On October the 19th the Lebanon programme launched the celebration of the great achievement of 1,000,000 square meters of released land after cluster bombs clearance in the South of Lebanon.

The programme has been running since September 2006; the initial capacity of 4 teams working for 18 months under an ECHO grant have then been reduced to 2 since February this year. Despite the reduction of capacity, the teams increased the productivity and reached the 1,000,000 sqm as for the beginning of October.

The activities are currently funded by the EC until the end of 2008 – although the contamination in the South of Lebanon is still high, the programme is at a stake for 2009 due to lack of funding so far.