PREFACE.

10. The future of Landmines

Based on a real-life land mine victim, this middle reader novel tells a story of recovery, hope and coming of age of an African girl who loses her legs to a land mine.

By the time it ended in 1992, Mozambique's 15-year civil war had exacted a terrible price. Economically paralyzed, the vast, drought-stricken country was rich only in enmity, landmines, and AK-47s. Into this misery was thrust a multifaceted UN mission, ONUMOZ, to manage the transition from military combat to electoral contest. Remarkably, when ONUMOZ departed two years later, that job was largely done. This comprehensive account describes how ONUMOZ went about its tasks--assembling and demobilizing troops, providing humanitarian aid, demining, preparing for elections--and assesses how well each was accomplished and why. Richard Synge takes us behind the scenes of the operation, unearthing new information from confidential UN files and from face-to-face interviews with leading players. Even-handed and rigorous, Synge highlights not only the strengths but also the weaknesses of ONUMOZ, and he puts ONUMOZ firmly in its international and regional context. Among the many lessons ONUMOZ offers future peacekeeping efforts is that success demands the support of an engaged international community and a people eager to make peace work.

Saint Kitts and Nevis

An impressive array of activists, scholars, government officials, journalists, and landmine victims themselves are gathered here to tell the dramatic and inspiring story of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL). Organized in the early 1990s, the ICBL is a network of more than one thousand nongovernmental organizations worldwide, working for a global ban on landmines. It was an important force behind the treaty to ban antipersonnel landmines that was signed in Ottawa in 1997, and which led to its being awarded the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize, along with its coordinator.