COPE Center

The Cooperative Orthotic and Prosthetic Enterprise, or COPE Center, is a Vientiane-based non-profit organization dedicated to providing prostheses and rehabilitation therapy free of charge to those injured in landmine or UXO (unexploded ordinance) explosions. In Laos, that's a very serious issue.

Laos, while on the periphery of the Vietnam War, was affected in a very real way. Suspecting Vietcong insurgents of hiding in Laos, the US carried out an extensive and secret bombing campaign of the country. This has come be be known as the "secret war", as information regarding the operation was forbidden from getting back to the American people. While the military had to follow certain rules in Vietnam - no bombing withing X meters of a school, hospital, or temple, for example - the military was unrestrained in its bombing of Laos. In less than five years, Laos became the most heavily bombed country in history.

statues made out of landmines

Today, there are more unexploded bombs leftover in the jungles of Laos than there are people in the whole country. Every year, hundreds of people are killed or seriously injured by stumbling across a 40 year-old bomb that's just waiting for the right jostle to go off.

We visited the free COPE visitor's center in Vientiane. This organization, supported in part by, among other NGOs, USAID and its Australian and Canadian counterparts, runs programs to seek out and destroy the UXOs, and to provide prosthetic free of charge to those injured in explosions.

prosthetic legs

We watched a documentary film at the center that followed an Australian bomb disposal expert and the team of Laotian government workers that he was training in bomb disposal. Part of the problem is that there is a very large scrap metal black market in Laos. One unexploded bomb may be worth enough to feed an entire family for two months. As maybe nine out of ten are inert from age, for a lot of kids, it's worth the risk to try to dig up a discovered bomb. This results in a lot of tragedy for the people of the poor rural parts of Laos.

examples of the munitions still found in Laos

Visiting COPE was a sobering and humbling experience. I knew about the war in Laos, but I hadn't really thought of it much. In Vietnam, the war raged from both sides, but here, Laos was an innocent victim. The country wasn't an active participant in the war, and there were no military targets in Laos. All of the victims were civilians. Fortunately, the US government has taken responsibility for the bombings, and has dedicated large amounts of aid to help clean up the bombs in Laos. Ironically, the US bombing, which was meant to prevent the "domino effect" of countries falling to Communism, had the opposite effect. The Royal Lao government was seen as incapable of protecting the people, who rapidly turned to Vietnamese-style Communism.

an oil lamp made from a bomb - the black market scrap metal trade is a dangerous problem in Laos

The COPE Center museum is free to visit. At the end of your visit, you can visit the gift shop, where  proceeds go towards purchasing prosthetic limbs for UXO victims. We didn't have the $70 required to buy a whole leg within our budget, but we did purchase a bag of COPE "Karma Coffee", which is an organic and free-trade blend whose proceeds go directly to COPE.

proceeds go to COPE