Clearing Land Mines Becomes Women's Work in Mozambique and Beyond

MAPUTO, MozambiqueWhen Biatriz Hernesto was a child, she and her school friends longed to pick fruit in the bush behind her grandparents' house. They knew that's where the best marula fruits and other wild treats grew. But they also knew the area contained land mines, so they seldom ventured there.

Hernesto grew up in Maxixe, in southern Mozambique, in the aftermath of a brutal civil war that lasted from 1977 to 1992 and left the southern African country riddled with deadly, unexploded ordnance.

When she saw people coming to clear the land of mines, she hid. "We thought the de-miners were soldiers who would kill us," says Hernesto, now 25.

Many of them were, in fact, former fighters. Traditionally, mine-clearing efforts in Mozambique, and globally, have employed ex-soldiers as a way to provide them with work and integrate them back into society, says Ashley Fitzpatrick of APOPO, a Belgian NGO headquartered in Tanzania that clears land mines in Africa and Asia.

But those demographics are shifting. In Mozambique and other countries, women are now working as de-miners.

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In Cambodia, women began taking up such work in 1995, followed by Kosovo in 1999. The passage of UN Resolution 1325 in 2000, which required the de-mining industry to work toward gender equality, has boosted the trend. Now, about 20 countries employ females in land-clearing occupations, which include de-mining, training, and managing.

The push for women miners has also come from donors who support the de-mining efforts of humanitarian organizations, says Arianna Calza Bini, director of the Geneva-based Gender and Mine Action Programme.

Those donors, along with the UN and many NGOs, note that in postconflict areas, de-mining is often one of the only economic opportunities available. And workers and funders want to include the larger community in the processit is, after all, their land that's being cleared. Finally, it's often women who are most at risk of being hurt or killed by land mines.

"Women are the people in Mozambique who are responsible for gathering firewood and water, and for tilling the fields," says Kate Brady of the United Nations Development Programme in Mozambique. "Therefore, they are [most] likely to be affected by land contamination."

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Clearing Land Mines Becomes Women's Work in Mozambique and Beyond