| Media Note Office of the Spokesman Washington, DC June 19, 2002 Special Representative for Mine Action Salutes HALO Trust's Clearance of One Million Landmines and UXOLincoln P. Bloomfield, Jr., the Special Representative of the President and Secretary of State for Mine Action, today lauded the HALO Trust, the world's largest private non-profit humanitarian demining organization, on its destruction of 1,000,000 landmines and other items of unexploded ordnance (UXO) since 1988, when it began operations in Afghanistan. "Congratulations to the HALO Trust, its dedicated headquarters staff and 4,850 hardworking local deminers in nine mine-affected countries around the world, for their nearly fourteen years of life-saving toil under very dangerous circumstances," said Special Representative Bloomfield. "Besides its efforts to make the world safe from landmines and other remnants of war, HALO Trust's activities have helped representatives from donor nations, international organizations and non-governmental organizations to safely and effectively carry out their own humanitarian assistance work." Special Representative Bloomfield, who also serves as the Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs, is responsible for the U.S. Department of State's humanitarian demining functions that include providing demining assistance worldwide and promoting public-private partnerships to reinforce official mine action efforts. The HALO Trust, one of these mine action partners, is also under a contract to the Bureau's Office of Humanitarian Demining Programs to hire, train and equip 800 new Afghan humanitarian deminers who are reinforcing the 4,500 deminers already employed by the HALO Trust, the UN and non-governmental organizations in Afghanistan. "HALO Trust is known to be among the best of the mine clearance organizations, having been at this business for well over a decade. We first engaged them in 1999 and have found them to be efficient, effective, productive and professional in their approach to demining. We have enormous respect for HALO's capabilities and achievements and we now fund their operations in Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Georgia and Somalia," remarked Donald "Pat" Patierno, who directs the Office of Humanitarian Demining Programs. "In fact, the U.S. is the leading funder of the HALO Trust." To learn more about the State Department's humanitarian demining activities, visit the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs website at http://www.state.gov/t/pm/. Click on Humanitarian Demining Programs and Office of Mine Action Initiatives and Partnerships. |
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