In December of 2005 the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN) made a Resolution on Mine Action thereby declaring April 4th the International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action. This was done due to the humanitarian and developmental problems caused by mines and explosive remnants of war.
As the central state body for organising and coordinating all tasks associated with demining activities, the Croatian Mine Action Centre was established in 1998. In addition to reducing the size of the suspected hazardous areas (SHA) from 13,000 km2 (UN's assessment for the Republic of Croatia in 1996) to today's 405 km2, the Croatian demining system has achieved a number of other accomplishments as well during their twenty years of operations. This includes a stable market along with safety of pyro-technician and users of the demined areas. Furthermore, an extraordinary feat was achieved in terms of getting the EU funds to finance demining, international proliferation of the demining system, the capacities constantly being modernised etc.
The greatest success of the system is definitely the reduction in the number of the persons injured, that is, the fact that there were no incidents and accidents tied to mines in 2017. Since 1996 until today, 595 persons have been injured by mines, 203 fatally. Therefore, despite the fact that last year there were no mine related injuries, the public still needs to be reminded of the presence of the mine hazard, made aware of the problems caused by mines, stimulate care for mine victims and ask citizens to act responsibly.
Tajana Čičak, Bachelor of Law
Head of the Office of the Director of CROMAC
