The ASEAN Regional Mine Action Center (ARMAC) hosted a courtesy call with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) at ARMAC’s Permanent Secretariat on 25 December 2017. Both organisations gave a brief introduction about themselves and outlined cooperation opportunities for the near future.

Mr. Roman Paramonov explained that ICRC has been working in Cambodia since 1979 during the emergency situation, and currently ICRC focuses on various programmes, such as: to improve general conditions of detention and treatment of detainees in Cambodian prisons (i.e. access to equitable health care, safe drinking water, family links service, etc.), physical rehabilitation for people with disability, and to promote the International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and the implementation of universal humanitarian principles. In the mine action sector, ICRC contributes to both mine risk education and victim assistance in Cambodia. In Battambang and Kampong Speu, ICRC established Regional Physical Rehabilitation Centres, and support the outreach programme through mobile workshops.

During the meeting, ARMAC’s Executive Director Mr. Ly Panharith discussed the effectiveness of integrating MRE into school curricula and the potential for ICRC to implement this. Also, as CMAA’s National Mine Action Strategy includes MRE and Victim Assistance as main goals, ICRC in Cambodia may have further opportunities for cooperation.

During the meeting, Ms. Dwi Prameswari gave a presentation on the history of ARMAC’s establishment, structure, and implementation progress. Mr. Roman Paramonov mentioned his interest for potential collaboration in the future as ICRC’s programmes are relevant to ARMAC’s mandate and functions

ICRC has conveyed and offered their support to provide expertise for training in the future. In return, ARMAC also offers support on providing inputs to the ICRC workshops and/or training. As ICRC has an office in most countries in Southeast Asia, there is high potential collaboration with ARMAC at the regional level.