Day Fifteen - UXO Lao Visitors' Centre

Today, we visited the UXO Lao Visitors' Centre on the outskirts of Luang Prabang. It is primarily a field office for the organisation but there is a small room set aside as a museum of sorts.  It was a moving and sobering visit, so without apology from me, this blog entry is purely information on the work of UXO Lao.

UXO stands for Unexploded Ordinance.

This is what they look like:

A cluster bomb with its payload of "bombies"

Between 1964 and 1973, an estimated two million tons of ordinance was dropped by US forces on Laos, making it the most heavily bombed nation per capita in history. That figure included some 260 million anti-personnel "bombies" of which perhaps a third (78 million) failed to explode. The bombies and other small pieces of ordinance are, of course, very attractive to inquisitive children and, of the more than three hundred deaths from exploding ordinance in the Lao PDR each year (roughly one person a day), most involve bombies.

Most bombs were dropped in the poorest eastern provinces of Laos and, although the Laos government programme is painstakingly removing UXO as fast as its meagre funding allows, poverty and the search for scrap metal by local people constantly puts adults and children in harm's way.

A scrap metal hunter and his son

Although international agencies like the UN and individual governments, including the USA and the European Union, are helping the Lao government with their programme, the contributions are small and the UXO project remains  massively underfunded.

If you feel you can help financially with this vital work, you can learn about how to donate by visiting their website.