CAMEO Corporate Objects and Goals

To accomplish CAMEO's Mission, CAMEO Landmine Clearance has registered six primary Objects of the Corporation:

Each of these Objects is described in detail below.

2.1 To engage in humanitarian mine clearance. In Angola in August 1994, there were approximately 70,000 amputees out of a population of 10 million, and at least an equal number of people killed. The majority of the victims are not soldiers, but civilians, and of the civilians killed or maimed the majority are women and children, who become casualties as they forage for food and firewood for their starving families. Many of these cases go unreported because the victim is alone or it is night at the time the accident occurs, and many of those originally only maimed die from inadequate treatment being available or from gangrene because there are no disinfectants. Still others die because the blood they require to survive the operation is tainted with HIV and/or Hepatitis B. Even those whose amputations are successful still have to have their limb sawed off with no anaesthetic available in many cases, and even the saw is not sterile because there is no autoclave available to sterilize tools for such operations.

The intense pain and shock of landmine injuries are severely traumatic experiences which cause long-term psychological disorders in a significant proportion of victims, particularly the young whose remaining 50+ years of physical life become distorted beyond repair .
2.1.1 In Cambodia, for example, one young man was blown up by a mine and his companion went for help - when they returned, the man had hanged himself from a tree because he felt he had no useful life without all his limbs. Nearly a quarter of the war casualties treated by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) are mine victims, and of these mine victims, as many as 80% (Georgia 1994/95) are civilians. In Somalia in 1991, 74.6% of mine victims were children, and these were the ones which were reported. Some 85% of child victims die before they reach hospital and therefore do not appear in most statistics. It is abundantly clear that the only measure which can really save lives is the preventive measure which forms the substance of this Object - mine clearance removes the hazard, and these other pitfalls are concomitantly obviated.
2.1.2 Land mines are not a form of munition, because a munition needs a mechanism to aim and fire it; rather, land mines are weapons in their own right, and they and booby traps (often mixed with mines) are the only weapons where the victim triggers his or her own destruction. Anti-personnel mines are particularly indiscriminate, having been originally placed to act against soldiers but act against civilians equally severely. Furthermore, many of these have been placed on purpose in areas where civilians are likely to go just to disrupt traffic patterns and deny the use of facilities, and these silent killers are like eternally vigilant unsleeping sentries for whom the war is never over regardless of a signed peace accord. Most of their locations are never marked, and in many cases the persons who laid them were killed and the knowledge of the locations died with them.
2.1.3 To conduct humanitarian mine clearance, CAMEO Security will be using former Canadian Military Engineer mine and explosives experts who have considerable experience with the Canadian Forces peacekeeping missions where they have dealt with the land mine hazard to the peacekeepers. CAMEO's personnel have hands-on experience in mine action in Pakistan (for Afghanis), Cambodia, Kuwait, the former Yugoslavia, and other smaller sites such as Haiti. For immediate response, CAMEO Security will be using former Gurkha military engineers from the British Army through an arrangement with the Gurkha Security Guards {GSG (EOD) Trust} from Nepal, because these individuals can respond within two weeks to crisis centres and will stabilize the area until the Canadian contingent arrives. For rapid area detection of mines, CAMEO Security will utilize mine search dogs trained by Detector Dog Services International located in Calgary, Alberta.
2.2 To engage in humanitarian explosive ordnance disposal is the object which represents a final solution to the hazard of unexploded aerial bombs, artillery shells, mortar bombs, rocket grenades, and smaller types of munitions. In Laos, there are millions of "bombies", as they are called by the Laotians, which are the small bomblets spread by the dropping of cluster bombs over Laos during the Viet Nam War. The bomblets act in many ways like mines, especially anti-personnel mines which have been dropped aerially, such as the hundreds of thousands of "butterfly" mines dropped by the Soviet Union on Afghanistan. These latter mines were particularly insidious, because they were painted in bright designs and colours expressly to attract children to pick them up and by so doing be cruelly maimed or killed. Their sole purpose in being dropped was to sow terror throughout the mined area and paralyse the local population from moving out of the settlement areas.
2.2.1 In many former battle areas, unexploded ordnance (UXO) is equally the hazard that mines are, because of the volume of shells fired during the battle. Although the shell may not have exploded upon impact, it may be so sensitive that a small child might set it off just by tripping over it. In Europe, shells from World War I are still turning up in farmers' fields, having originally been buried upon impact but subsequently slowly percolating to the surface over time.
2.2.2 To accomplish this Object, CAMEO Security will utilize the same former Canadian Military Engineers experts and Gurkha specialists. In most hazard areas, UXO are present along with mines, and both the first and second Objects will usually be tackled simultaneously. Mine search dogs can also be used in this Object, because it is the explosive they smell rather than the mine or UXO itself.
2.3 To engage in live-firing area clearance and environmental clean-up is particularly important in built-up areas such as towns and villages. In this instance, most of the locations of mines and UXO hazards are known, but the settlement has to be "sanitized" to ensure a safe return to productive use of all facilities. This third Object of CAMEO Security comes into play during reintegration and reconstruction of communities once the emergency is over.
2.3.1 This Object will be accomplished using the former Canadian Military Engineer personnel to organize and lead teams of volunteer local inhabitants, some of the latter who will have been earlier trained by CAMEO personnel in mine clearance and explosives technology. It is also intended for CAMEO to act as a field test site for Canadian technology to be transferred to the re-building society, and under this Object, a mechanical explosive vapour detector machine like the one made by CPAD Technologies of Ottawa could be employed, for example.
2.3.2 These first three objects represent the "final solution" to the mine and UXO hazard in a particular area or community, but because clearance is extremely slow and costly work (it takes 50 people one year to clear one square kilometre of mined area regardless of the number of mines found), CAMEO also has objects which are designed to adapt people to living with the mine hazard until the mines can be safely removed.
2.4 To engage in land mine and explosive ordnance awareness training is the first activity to be undertaken upon entering a mined area, because it is immediately effective in reducing the casualty rate, although it does not eliminate the probability of casualties as only actual clearance can do that. Mine awareness education is essential for all inhabitants of mined areas, and is best taught to local community leaders who in turn make it a continuing topic of community education. It is not a "one-shot" activity, but rather is a continuing requirement as long as there are mines in the area where community dwellers work or play, which could be for two or more generations.
2.4.1 Mine awareness seeks to adapt individuals' life styles to include living with the mine hazard. In the same way as a parent in Canada will instill in the child the absolute need to look both ways before crossing a busy street, mine awareness education will instill in the individual the absolute need to stay on the cleared path and never take shortcuts, as well as never picking up objects from the ground which they themselves did not put down there, etc. It is a huge challenge, but is paramount to the safety of all persons in a community, particularly the young, who tend to be inquisitive to the point of self-destruction.
2.4.2 As well, one is taught to recognize mines and UXO, and what to do upon encountering them, including the safe extraction of a land mine victim from a minefield. Mine awareness education is particularly important for returning refugees and internally-displaced persons (IDP) before they return to their traditional areas, because they must be made to realize that these areas are not the same as when they left but rather have since been mined. Complacency kills.
2.4.3 The methods to be used in teaching mine and UXO awareness include the full range of audio and visual teaching procedures. It has been found that puppet shows are particularly attractive to rural African children, for example, and the mine awareness message can very effectively be taught in such a medium. Since most rural villages will probably not have electric power, the use of TV and radio will be concentrated on the larger urban centres, although a vehicle containing audio/visual aids along with a portable generator can create considerable interest in such settlements. Similarly, many children will not be able to read, so published material will concentrate on imagery for its lessons. For smaller settlements, it has proven very effective to enlist the services of village elders and community leaders, and these trusted individuals will be most effective in putting forth the mine awareness message to community groups. At the same time as the mine awareness message is being passed, a system to deal with unexpected casualties will be set up by these same elders and leaders.
2.4.4 Under this Object, it is also intended to promote donor country mine awareness and keep pressing for a total world-wide ban on the production, transfer, and use of anti-personnel mines in accordance with Canadian Government international leadership in this area. CAMEO personnel have already participated in community meetings in Ontario and upper New York State to promote Canadian and US understanding of the devastating mine hazard present in war-torn societies and the means to assist these countries to build up their indigenous capacity to undertake mine relief work.
2.5 To engage in land mine and battle area surveys, CAMEO will be seeking assistance from the National Defence Geomatics Directorate to accomplish digital mapping based on Canadian geographical information system (GIS) technology, in which Canada is a world leader. CAMEO will record all mines and mined areas found in digitized format capable of being placed on digital maps. This system is now being set up by the National Demining Commission of Mozambique using German Project Coordination, a specialist NGO. All of CAMEO's mine survey and marking operations will be conducted in a manner compatible with the Mozambican national system of mine marking and recording.
2.5.1 This Object is an essential precursor to the actual clearance of minefields and battle areas, because it not only locates the mines but also their number and density, and allows appropriate mine clearance plans to be made in accordance with national reconstruction and rehabilitation priorities as well as available personnel and equipment. It is appropriately done in conjunction with mine awareness education, because the mine awareness education includes training locals how to identify and report mines in their various villages or settlements. CAMEO personnel have over ten years of experience in this area, having begun their mine awareness and mine survey training activities as a part of the Canadian Military Engineers Team in Pakistan training Afghani refugees before they returned to their homeland.
2.6 To provide training and assistance to others in the carrying out of all of the above activities is the sixth Object of CAMEO Security, but it is really an integral part of all the other five Objects. The aim of CAMEO's humanitarian missions is not only to provide immediate relief but also to build up a national capacity to reduce and eventually eliminate the need for further relief. In the case of land mine clearance, it is foreseen that CAMEO could provide advice to the national government on the formation of an Institute to regulate all mine clearance within the country, because such clearance will take many decades to complete. World War I bombs are still turning up in farmers' fields in Europe, for example, and the same will be true for many minefields in the third world. There are over 110 million mines estimated to be in the ground at present, and the current rate of removal is only about 100,000 per year world-wide. Furthermore, mines continue to be manufactured and planted, which is why their manufacture and use must be completely outlawed now if there is ever to be an eventual complete clearance of this scourge on humanity from the world.

Contents © 1997 CAMEO Security

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