During 14-17 June 2015, Thailand, as a member of the Committee on Victim Assistance under the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention, organized the Bangkok Symposium on Landmine Victim Assistance: Enhancing a Comprehensive and Sustainable Mine Action. The Symposium aimed to realize the ambitions of the Maputo +15 Declaration and the implementation of the Maputo Action Plan, adopted at the 3rd Review Conference of the Mine Ban Convention held in 2014, with a view to ensuring the full, equal and effective participation of mine victims in society. Countries were urged to adopt a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary, long-term, and sustainable approach to providing assistance to landmine victims because health, social welfare, education, employment, development and poverty reduction are all crucial aspects of States Parties’ obligations under the Convention. Approximately 100 participants from 34 countries and 9 organizations, including the United Nations and civil society, attended the Symposium.
         In the first session, participants shared the challenges they faced in fulfilling their commitments contained in the victim assistance section of the Maputo Action Plan and the Vientiane Action Plan, and possible forms of assistance to overcome those obstacles. In the second session, participants discussed what a comprehensive approach to empowering mine victims might entail. The third session discussed ways to reintegrate landmine victims, along with all persons with disabilities in general, into society.
         The Symposium was moderated by Mr. Thani Thongphakdi, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Thailand to the United Nations Office at Geneva, and key panelists included representatives from the Convention’s Implementation Support Unit, Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, International Committee of the Red Cross, and representatives from relevant Thai government agencies and Thai and international NGOs. Overall, the participants stressed that political will and leadership at the highest level is essential in ensuring a holistic, whole-of-government, and whole-of-society approach towards victim assistance. Victim assistance should be based on a rights-based approach, with persons with disabilities as rights holders and governments as duty bearers, in order to promote these victims’ full participation in society on an equal and dignified basis.The importance of international cooperation was reiterated especially in the area of technical assistance as well as initiatives in south-south and triangular cooperation.
         A number of participants and panelists joined a field visit to Surin, a mine-affected province in Thailand’s northeastern region. The trip included a briefing on medical care and rehabilitation provided to mine victims at the Surin Hospital and a visit to a minefield inBua Ched District which is being cleared by the Thai Civilian Deminers Association (TDA), a local Thai NGO, under supervision of the Thailand Mine Action Center (TMAC)