Sri Lanka's Ambassador to the UN in Geneva Ravinatha Aryasinha has said Sri Lanka stands ready to share its experience in comprehensive demining as a 'best practice' with countries which are facing similar challenges.

Ambassador Aryasinha made this observation when he addressed the 16th Annual Conference of the High Contracting Parties to Amended Protocol II on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the use of Mines, Booby-Traps and other Devices of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) on Wednesday (12 November 2014) at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.

He mentioned that "Sri Lanka’s continuing progress in demining has been achieved by telescoping what according to some estimates was to take 15 – 20 years, into one of 5 – 7 years duration, he said this was not only a rewarding experience for our people as they now move about freely across the country, but also a positive lesson for other conflict affected countries, where nationally owned and nationally driven programmes could achieve their intended purposes, if the necessary political commitment, resolve and pragmatic vision is put in place".

Ambassador Aryasinha also added that "the GoSL successfully embarked on a very difficult challenge of demining an area of approximately 5,000 square kilometers of land initially estimated to be contaminated with mines, out of which approximately 2,064 square kilometers were confirmed as hazardous areas…..  Over  1,128,336 explosive devices (1,712- anti tank,  615,669-anti personal and  510,955 UXOs) have been recovered as at September  2014. Five years since the ending of the terrorist conflict in Sri Lanka, so far this year alone, a total of 55,761 explosive devices, including 78 Anti- Tank mines, 28,577 Anti Personnel mines and 27,106 UXOs have been recovered. Demining continues to take place as the number of mines and IEDs laid by the LTTE was extensive and their locations unknown."

He added that 75% of this demining work had been allocated to the Sri Lanka Army. The demining process was also supported by funding from donor countries and the UN and carried out by INGOs/NGOs such as the Halo Trust, DDG, MAG, FSD, Sarvatra, Horizon, MMIPE and DASH.

"Out of the total confirmed hazardous area, 96.2% has already been cleared and only 78.8 square kilometers of territory remains to be cleared. It is expected that these areas too will be completely cleared in the near future" Aryasinghe added.

As a result of this work the Government of Sri Lanka was able to resettle a total of 510,710 persons (153,837 families) out of nearly 767,748 IDPs (226,824 families), in the Northern Province and 257,038 persons (72,987 families) in the Eastern Province, the Ambassador said. “Only a total of 26,056 persons (7,840 families) remain to be resettled, which includes 21,747 persons (6,498 families) from the North and 4,309 persons (1,342 families) from the East"