Note to Correspondents

United Nations Marks International Day for Mine Awareness by Hosting

 

Multimedia Exhibition at Headquarters, 4 April

 

Long after wars and other hostilities end, landmines and other unexploded ordnance — including bombs, mortars, grenades and missiles — still inflict pain and suffering on millions of people, often women and children in the world’s poorest areas.

This year’s commemoration of the International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action, on 4 April, will highlight the work of the mine action sector in saving lives, protecting livelihoods and celebrating the vigorous movement towards the United Nations vision of a world free from the threat of landmines and other explosive remnants of war.

To mark the international day, a multimedia exhibition entitled “UN Common Cause” will open at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, 4 April, with a formal ceremony and reception in the Main Gallery of the Visitors Lobby at United Nations Headquarters.

The show features works by New York-based portrait photographer Marco Grob, who travelled to Afghanistan and Cambodia — both heavily contaminated with landmines and other explosive ordnance — to photograph mine victims for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Mine Action Team (UNMAT).  Also featured are photographs by Italian photojournalist Giovanni Diffidenti, who spent some time documenting the work of the Joint Mine Action Team (JMACT) in Libya, where the ongoing conflict has created a deadly topography in homes, communities and workplaces with a lethal collection of unexploded ordnance, abandoned ammunition and newly laid landmines.

In 2011, a very successful landmine-awareness campaign in Colombia was implemented for International Mine Awareness Day.  The “Lend Your Leg” campaign asks all to roll up their trouser legs in a symbolic gesture of solidarity with landmine survivors across the globe who have lost limbs to the deadly devices.  This year, the campaign is going global, with UNMAT and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines joining the Fundación Arcangeles to mobilize hundreds of organizations in at least 138 countries to “Lend their Leg”, and declare with one voice, NO MORE LANDMINES.  (For more information, visit www.lendyourleg.org)

The exhibition will also display educational models of landmines, cluster munitions and other explosive devices, as well as videos that provide a glimpse into the historical overview of United Nations mine action work.

For additional information, visit the UN Mine Action Team’s website, www.mineaction.org.  In New York, contact Aaron J. Buckley, UN Mine Action Service, tel.:  +1 212 963 4632, e-mail:  buckleya@un.org.  For more information on United Nations exhibitions, call Jan Arnesen, +1 212 963 8531, e-mail arnesen@un.org; or Liza Wichmann, tel +1 212 963 0089, e-mail wichmann@un.org; or visit http://visit.un.org.

* *** *

For information media • not an official record