Lebanon serves as a reminder of Britain's vital role in helping countries recover from conflict

Author: Jo Gideon MP, Conservative Member of Parliament for Stoke-On-Trent Central

Lebanon is a country beset by economic and political challenges but I have witnessed first-hand the life-saving impact which British expertise is having on some of the poorest communities in that country.

On a visit there with the Coalition for Global Prosperity I walked through the minefields of the Blue Line, on Lebanon’s southern border, and met families living right next to land littered with deadly cluster bombs.

But I also met farmers who were able to cultivate land for the first time in decades because those precious acres were, at long last, free of landmines.

This work to free communities from the fear of landmines and unexploded ordnance is being done by British charity the Mines Advisory Group (MAG), which is headquartered in Manchester and employs some 5,700 staff in 27 countries.

In Lebanon, their work is not just about saving lives and limbs but, crucially, brings back into use fertile agricultural land in a country which desperately needs to increase its productivity and lessen its reliance on foreign imports. In a country facing a spiralling food crisis, with the cost of food surging nearly 400% in one year, and which normally imports 95% of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine, any increase in farmable land will be life-saving.

I witnessed the highly skilled MAG staff patiently finding and destroying the landmines and watched as they searched for unexploded cluster munitions in the Bekaa Valley, dropped some four decades ago but still claiming lives and contaminating farmers’ fields today. The landmine problem is a legacy of decades of civil conflict ended in May 2000. Lebanon’s cluster munitions problem is a combined result of the conflict with Israel in the 1970s and 80s, as well as the period between July–August 2006, when four million submunitions were fired on south Lebanon, of which an estimated one million failed to detonate.

In 2021 alone, 30 victims of mines were reported in Lebanon, including eight fatalities. This is more than triple the number of victims in 2020, with the economic crisis causing many more people to risk increased exposure to landmine and cluster munition contamination in search of money for survival. Victims were in many cases famers using contaminated land for agriculture purposes or people searching for scrap metal for resale.

A 2019 study by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) ) and the Lebanese Mine Action Centre (LMAC) on the socioeconomic benefits of mine action in Lebanon shows that every US $1 invested in mine action generates US $4.15 in socioeconomic benefits.

The achievements of MAG represent Britain as a force for good in the world in the most tangible way imaginable. British expertise applied globally, and in partnership with local communities and host governments, to achieve demonstrable outcomes.

Lebanon’s situation is a striking example of the often-ignored long-term impacts of conflict – and a reminder that the war currently raging in Ukraine will continue to devastate lives long after the guns have fallen silent.

And the lesson that I take from my experiences in Lebanon is that Britain can and must play a leading role in helping countries recover from conflict, and that the expertise of British organisations such as MAG will be crucial not just in countries in the Middle East, or Africa or South East Asia, but closer to home too whenever a sustainable ceasefire or peace agreement is forged in Ukraine.

This article was first published on Politics Home.