Ecuador has anti-personnel landmines along its 79 kilometer border with Peru, a result of a long-standing border dispute that escalated into a brief war in 1995. The 6,905 mines affect an area of 438,690 square meters. A lesser, though unquantified, threat is ERW from jungle warfare in the Cordillera del Condor area. The area affected by mines is sparsely populated; however the mines significantly affect indigenous Shuar and Achuar tribes' access to their traditional farming and hunting land. The challenges to mine clearance operations are the steep terrain, lack of road access, and frequent flooding.

Sources: To Walk the Earth in Safety, June 2006
Landmine Monitor Report, 2006

TEMPEST

The Tempest is an affordable, remote-controlled, multi-purpose mechanical system capable of clearing medium vegetation, reducing metal debris, eliminating tripwires, and engaging the ground to initiate landmines in anti-personnel minefields. It uses an interchangeable cutting flail and slasher to clear vegetation, and a ground engagement flail to prepare the land for manual demining. Integrated and independent magnet arrays are added to remove metallic debris from the soil's surface, reducing the false alarms of follow-on detection technologies.

PARTNERS: Mines Advisory Group - Cambodia, Thailand Mine Action Center, National Demining Center of Ecuador