Obama considers toll of war at prosthetic center in Laos

Visiting U.S. President Barack Obama addressed the continuing legacy of death and injury resulting from U.S. bombing raids of 1964-1973 during the Vietnam War with a visit to a prosthetic and education center in the Lao capital on Wednesday.

Laos bore the brunt of U.S bombing raids in the so-called "Secret War" during the period 1964-1973 which saw some 2.5 million tonnes of ordnance dropped on Laos during military intervention in the landlocked country, more than that experienced by Japan and Germany combined during World War II.

The country has counted some 50,000 victims of remnant anti-personnel cluster munitions that remained unexploded.

Speaking at Vientiane's Cooperative Orthotic and Prosthetic Enterprise (COPE) which provides assistance and employment to physically disabled victims of unexploded ordnance (UXO) and related accidents in the South-East Asian nation, Obama highlighted the need to understand and prevent wars and their heavy toll on innocent civilians.

"Every young boy and girl ... deserve to be free from the fear of the shadow of a war that happened long ago," Obama said. "Wars are about the countless millions that suffer in the shadows of war, the innocence forgotten and the bombs that remain unexploded in fields decades after."

"Acknowledging the history of war and how it is experienced concretely by ordinary people is a way that we make future wars less likely," he said.

The visit to the COPE Center came after Obama announced some 90 million dollars in U.S. aid over three years for the safe identification and removal of UXO in Laos.

The visit also came as efforts to safely remove the threat from UXO was enshrined in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) for Laos by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Lao Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith on the sidelines of the ASEAN summits in Vientiane. Endit