Colombia is one of the countries with the highest number of antipersonnel mines in the world. According to the report prepared in April 2020 by the International Committee of the Red Cross, it is identified that at least 118 people were victims of antipersonnel mines (MAP) and other explosive devices in Colombia during the first quarter of the year.
One of the entities in charge of carrying out Humanitarian Demining in Colombia is the Brigade of Humanitarian Demining Engineers of the National Army, which has carried out this work in the country since 2005, when the demining process began thanks to the Ottawa Convention. As of 2007, they began to carry out Humanitarian Demining work in communities affected by MAP in different areas of the national territory.
Colombia has the Tolemaida Military Fort, located in the department of Cundinamarca where the National Army trains hundreds of men who receive classes, physical training, and instructions in the management of manual, mechanical and canine demining.
The Río Blanco village, belonging to the municipality of Baraya, in the department of Huila, was a strategic corridor for the mobility of armed groups before the signing of the Peace Agreement in 2016, and it is in this place where the Battalion of Engineers of Humanitarian Demining No. 5 has deployed a group of its best men to carry out work in the largest confirmed dangerous area in terms of land area, with 140,000 square meters, where eleven explosive devices have been neutralized since 2017 to date.
These soldiers work every day to be able to return to the peasants the lands that one day was taken from them or that they had to leave for fear of being victims of a war that they hope to end soon.
Vannessa Jiménez is a Colombian photojournalist and documentary photographer, she studied photojournalism at the Association of Graphic Journalists of Argentina where she became involved with the feminist movement and its militancy, upon returning to her country of origin she continues to develop personal documentary projects with a gender focus, while her Working as a photojournalist allows him to represent the struggles and social and political manifestations of Colombia.
