Among the participants of the ceremony were the German Ambassador to Armenia Hans-Jochen Schmidt and the Deputy of the US Military Attaché to Armenia Justin Budd. The Head of the “HDEC” Ruben Arakelyan welcomed the guests and made a brief presentation of the objectives, functions and the actual work conducted by the Center throughout the current year. Ruben Arakelyan noted that during demining operations launched this spring 21 hectares of mine -contaminated area have been cleared in concordance with international mine action standards and different types of unexploded ordnance (UXO) and sub-munitions were detected and destroyed as a result of these field operations. The cleared area was once more selectively inspected with special devices and verified as mine-free and after that a proper certificate was handed over to the governor of Syunik providing official evidence that the area is cleared. Governor S. Khachatryan highly evaluated the work accomplished by the Center and expressed hope that additional contributions and engagement of international donors will enhance the activation of the demining process. Since the establishment of the ceasefire, adjacent areas of about sixty mine-impacted Armenian communities remain contaminated. There are approximately 102 suspicious hazardous areas which in total cover land surface of about 322 s q.km. According to the same data, since the ceasefire, more than 400 people suffered from mines and unexploded ordnance, out of them 112 got killed. As a result of the daily demining process many areas were mine cleared becoming available for agricultural use and most importantly the probability of tragic incidents caused by explosions of non-defused ammunition has substantially reduced.