Mines:
Blind Weapons or Smart Bombs?

Mines have been rightly called blind arms, because they kill and wound with no discrimination. Unwire, bullets and rocket shells, they don't have a fixed target. Children are the "favourite" victims of these booby-traps, this is because they often are not able to recognise from a toy. There is even a kind of mine named "green parrot", of Russian make and project on purpose in order to device the most inexperienced people . Dropped from the soviet helicopter it was often taken for a rumble , for its strange spiral movement while free falling.

Mines do not know the saying "cut fire!". They do not stop killing once the war is over. Paradoxically their killing action begins often when peace is reached. They are a plague which marks its victims at different levels: personal social and economical.
In the agrarian and pasturage developing countries communities, the ones most touched from this scourge, a disabled is a non-producing person, one mouth more to be fed, a man living on the fringe of society.
Furthermore a crippled person need very expensive treatments.

According to some data by C.R.I., a child, leaving for the average for additional 40 or 50 years, should need to change, because of the wear and tear, almost 25 prosthesis. One of these costs more or less 125 USD. The total figure of 3125 USD. It's unapproachable for a family from the Third World that earns 10-15 USD a year.

The mines removal has very high costs. A land-mine inactivation needs roughly 650 USD, and there are 110 millions of yet-charged devices all over the world. Finally, about 10 millions of mines re assembled each year ready to be spread with helicopters or by land with special means of transport able to cater up to 1700 per minute. It was calculated that for each removed mine, 20 are placed.

The usual buyers are Cambodia, Ex Yugoslavia, African Countries as Angola, Mozambique and Somalia. The major mines producers are China, U.S.A., Russia and Italy.
There are the Italian firms that from after World war ii till now have shared out the production market: Tecnova Italiana S.r.L.(Bari), B.P.D. Defence and Space S.p.A; and Valsella Meccanotecnica S.p.A. (Brescia), these last owned for a 50% by Fiat.

What interest pushes the Biggest Italian Industrial Group entering in this market? The answer is simple. It is enough to at the Budgets of the two firms from Brescia to notice that after the first period during which the major purchaser is the Ministry of Defence, in the 80'S the largest item by far is the referring to exportations.. In 1992 the yearly income from the scarcely 10 billions Italian Liras of the previous year to 80, to jump then to 107 in 1983. In the beginning of the 90's foreign sales mark with no doubt the time . With exemption of Valsella the other firms start having a descending parabola that we hope will bring to their re-conversion. It is just only on an International level that the solution to the problem has to grow. On the wave of success obtained from some enterprises, addressed beyond the simple control of the use towards the complete abolition of the production as well as of the commerce of mines , a World-wide Conference for the revision of the UN Convention of 1980 has been held.