COPE

COPE stand for Cooperative Orthopedic Prosthetic Enterprise and their headquarters in Vientiane is the destination for this somber Sunday morning outing. COPE is dedicated to providing treatment, rehabilitation and prosthetic limbs to those who have, most often, lost limbs to UXO's (or "unexploded ordinance") from the "secret war" that occurred in Laos during the Vietnam war.

More bombs were dropped on Laos by the U.S. during the Vietnam war than all of the bombs dropped by the U.S. throughout WWII. The U.S., in an attempt to destroy North Vietnamese sanctuaries and rupture supply lines running into Vietnam via Laos and the Ho Chi Minh trail, essentially bombed the living daylights out of Laos.




It works out to roughly one bomb being dropped every 8 minutes, or over 2,000,000 million tons worth of bombs from 1963-1973 or, several million dollars worth of bombs every single day.




Needless to say, thousands upon thousands of these bombs remain unexploded throughout all of Laos. The worst are the cluster bombs pictured above — small powerfully explosive balls which scatter when dropped and cause vicious destruction. Even now, decades later, they continue to cause hundreds of deaths and injuries every year to Laotians. Most of the accidents involve farmers and their families working in rural areas who come across the UXO's while working the land, triggering an explosion when they hit the clusters with a shovel or simply pick it up to investigate. COPE works to offer those who are injured with rehabilitation opportunities and to outfit people affected, free of cost, with prosthesis limbs.




The big problem is that rural Laotians can collect quite a bit of money for scrap metal — even if the scrap metal they are finding has the potential to cause them serious injury. To many, in need of money, the risk is worth it.




None of this information was easy for us to hear. We both knew about the atrocities inflicted during the Vietnam war, but had no idea about the extent that it affected Laos and how much, to this day, people are still being affected by the thousands of bombs that remain buried, hidden and unexploded.

In the COPE center we learn about the 19 different kinds of bombs and land mines that continue to be found throughout Laos, the process for making and fitting prosthetic limbs and the work being done to try to educate the rural people in order to save lives.




Of the 108 countries that signed the 2008 Convention of Cluster Munitions treaty banning the production and/or use of cluster bombs, only 60 have yet to ratify it. Canada has yet to ratify the agreement and the U.S never signed in the first place. In fact, the U.S. put cluster bombs to great use during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars meaning more innocent deaths will persist in those countries for decades to come.

To make a donation to COPE and/or to find out more information visit www.copelaos.org