Lone woman driving Nepal’s anti-landmine campaign

By Shaurya Kshatri
Kathmandu, Apr. 5: Globally, thousands of people lose their lives to landmines every year. Those who survive suffer life-altering injuries. In a bid to remember those who lost their lives to these lethal weapons of war and to spread awareness regarding their harmful effects, International Day for Mine Awareness is observed every year on April 4.
In Nepal, Purna Shova Chitrakar, an activist and founder of Ban Landmines in Nepal Campaign (NCBL), has been driving the landmine awareness cause since 1995.
In over 25 years of her campaign, Chitrakar has been determined in eliminating these threats to civilians, and her work has been instrumental in mobilising masses across the country to convince the government to ban landmines outright.
An ardent advocate of peace and the winner of the N-Peace Award 2011, Chitrakar was also at the forefront of the nationwide campaign to free Nepal of all the minefields after the end of insurgency. She worked as a member of Nepal’s National Mine Action Steering Committee to free the country of landmines that were scattered across the country during the conflict.
Even in the midst of the conflict, Chitrakar travelled across the country to remote districts and even to areas in the line of fire urging children and adults to stay away from peculiar abandoned objects. She distributed pamphlets to help villagers identify objects resembling anti-personnel landmines.
Likewise, from 2009 her organisation started conducting mine-risk education in 10 districts while also distributing over 100,000 brochures during the introductory programme. Since then, the advocacy group has expanded its reach to several districts and has even supplied educational pamphlets to all the 77 district CDOs.
“It seemed unfair to me that so many innocent people had to pay the price of a war that ended a long time ago,” says Chitrakar talking about her motivation.
Although the UN declared Nepal as a minefield-free country back in 2011, some of its vestiges still continue to maim innocent lives, one and a half decades after the armed conflict came to an end.
Just last year in April of 2020, four children of Rolpa were killed in a blast supposedly caused by old ordnance left over from the decade-long Maoist insurgency.
As part of the 2006 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, the then government and the Maoist rebels committed to identifying and clearing the landmines, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and other explosive remnants of war.
The government, Nepali Army, and the UN Mine Action Team (UNMAT) collectively combed the minefields scattered across the country inch by inch, measuring, prodding, and digging using metal detectors to clear every single mine they could.
In her campaign to ban landmines, Chitrakar has firsthand witnessed several tragedies strike unsuspecting individuals. In order to help those affected, she has helped several recuperate from the horrors via NCBL. NCBL is a member of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), as a result of which it has been able to support several landmine victims of the
civil war.
One such case is that of 22-year-old Tulsi Darji of Gorusinge, Kapilbastu. When she was only 8-years-old, Darji lost her left leg after stepping on a landmine. The organisation sponsored Darji’s education up to Grade X. She is now ekes out a living as a tailor in her village.
“However, life is still an uphill battle for young Darji. She has to change her prosthetic leg every six months or two years and thus has to constantly travel to Kathmandu, incurring hefty expenses,” added NCBL founder Chitrakar.
In much the same vein, the group has helped several other victims by either providing seed money for business, education sponsorship, free treatment, and counseling.
As of now, Chitrakar is bent on pressing the government to ratify the Mine Ban Treaty -- an international agreement that prohibits the use, production, stockpiling, and transfer of anti‐personnel landmines, while additionally outlining mine removal efforts and calling for assistance to victims of landmines.
There are 164 Countries that are State Parties to the treaty, which is still open for ratification by those that did not sign before March 1999.
“This key contemporary disarmament measure has saved thousands of lives. Eighty per cent of governments in the world have joined this treaty. It is time for Nepal to rethink its policy and join the other nations around the globe that have reached a conclusion that this weapon deserves to be consigned to the dustbin,” concluded
Chitrakar.