IRAQ: Mine awareness summer school for children

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

DAHUK, 12 Aug 2004 (IRIN) - As International Youth Day was celebrated worldwide on Thursday, the children of a mountain village called Spindari 45 minutes north of the northern Iraqi city of Dahuk hit the jackpot.

They would usually spend July and August roaming the streets, or guarding their parents’ goats. Instead, the village school has been transformed into a funfair.

In a room lined with colourful drawings, three 10-year old children perform a mime for their classmates. Everybody laughs as one girl pulls an imaginary hair from her fellow actor’s head, and uses it to sew his ear to a third boy’s.

From next door comes the strident sound of singing. Seven children are lined up in front of the blackboard, each one with the name of one of the seven notes of the scale stuck to their foreheads. Do starts, Ray follows, and then Me. Then everybody joins in.

The Spindari summer school is the work of the Kurdistan Organisation for Mine Awareness (KOMA), a Kurdish NGO that provided the civilian outreach side of the United Nations’ de-mining projects after 1996. The bulk of its work has been to train villagers how to recognise mines and how to react when they find them.

For several years, though, KOMA has also worked with children.
“In some ways, children are more vulnerable to mines than adults,” organiser of the Spindari summer school, Nizar Fandi, told IRIN. “They’re also quick to learn and often more talkative than their parents - ideal vectors for what we are here to do.”

Behind the fun and games, however, the school has a very serious objective: to educate Spindari inhabitants, via their children, in what KOMA members call mine risk education.

“We chose the village because it is surrounded by 12 known minefields, one less than 30 metres from the houses,” explained Fandi. “Three people have been seriously injured here in the last five years, and several flocks of sheep decimated.”

The idea for the project is simple - teach the children how to recognise and avoid mines and unexploded ordnance, and they will convey that information to their parents, either at home, or via the concert and exhibition the children will put on when lessons end in mid-August.

Theatre and music classes are not all mime and traditional songs. The children are also preparing short plays and songs on what to do if you stray into a minefield. Alongside the English, storytelling and art classes, children also have lessons devoted to mine awareness.

Many of the children say this is the course they enjoy the most. It is easy to see why. The lesson starts with a puppet show. A fox, a tiger and a rabbit perched like Punch and Judy on a wooden ledge. The fox is naughty, and likes to take his slingshot to shoot sparrows in the fields. His friends persuade him against it.

The classroom floor is littered with a dozen or so small polystyrene squares. On each, a photograph of a different type of explosive device. “Who can find me two anti-personnel fragmentation mines?” asks the teacher. A line of hands goes up.

Of the six teachers working at the summer school, only the two music teachers are not KOMA employees. “Teaching children is a pleasant change from the work we usually do with adults,” drama teacher Yusef Ilias, told IRIN. “I haven’t done this kind of thing since I was at university.”

Formerly sponsored by the UN, KOMA is currently funded by the local authorities. That has meant a drastic cutback in the money available to it.

“At US $2,000, we’re only able to afford two summer courses this year,” Fandi said. “The other one starts in Akre at the beginning of August.”

He added that there was talk of KOMA being taken over by Iraq’s new National Mine Action Authority, whose northern branch is based in the Arbil governorate. “I have no idea whether that will happen, but I think it would enable us to do more of this kind of work.”

[ENDS]