Tribute to ICRC's work for mine victims

The ICRC has been awarded a prize of one million Swiss francs by the Italian-Swiss Balzan Foundation based in Milan (Italy).

This award will enable the humanitarian organization to increase its urgently needed assistance to thousands of people injured every year by the 10 million anti-personnel mines sown in war-torn Afghanistan over the last decade. The ICRC is currently operating four prosthetic/orthotic centres there, in Kabul, Herat, Mazar-i-Sharif and Jalalabad. In 1995, it produced 4,268 artifical limbs and fitted 3,084 new patients, of whom 23.2% were children under the age of sixteen. In cooperation with the Afghan Red Crescent, the ICRC is also conducting large-scale mine-awareness programmes for communities living in mine-infested areas.