The US Department of State is pleased to recognize Schonstedt Instrument Company’s donation of over US$75,000 worth of magnetic detectors to help humanitarian deminers locate and clear persistent landmines and explosive remnants of war.
Schonstedt Instrument Company, an employee-owned company in Kearneysville, West Virginia, is one of the 61 public-private partners of the Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement in the US Department of State’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs. Since May 2007, the company, which manufactures specialized detectors used by survey, demining, utility, telecommunications and energy firms around the world, has donated 74 of its GA-72Cd magnetic detectors for demining in Laos, Somalia, Tajikistan and Vietnam, in coordination with the United Nations Mine Action Service. Some of the 20 detectors donated to Somalia have also been used by the International Mine Action Training Center.
Schonstedt Humanitarian Demining Initiative (‘Buy a Schonstedt, Save a Life’) donations can come about in two ways. First, companies that buy one of Schonstedt’s TraceMaster II or XTpc pipe and cable locators can have a magnetic detector donated in their name to a United Nations Mine Action Team for use in a conflict-affected country. Second, companies can make direct donations. Quakers in Woodstown, New Jersey, recently raised money to purchase 12 Schonstedt magnetic detectors for donation, which were matched with another 12 detectors from Schonstedt. All 24 detectors have been sent to Vietnam where they will be used by MAG, both of which are also Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement Public-Private Partners.
To learn about the Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement’s bilateral and multilateral humanitarian mine action programs, and its Public-Private Partnerships, which together have contributed to dramatically reducing the rate of reported casualties from landmines and explosive remnants of war around the world to 5,759 in 2006.