Azerbaijan

The Landmine Problem
The 1988 to 1994 war with Armenia left much of Azerbaijan littered with landmines.  The Soviet Union’s collapse also left the area around former military bases threatened by landmines.  Over the past two years, 51 civilians were killed or injured by landmines in Azerbaijan, with over seventy percent of the incidents happening during farming or herding activities.  The recently completed landmine impact survey of Azerbaijan found that a total of 1,205 landmine injuries or deaths have been recorded in the country and that the safety and livelihood of 514,000 citizens are still threatened.

In addition to threatening the lives of agricultural workers, landmines also endanger refugees and internally displaced persons.  Only 35 percent of the almost 6 million Azerbaijans and Armenians displaced by the six year war have returned to their homes, and many of the remaining refugees cannot return until their communities of origin are no longer threatened by landmines.

Humanitarian Demining Programs

The completed landmine impact survey of Azerbaijan provided the Azerbaijan National Agency for Mine Action (ANAMA) with information about the entire country’s landmines problems and grouped threatened communities into priority levels.  As such, the ANAMA can now better allocate its resources for humanitarian demining efforts and better explain its requirements for additional demining assets, including landmine detection dogs.  The Republic of Azerbaijan requested from the US Department of State an indigenous landmine detection dog group to help restore landmine threatened land.  Currently, sixteen mine detection dog teams are operating in Azerbaijan but will remain in the country only through the duration of their respective programs.  In 2005 MLI provided seven fully trained mine detection dog teams to Azerbaijan to establish an initial mine detection dog capacity for Azerbaijan’s national program.

The Marshall Legacy Institute’s Program

After MLI visited its first graduating dogs in Azerbaijan, the national government, impressed by the teams’ initial work, requested eleven more mine detection dogs.  In 2006, MLI is partnering with the US Department of State and the International Trust Fund for Humanitarian Demining and Victims Assistance (ITF) to meet this national requirement.  MLI sent five more dogs to Azerbaijan in February and the final six are expected to be trained later in 2006.  MLI is working to find sponsors for all eleven dogs to continue building indigenous capacity for Azerbaijan’s successful national demining program.

For more information about MLI (CHAMPS parent organization) sending six minedogs into Azarbaijan, click here.