rwanda. The MDD's are used for post manual de-mining to quality assure (QA) land. QA is an IMAS standard that needs to be completed before land can be handed back to communities.

Thanks to the fundraising event, Bubblegum Bangers 2008, the MDD project in Rwanda has continued to be operational for the whole of 2009. Bubblegum Bangers was a rally that took 152 people around Europe in order to raise funds for MAT. Rwanda is soon to be a landmine impact free country which is something MAT is extremely proud to have assisted with. MAT is extremely grateful for the Bubblegum Bangers 2008 as it would not have been achieved so quickly had the event not taken place. Many thanks to Brin Harrison for all his efforts that made the event so successful.

Three dogs have been deployed into Rwanda and are currently working on a minefield, Kanombe, just a few miles from Kigali airport. Norweigan's People Aid (NPA) provided a short term project where they brought in a ground preparation machine (MW). This machine prepared an area of approximately 500,000 sq metres for the manual de-miners to then commence work on and for the MDDs to QA.

The dogs are kept at the National De-mining office (NDO) in Rwanda where they are looked after by their handlers. MATs MDD Specialist, Conrad Botha, refreshed the handlers qualifications before QA started and to date, the dogs and their handlers have QA'd thousands of square meters of land.