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The Lutheran World Federation Endowment Fund ensures that the agency's work in Cambodia continues. To give to the endowment, contact the ELCA Foundation at 800-638-3522, ext. 2970. Send checks payable to the ELCA (write "LWF Endowment" on the memo line) to: ELCA Foundation , 8765 W. Higgins Rd., Chicago, IL 60631.

Land mines in Cambodia

Land mines were first laid in the 1960s when Cambodia entered the Indochina War, according to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. During the Democratic Kampuchea regime (1975-1979), Khmer Rouge troops used the mines for military and civilian control. Their use grew during the civil war that followed the overthrow of the Khmer Rouge, continuing into the 1990s.

The 1993 democratic elections ushered in a period of relative normalcy. Many refugees and internally displaced people began returning to reclaim their former land—where mines could be set off by anything from a gardening tool to the footfall of a child.

In 1999, when Cambodia ratified the international Mine Ban Treaty, it agreed to clear all antipersonnel mines from areas under its control, no later than Jan. 1, 2010. By 2012 the government’s goal is to make all of Cambodia free from the impact of mines and unexploded ordnance. Since many mined areas are not fenced-off or marked, it remains a painstaking process.

Like swords into plowshares

In Cambodia, Lutherans help replace land mines with vegetables, fruits

Morm Saveurn, 46, his wife, Mou Ly Viseth, and their six children live in Kam Prong, a remote village in northwest Cambodia’s Battambang Province. Saveurn and Viseth (both former soldiers) left the capital, Phnom Penh, and returned home a little more than 10 years ago. Saveurn still works part time as a soldier (10 days a month) but also depends on farming for the family’s income.

Thanks to Lutheran support for clearing land mines in Thmey, Kampong Speu Province, Cambodia, Khan Trang (right) and her husband, Yoy Yon (left), safely grow vegetables to sell at market and feed their five children.

Home is the site of a former battlefield, where Khmer Rouge troops fought those of the Vietnamese and Cambodian governments. Battambang is the most heavily mined province in Cambodia. From January 2004 to August 2005 alone, Battambang recorded 458 casualties from undetected land mines. Current estimates place 4 million to 6 million land mines and unexploded ordnance (UXO) scattered across Cambodia—threats to lives, limbs and economic recovery. Since hostilities ceased in 1997, some 40,000 people have lost limbs to mines in Cambodia.
A Lutheran World Federation partner, the U.K.-based Mines Advisory Group, is one of the country’s mainde-mining operators. The group has spent the last five years clearing nearly 4 million square yards of land in Battambang. In the first half of 2007, the Cambodia Mine/UXO Victim Information System reported 232 victims—a 28 percent decrease from the same period in 2006.

Since 1979 the LWF Department for World Service has worked in Cambodia, taking an approach to sustainable development that empowers vulnerable groups such as poor farmers, female-headed households, landless families, returnees, internally displaced people, rural youth and people affected by HIV/AIDS in remote and isolated areas.

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