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United Nations: Use Massoud Hassani’s Mine Kafon Invention
The children are this planet’s most precious resource. The statement is often repeated and sounds cliche: the children are our future. The fact is they are.
Over the past one hundred years the deadly legacy of armed conflict throughout the world is the insidious anti-personnel mine…also known as the land mine. Unexploded land-mines remain lethal as a war-torn country begins its reconstruction and development. Frequently the widespread practice of mining agricultural land has led to malnutrition, even to famine and starvation. This heinous military practice is harmful to adults and children alike.
Placing minefields without marking and recording them for later removal is considered a war crime under Protocol II of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, an attached condition to the Geneva Conventions.
Using his childhood experience, making toys from whatever materials were available while growing up in war distressed Afghanistan, designer Massoud Hassani has created a wind-powered sphere made from bamboo and biodegradable plastic that can be used to clear landmines. The Mine Kafon.
It is the inexpensive the solution to this dilemma. Watch the video made by artist/film maker Callum Cooper, of the United Kingdom, to see the prototype of this unique lifesaving device in action.
In military science the land mine is a defensive or harassing device, used to slow the enemy down, in order to deny certain territory to the enemy; it is used as well to focus enemy movement into kill zones, or to lower troop morale with unpredictable attacks on equipment and personnel. It is said in some battles during World War II, anti-tank mines accounted for half of all vehicles disabled. We are certain the number is considerably higher in the myriad armed conflicts seen round the world today.
The unexploded devices injure and kill tens of thousand of adults and children every year. Minefields are often marked with warning signs and cloth tape, to prevent friendly troops and non-combatants from entering them. Of course, sometimes protected land areas can be denied using dummy minefields. Most armed forces carefully record the location and disposition of their own minefields, because warning signs can be destroyed or removed, and minefields should eventually be cleared. Minefields may also have marked or unmarked safe routes to allow friendly movement through them.
Often the areas where these land mines have been placed and abandoned are the play areas of the world’s children. If there are warning signs posted many of the children are illiterate and are unable to read them or in the course of their enthusiastic play the signs, if present, go unnoticed. The United Nations knows from a 1996 report about the dangers of land mines children who manage to survive explosions are likely to be more seriously injured than adults, and often permanently disabled. Moreover, competing demands for scarce medical services also mean that children injured by mines seldom receive the care they deserve.
The United Nations is aware of the impact armed conflict has on the children of the world. In 1997, the Ottawa Treaty a document intended to eliminate dangerous land mines from the planet, was signed by 133 members of the United Nations.
Current reports indicate to date, 2012, 160 countries in the United Nations to have signed the Ottawa Treaty. States who signed the treaty must cease production of mines and destroy its stockpile of anti-personnel mines within four years.
Difficult to believe there are still 34 UN nations, including China, Cuba, and the U.S., who have not signed the treaty.
We respectfully request United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon arrange to use Mr. Hassani’s device to rid our planet of these concealed destructive weapons of war immediately.
Massoud Hassani has provided the solution to this problem with his invention, the Mine Kafon. It can be installed with GPS technology and the data returned to a web site to indicate where the mines have been cleared. It’s cost effective to produce. It’s efficacious when implemented to detonate unexploded land mines safely. It saves lives!
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