A sign denoting the entrance to the Mine Clearance Training Unit (MCTU), located just outside ...

A sign denoting the entrance to the Mine Clearance Training Unit (MCTU), located just outside Battambang. To the left of the hut, a group of trainees are preparing their mine detection equipment prior to a training session. The MCTU was an initiative of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) designed to assist in mine clearance in a country that had seen close to thirty years worth of indiscriminate mine laying by all factions and where mines are handed out to soldiers like bullets. In 1993, it was estimated that twenty million mines were stockpiled in Cambodia, eight to ten million mines remained undiscovered, and had been used at a rate and with such indiscretion that over 300 Cambodians were killed or maimed by mines every month.