Colombia. With the purpose of ridding the national territory of antipersonnel mines, the Military Industry, Indumil, through innovative and technological projects, structured a series of tools with which it seeks to facilitate the work of deminers and above all protect their lives, among which the Canine Training Kit stands out.
In this regard, Colonel (RA) Juan Manuel Sánchez Rosas, director of the Antonio Ricaurte Explosives Factory of the Military Industry, revealed that "as a result of the needs that have arisen at the national level to achieve humanitarian demining protecting the lives of our men, the Military Industry has generated this innovation that is composed of several of the substances that make up the improvised explosive devices that have been planted in Colombia, allowing us to take significant samples to create a small kit that has served to train dogs with good results."
He added that "what we intend is to train all the canines that make up the Military Forces and entities that are in the process of demining to obtain the kits."
Faced with this, Captain Oscar Ashley Buitrago, representative of Indumil of the Committee on the Mine Action Program of the Organization of American States, DAICMA, said that "the sales of the kit for 2018 are estimated at 1,800 units."
For its part, Halo Trust, one of the oldest organizations in the field of humanitarian demining worldwide, through its director Chris Ince, revealed that "for our part we have 50 kits to train dogs, which are accredited after their training, so that we can prove to the authority that they will find the substances that are in the mines."
The director of the NGO, stressed that the training of dogs is an arduous task because of the 18 months that the animals may have, 14 of them are dedicated to training, allowing them to obtain from clearing areas of around 400 meters a day, unlike the capacities of a trained man that are 20 square meters, that is, 20 times more effectiveness."
Figures
- · Colombia ranks second in the number of victims in the world by anti-personnel mines, with a total of 11,498 affected, of which 7,200 are from the Military Forces and others are civilians.
- ·31 of Colombia's 32 departments have been buried by antipersonnel mines, or 687 municipalities.
- · With these figures, humanitarian demining establishes a great challenge for the country: to decontaminate the areas infested by explosives that threaten humanity.
