This prosthetic leg was produced by Handicap International (now Humanity & Inclusion), an organisation founded in 1982 to help refugees in camps in Thailand and Cambodia. Activities eventually expanded to other countries suffering from conflicts and catastrophes. It co-founded the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, the ICBL.
The prosthetic leg was donated to the Nobel Prize Museum by Humanity & Inclusion in 2001.
The Mekong wheelchair was made In Cambodia, where many people have lost one or both legs due to landmines. The wheelchair was made by the Jesuit Refugee Service, a member of the ICBL, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. The ICBL began operating in 1991 and is an umbrella for numerous people and organisations. At the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in 1997, the ICBL was represented by Tun Channareth, who began campaigning against landmines after losing both legs in a landmine explosion. He used this Mekong wheelchair at the award ceremony.
The development of the Mekong wheelchair began around 1990. The initiators and designers, David Constantine, Simon Gue, Richard Frost and Ian Harris, have striven to design it in a way that is suitable for low-income countries. They embarked on a partnership with the Jesuit Refugee Service, which has been producing the Mekong wheelchair at its factory in Phnom Penh since 1993.
A lot of wood was used for the wheelchair, since steel was not reliably available in Cambodia at the time. The wheelchairs were flat-packed at the workshop in Phnom Penh and distributed to local workshops where they were assembled.
Due to the country’s poor infrastructure at the time, shipping was a problem. The designers tried to factor in the conditions and still achieve a functional and comfortable product with the available materials.
The wheelchair was donated to the Nobel Prize Museum by the Jesuit Refugee Service in 2001.
