LEBANON: Women in the Frontline for Clearing Mines

[rodeodance]

LEBANON: Women in the Frontline for Clearing Mines
By Rebecca Murray

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38826

TYRE, Lebanon, Aug 8 (IPS) - "Mine action is a male dominated sector, but it doesn't have to be," declares Christina Bennike, the dynamic head of Danish charity Dan Church Aid (DCA) in south Lebanon. "I really felt it would be important to address this from the beginning, then it would be natural instead of something different or unique."

DCA, together with the government-backed Swedish Rescue Services Agency, has taken the innovative step of hiring both men and women as searchers to do the challenging work of Battle Area Clearance (BAC) -- methodically clearing the land of deadly cluster bombs, a metre at a time.

"We've had the first integrated teams in Lebanon and it's working out well," Bennike told IPS on phone. "They understand they are here to do a job, and return the land to the people."

Bennike has also brought two female supervisors from Kosovo on board to lead the mixed BAC teams, something unprecedented in Lebanon's traditional mine action community.