The second day of the Third World Conference on Support for Mine Victims, which is being held in the capital of the Kingdom of Cambodia, began with a session on mental health and psychosocial support, which is one of the main pillars of support for mine victims. One of the panelists at this session was a member of UDAS, Zoran Ješić from Banja Luka, who spoke about the importance of this topic from the perspective of landmine survivors, and the role and capacities of landmine survivors’ organizations in this regard.
If we know that good mental health and psychosocial support are the basic prerequisites to reduce the suffering caused by a traumatic event, and to strengthen the remaining abilities of the victim in order to successfully recover and achieve a satisfactory quality of life, one of the conclusions from the meeting is that timely and effective planning all the necessary steps when it comes to this topic, with greater engagement of competent state institutions and provision of stable and regular sources of funding for organizations and projects dealing with support for mine victims.
It is necessary to obtain information about the existence of the victim, and then realistically look at the objective needs of the victim and family members, primarily based on the needs and wishes expressed by the victim herself, and then also the experience that experts and organizations have in this area. It is very important to choose the right type of support, depending on the affinity of the victim, because only in this way can we raise the level of the victim’s self-confidence and quality of life, which is a key prerequisite for a feeling of full rehabilitation and well-being. At the same time, we must not look for the cheapest solutions, because in some cases the cheapest can become the most expensive, that is, with inadequate psychosocial support, mental health can be seriously damaged and as a result have negativity and deviance that can ultimately cost society much more than timely and adequate support.
Therefore, support for landmine victims and their families acts preventively and costs less than remediation of the possible consequences of impaired mental health, not only for the individual, but also for society as a whole. At the same time, the process of supporting mine victims must be flexible, that is, subject to changes in accordance with the real and current needs of the victim and his family members.
In this context, the representative of our Organization UDAS gave an example of how e.g. former active athletes, when they felt that active sports had become tiring, needed some other kind of support, which our organization provided. Thus, many of them found their vocation in some other fields, and as a positive example, the psychosocial and economic support of landmine victims through beekeeping, a project that was started with the selfless support of ITF Slovenia and the Government of the Republic of Slovenia, and which in the meantime has been annexed by the Government of Republika Srpska and which is still ongoing.
Due to all of the above, a strong message and recommendation was sent that mental health and psychosocial support must be part of official policies, strategies and action plans, starting from the local community to the national level, and that mine victims themselves and their organizations must be included in that process. . Only in this way is it possible to provide continuous and timely support that will come to the fore in full capacity, increase the quality of life of the victims and their family members, and reduce the consequences, which, unfortunately, we have witnessed, in some cases can be catastrophic even for the wider social community. .
The third global conference on assistance to victims of anti-personnel mines and other explosive lethal means is being held from October 17-19, 2023 in the Kingdom of Cambodia.