Ferit Aslan / Diyarbakır, Oct 26 () - A “Landmine risk training” for children has been launched in Diyarbakır province, in southeastern and eastern Turkey, as a significant number of children lose their lives or become disabled due to threat of landmines in the region, where violence has been escalating.

The Coordinator of A Turkey Without Land Mines Initiative, Muteber Öğreten, urged that civilians have been the essential victims of the landmines, and a 25 percent of the civilians having suffered from this threat was children.

The training, organized by the Turkish initiative and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), has been supported by the Diyarbakır Municipality, while the first students of these trainings were the children in refugee camps having fled the ISIL-struck Sinjar in Iraq.

While 100 children between ages of 7-12 participated the class, students were taught not to touch an unidentified object. Also, educative flyers in Arabic and Kurdish, along with animation books about topics such as “Right to live” and “What to do in situations of risk?” were distributed to students. Two educators and two translators supported the event.

Having underlined that the trainings aimed to demonstrate children how to survive in regions struck by war and conflict, Öğreten urged they have started with Yazidi children because the landmines were to create danger particularly when they would return to their home country, after the war.

Within the project of ICBL, “Survivor Network Project”, five pilot regions have been selected and one of them was Diyarbakır, said Diyarbakır Municipality Chamber of Social Services Semra Kıratlı.

NGOs in the region such as the Human Rights Association (İHD) and the Association of Human Rights and Solidarity for Oppressed Peoples (MAZLUM-DER) support the project, where pscyologists, child development specialists and special education consultants lead the trainings.

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