Anglican Communion News Service

Niche diplomacy - concentrating our available resources and influence on areas where we can actually make a difference is what Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy has been practising in the Ottawa Process around landmines. Two stories that lay together on a PWRDF desk give some clues as to a Canadian Anglican niche in the world-wide efforts to address landmine issues. Both are from Maputo, Mozambique.

The first is a story reported at the 4th International NGO Conference on Landmines held in Mupoto in February 1997: "Elizete Manhica woke up early on the morning of March 13, 1996, to tend her small farm. While gathering dry grass, she felt a strange object. She took a hoe and beat the land to remove the object when it exploded, blowing her back a distance. She tried to stand, but was not able. Help came after hearing the explosion and Elizete's cries for help. However, she died on the way to the hospital. Because of the explosion, her three children are now orphaned -- their father had died during the war."

People uprooted by war experience the devastation of landmines at every stage of their exile. Landmines not only disrupt the supplies of humanitarian relief to war victims and refugees, they also cause civilian casualties that require long-term rehabilitation. Landmines make the return to, and reconstruction of, war-torn areas a life-or-death exercise. For Elizete Manhica it meant death.

The second Maputo story is a June report from Co-operation Canada-Mozambique (COCAMO) to African Development Co-ordinator Charlotte Maxwell, PWRDF'S COCAMO representative. The COCAMO Partnership Program was developed through extensive consultations between Canadian and Mozambican non-governmental (NGO) partners held in Ottawa and in Nampula, Mozambique throughout 1992. Its aim is to support local NGOs' efforts to rebuild their society after 15 years of war.

COCAMO staff reported their support of the Nampula Orthopaedic Centre's rehabilitation efforts. Financial support enables the Centre's staff to travel to rural districts to identify landmine victims and other amputees, and pay for their transportation to Nampula to be fitted with prosthetic devices. COCAMO also supports the Canadian International De-mining Centre as it assesses the problem of landmines and develops an appropriate de-mining strategy for Nampula province.

Then there was the report from Maputo. COCAMO works with Handicap International theatre training groups for mines awareness and is aiming at breaking into the Department of Education to get mines awareness added to the curriculum. "The assessor from Maputo was here and she has agreed to put a draft proposal together." Perhaps Elizete Manhica's children will be a part of that program.

A nice is more than a place where we fit. Ecologically, it is an appropriate combination of conditions for a specifies to thrive. In Canada, PWRDF urged the General Synod Council to join Mines Action Canada, a coalition representing 37 international development, peace, public health, human rights and faith NGOs. Outside Canada, PWRDF priorities call for partnership with the poorest people in the poorest countries, and support for reconstruction after disasters and wars. PWRDF's involvement with COCAMO helps war-weary Mozambicans rebuild their homes and de-mine their land.