Mine Action After Diana: Progress in the Struggle Against Landmines

Mine Action After Diana Progress in the Struggle Against Landmines Stuart Maslen

in association with

Pluto

P

Press

LONDON • ANN ARBOR, MI

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First published 2004 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 839 Greene Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48106 www.plutobooks.com Copyright © Landmine Action and Stuart Maslen Chapter 6 is copyright © Landmine Action and Ted Paterson, 2004 The right of Stuart Maslen and Ted Paterson to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN ISBN

0 7453 2257 3 hardback 0 7453 2256 5 paperback

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for

10

9 8

7

6

5

4

3

2

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Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services, Fortescue, Sidmouth, EX10 9QG, England Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England Printed and bound in the European Union by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne, England

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Even if the world decided tomorrow to ban these weapons, this terrible legacy of mines already in the earth would continue to plague the poor nations of the earth. ‘The evil that men do lives after them …’ Diana, Princess of Wales, 12 June 1997

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Contents The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund Abbreviations and Acronyms

xi xii

Contributors

xv

Foreword by Andrew Purkis and Richard Lloyd Introduction

xvii 1

1

The Global Threat

10

2

Mine Action Myths and Realities

24

3

The Evolution of Mine Action: from Afghanistan to International Standards

37

4

‘Doing the Job Right’: the Basics of Mine Action

45

5

The Art of Managing Chaos: Mine Action Programming

82

6

Mine Action and Development: Doing the Right Job

99

7

A ‘Who’s Who’ of Mine Action

132

8

The Results of the Audit

161

Notes

176

Select Bibliography

182

Index

194

vii

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Illustrations PHOTOGRAPHS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Unexploded US cluster submunition, Kosovo Children at play in refugee camp, Eritrea Mine clearance, Cambodia Landmines destroyed in situ Mine survivor in physiotherapy, Mozambique Landmine survivor, Cambodia Cambodian Campaign to Ban Landmines Landmine survivor, Cambodia

15 28 38 47 83 88 145 162

FIGURES 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Basic development The international development system Mine action during humanitarian emergencies Logic, value and results chains Some specific developmental impacts of mine action Direct economic contributions of mine action Potential benefits measured in monetary terms Estimated benefits from all case studies for Afghanistan Enhancing the sense of security Contributing to political development

105 108 109 109 111 113 114 116 122 123

TABLES 1 2 3 4

Mine action spending, foreign aid and GDP (in US$ millions) Estimates of saved medical costs (in US$) Rough estimates of landmine deaths and injuries per square kilometre of hazardous land UNOPS Mine Action Programme, northern Iraq

112 120 121 156

TEXT BOXES The killing fields of Angola A rethink on cluster bombs after Iraq?

5 20

viii

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Illustrations

Mine action in Angola Not just an African problem: the case of Colombia Mine action in Thailand: a summary Mine action in Afghanistan: a summary Mine action in Cambodia: a summary ‘UXO’ action in Laos: a summary Mine action in Vietnam: a summary The context for mine risk education in Cambodia Laos and the Ottawa Treaty Casualty reduction in Cambodia Mine action in Iraq: a summary Threat assessment: the case of Kosovo The Samaritan’s Dilemma The evidence on mine action saving lives and limbs Cost-benefit studies of landmine clearance: land and structures Cost-benefit studies of landmine clearance: lives and limbs Costs of treating victims of landmine accidents

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ix

26 31 34 39 48 54 57 59 66 77 80 84 102 110 115 118 119

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The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund was set up in September 1997, just days after the Princess’s tragic death. It seeks to create a living memorial to the Princess, by giving recognition and support to people living on the margins of society and helping them change their lives. Since it began, the Memorial Fund has pledged over £50 million to over 300 organisations, giving grants to charities in the UK and overseas, and using its profile to speak out on its chosen causes. Tackling the effects of landmines in communities recovering from conflict through support to practical projects has been a key theme in the Fund’s international grant-giving. More recently the Fund has extended its agenda to include cluster bombs and other explosive remnants of war, which, like landmines, cause equally lethal and indiscriminate destruction. Through its Clear Up campaign with Landmine Action, the Fund has been actively campaigning against the use of cluster munitions and urging governments to take responsibility for dealing with the lethal litter of these weapons and other explosive remnants of war.

xi

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Abbreviations and Acronyms ADP AICMA BAC CMAA CMAC CMAO CPA CPI CRS DFID DMZ DPKO DU EDD EOD ERW EU GDP GICHD GIS GPR HALO Trust HDI HI HRW ICBL ICRC IMAS IMSMA IND ISO KFOR KPC LIS

Accelerated Demining Programme (Mozambique) Comprehensive Action against Antipersonnel Mines battle area clearance Cambodian Mine Action and Victim Assistance Authority Cambodian Mine Action Centre Central Mine Action Office (Angola) Coalition Provisional Authority Clear Path International Catholic Relief Service Department for International Development Demilitarized Zone Department for Peacekeeping Operations (UN) depleted uranium explosives detection dogs explosive ordnance disposal explosive remnants of war European Union gross domestic product Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining Geographic Information System ground-penetrating radar Hazardous Area Life-Support Organization Human Development Index Handicap International Human Rights Watch International Campaign to Ban Landmines International Committee of the Red Cross International Mine Action Standards Information Management System for Mine Action National Institute for Demining (Mozambique) International Organization for Standardisation Kosovo Protection Force Kosovo Protection Corps Landmine Impact Survey xii

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Abbreviations and Acronyms

LSN LUPU MA MAC MACA MACC MAG MAIC MAP MAPU MDD MRE NATO NGO NMAA NPA OAS OBOD ODA POW PPE PRIO QA QC R&D RCAF SIDA SOP SWEDEC TA TMAC UN UNDP UNEP UNICEF UNMACC UNMAS UNOCHA UNOPS

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xiii

Landmine Survivors Network Land Use Planning Unit Mine Action Mine Action Centre Mine Action Centre for Afghanistan Mine Action Coordination Centre Mines Advisory Group Mine Action Information Center Mine Action Programme Mine Action Planning Unit mine detection dog mine risk education North Atlantic Treaty Organization non-governmental organisation National Mine Action Authority Norwegian People’s Aid Organization of American States open burning and open detonation official development assistance prisoner of war personal protective equipment International Peace Research Institute, Oslo quality assurance quality control research and development Royal Cambodian Armed Forces Swedish International Development Agency standing operating procedure Swedish Explosive Ordnance Disposal and Demining Center technical adviser Thailand Mine Action Centre United Nations UN Development Programme UN Environment Programme UN Children’s Fund UN Mine Action Coordination Centre UN Mine Action Service UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs UN Office for Project Services

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Mine Action After Diana

UXO VTF VVAF WCMD

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unexploded ordnance Voluntary Trust Fund Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation wind corrected munitions dispensers

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Contributors Nick Cumming-Bruce reported from Iran for the Guardian before moving to Bangkok to become its South-east Asia correspondent. In 2001, he became Bangkok bureau chief of the Asian Wall Street Journal, also providing coverage of Vietnam. He now works as a freelance journalist, still based in Bangkok. Stuart Maslen is a researcher and writer with ten years’ experience in mine action. He holds a PhD in international humanitarian law, which looked at the legality of anti-personnel mines, from the University of Tilburg in the Netherlands and has written a legal commentary on the Ottawa Treaty, published by Oxford University Press in the spring of 2004. He lives in France, close to the border with Switzerland. Ted Paterson is a Canadian consultant in international development, with training in economics and management. He has more than twenty years’ experience in development, split evenly between Canada and developing countries, and has worked in NGOs, government, business, and policy research institutes. In 2000, Ted wrote up the first thorough economic analysis of mine and unexploded ordnance clearance operations. It was his first job, however, (as a zookeeper) that provided the most relevant experience for mine action: be careful where you step. Ted now lives near Ottawa.

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Foreword Much has happened since Diana, Princess of Wales, in the last years of her life, transformed global awareness of the horrific effects of landmines. The anti-landmine campaign is perhaps best known for its focus on the effort to eliminate anti-personnel mines. Three-quarters of the world’s countries have already joined the treaty that bans these weapons, and tens of millions of stockpiled mines have been destroyed as a result. Most recently international attention has turned to creating a legal framework to deal with the similar humanitarian and developmental problems caused by cluster munitions and other explosive remnants of war. But the campaign has always been equally concerned with tackling the problem on the ground. Since 1997, large sums of money have been committed to the clearance of mines, with an apparent reduction in the numbers of casualties in some of the worst-affected countries. Many courageous people have risked their lives for others to achieve this. On the face of it, this must be a pretty good result for Diana’s last campaign. But, as this work so clearly demonstrates, there is no room for complacency. In too many ways the huge international efforts, known collectively as mine action, have been misguided or lopsided, not least in the way in which they have often been divorced from development. Landmine Action and The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund hope that this book will stimulate debate about the direction of mine action in coming years. It is both a tribute and a challenge to all those concerned with mines and unexploded bombs and their effects on the lives of ordinary people. This is about a humanitarian disaster that is very far from solved. About a massive but finite job to be done if a just and lasting peace with development is to be achieved in thousands of communities worldwide. It demands a renewed but better-targeted global commitment if the death, injury, poverty and waste caused by landmines are ever to be brought to an end. Andrew Purkis Chief Executive The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund Richard Lloyd Director Landmine Action xvii

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Introduction One of my objectives in visiting Angola was to forward the cause of those, like the Red Cross, striving in the name of humanity to secure an international ban on these weapons. Diana, Princess of Wales 1997: THE YEAR MINE ACTION CAME OF AGE Walking into a minefield In January 1997, with the eyes and cameras of the international media upon her, Diana, the Princess of Wales, donned the protective equipment used by deminers to minimise injuries in the event of an explosion and walked into the safe lane of a minefield being cleared by a British charity in Angola. This was a gesture that carried danger – notwithstanding the very high standards of mine clearance traditionally associated with the HALO1 Trust – because the aim of total, 100 per cent clearance of all explosive devices from any given piece of land is not always achieved. And even one of the smallest buried mines will blow off your foot and often much of your lower leg, driving bits of dirt and fragments of your shoes up into your legs and groin, leaving you as a single and sometimes a double amputee, a terrible life-long disability. Yet, despite the personal risks, she was on safer ground than when she later spoke in favour of an international ban on anti-personnel mines. To some, she had overstepped the boundaries of acceptable behaviour. In an off-the-record briefing to the media, Earl Howe, the Junior Defence Minister in John Major’s government, called her ‘a loose cannon’, saying that she was ill-informed on the issue of anti-personnel mines. Shortly afterwards, however, the British Medical Journal reported that,‘Seeing the overwhelming support for Diana from the nation, which had been presented for the first time with the human face of Angola’s tragedy, the government reacted swiftly and made it clear that it did not find fault with the Princess’s statements.’2 In fact, shocked by the injuries inflicted by landmines on some of the most vulnerable people on earth, Diana had understood that just ‘getting the mines out of the ground’ (see Chapter 2) was not, on its 1

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Mine Action After Diana

own, going to be enough. To stem what surgeons at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had already termed an ‘epidemic of mine injuries’, governments needed to find sufficient funding and to agree on a comprehensive set of measures to address the problem. Thus, a worldwide ban on anti-personnel landmines, plus enhanced clearance and awareness programmes, better access to assistance for the victims and the destruction of existing stockpiles would collectively become known as ‘mine action’. And 1997 would be the year mine action came of age. The Ottawa Process In February 1997, discussions opened in Vienna on a draft of a freestanding international treaty prepared by the Austrian government that would outlaw anti-personnel mine export, possession, production and use. The meeting was convened under what became known as the Ottawa Process, named after the Canadian capital in which it had been launched the previous autumn by Canada’s quixotic Foreign Minister, Lloyd Axworthy. The negotiations were the culmination of years of campaigning by hundreds of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that marched under the banner of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL)3 and by the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Swiss-based organisation dedicated to helping the victims of war.4 Now, in early 1997, thanks in no small measure to Princess Diana’s contribution to the campaign, landmines were finally getting the attention their effects warranted. A hectic series of conferences ensued in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe as momentum grew in support of the ban. Despite the reluctance, if not downright hostility, of many nations, several of the doubters were won over. Changes of government in France and the UK in the spring of 1997 resulted in changes of policy as bureaucrats were overruled by politicians more mindful of the public abhorrence at anti-personnel mines. Yet the US, which had led on action to combat the threat from anti-personnel mines, dragged its feet, keen to retain some of its landmine capacity while asking other countries to give up theirs. And China and Russia, both major producers of landmines, were implacably opposed to a total ban at least for the foreseeable future. Unusually for an arms agreement, the Ottawa Process was conducted outside the auspices of the United Nations. The UN was not a realistic option as a negotiating forum: it had just overseen

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Introduction

3

three years of discussions on mines, which had resulted only in patchwork amendments to an international agreement that fell far short of the total ban for which organisations and a growing number of governments were clamouring. Furthermore, the UN’s tradition of taking decisions on treaties by consensus meant that a single government with the necessary determination could block 190 others and extract concession after concession, sometimes leading to the entire unravelling of a hard-earned agreement. And with high-powered and high-profile military powers on the UN Security Council, notably its five permanent members (China, France, Russia, the UK and the US), lukewarm or downright hostile, it was clear another approach was needed. So, for the Ottawa Process, governments decided to step outside the corset of the UN. The role of the UN in mine action Outside the negotiating sphere, the UN’s record in addressing the worldwide legacy of mines was also coming under fire. To its credit, the UN secretariat in New York had resolved to learn some hard lessons from its early mistakes in mine action, especially in setting up clearance programmes. They commissioned a study headed by a development specialist, Bob Eaton, who already had experience in Laos5 in preventing deaths and injuries from unexploded ordnance (UXO) – bombs, shells, grenades and the like that are fired but which fail to explode as intended. In contrast to mines, unexploded ordnance is not designed to be triggered by a person, but its effects are similar to those of mines, and both are part of the ‘explosive remnants of war’ that litter postconflict landscapes. In calling for the problem of mines and unexploded ordnance ‘to be redefined to take account of the impact of landmines on communities and the coping mechanisms of individual families’, Bob Eaton’s 1997 study report, The development of indigenous mine action capacities, pulled few punches in criticising the UN’s management and strategic failures in mine action. It found that one of the most critical deficiencies in the UN was its inability ‘in most instances, to provide the type of management and administrative support necessary for the rapid initiation of mine action programmes in war-torn environments’. The study report judged that the UN would remain hamstrung in helping mine-affected countries until the organisation could develop the right mix of political, management and technical expertise, and

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Mine Action After Diana

reform its budgetary and administrative procedures. As we will see, despite determined and sincere efforts to take on board the many lessons and recommendations identified by Bob Eaton and his team, overall it is questionable how successful the UN has been in putting its mine action house in order. The study for the UN was also noteworthy as it was the first time the words mine action had appeared in a UN publication as the descriptive term for the discipline as a whole. Invented by Canadians in Cambodia in the early 1990s, the term mine action was to become the industry standard, although its definition would evolve over time. Previously the UN had tended to refer to ‘demining’ or ‘humanitarian mine clearance’, clear evidence of the slant towards mine removal in its early operations. Another important first for 1997 was the issuing of international standards for humanitarian mine clearance operations by the UN following a meeting in Copenhagen. These standards were clear evidence that governments, organisations, the UN and other partners were determined to improve the safety of deminers as well as the affected populations they were trying to help. The standards were an important step in the ongoing effort to transform mine action into a profession and, notwithstanding criticisms above, are proof of some of the UN’s successes in mine action. Tragedy and the treaty In August 1997, Diana again drew attention to the plight of a country struggling to emerge from bitter conflict amid a legacy of landmines and unexploded ordnance. This time she journeyed to Bosnia and Herzegovina, at the invitation of the Landmine Survivors Network (LSN), an organisation founded in the US by mine victims for mine victims. (The Network prefers the more positive term survivor to victim for those who do not succumb to their injuries.) Her itinerary (which was organised with support from Norwegian People’s Aid, a major mine action NGO) included private visits to the homes of mine victims/survivors and meetings with local disability groups and rehabilitation specialists. In a letter to Jerry White, co-founder of the Landmine Survivors Network, who lost his leg to a mine while hiking in Israel in 1984, she wrote, ‘The victims I met and their senselessly inflicted injuries have stiffened my resolve to ensure that their needs for care and support are not overlooked.’6

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5

The killing fields of Angola* Like millions of African children, Cecilia Namutumbo has only known war. Born in the rural town of Cuningha in Angola’s troubled central Bie province, she was just three when she narrowly survived a landmine accident that took her right leg and the lives of both her parents. For the legions of aid workers in and around Kuito, the provincial capital of Bie province and one of the most heavily land-mined areas on earth, Cecilia’s story is all too familiar. Placed on her mother’s back as her parents fled intense fighting around her home town, the youngster survived only because her parents bore the brunt of the blast from the Russian-built anti-personnel mine they stumbled upon. Angola has been a plaything of rich countries for decades. First it was a Portuguese colony, then, after independence, its Soviet-style government was propped up by Moscow and Havana and destabilised by South Africa and the United States.The superpowers eventually withdrew, abandoning the country to a debilitating war that would claim more than a million lives and become the longest-running civil war in modern African history. Today, Angola’s countryside remains littered with unmapped landmines – many provided by western companies. Angola’s natural riches – oil and diamonds – have been looted by both the country’s government and rebels to fund its own destruction. Even now, the softly spoken youngster can barely recall the accident. She says, ‘It happened about six years ago. I was on my mother’s back when she stood on the mine. My sister was there also, but she was not injured and she took me to hospital. When I woke up I had lost my leg. I miss my mum. When I lived with her, life was better. Now it is very difficult.’ For the past three years, Cecilia, who lives under the care of her teenage sister, has been visiting Kuito’s only hospital for her annual prosthetic limb fitting. Like most Angolans, however, her wait for a new leg was hindered by the war. ‘I was given my new leg three years ago,’ she said. ‘Before I had my first new leg it was very difficult for me. I used to cry a lot. I could not stand up and I was in hospital for a long time. I do feel better now; I can do things I couldn’t do if I didn’t have this leg. I can play with my friends. I can go on the climbing frame here at the hospital, and I dance a little and sing.’ Individual tales of survival around Bie province defy belief. People have been eating rats and leaves, camping in the mountains for months without shelter and trekking hundreds of miles by following rivers. In the midst of the chaos, landmines are claiming hundreds of lives. Ironically, Kuito was once a beautiful colonial town, used by the Portuguese as a mountain retreat. But, by May 1994, it had become the bellwether for Angola’s civil war. It was here that the biggest battle Africa has seen since El Alamein was played out, claiming an estimated 250,000 lives. By 2002, the town was devastated by almost a decade of persistent shelling and bombing, and the population must now cope with the aftermath of the battle.

4

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Mine Action After Diana

In January 1997, Princess Diana caused huge controversy by visiting Angola, putting on protective clothing and an anti-blast mask and allowing herself to be photographed near uncleared minefields. Later, she appeared in the company of children disabled by landmine accidents. The international pressure for a comprehensive ban on landmines heightened after Diana’s death that August: a treaty to end their making, trading and use was seen as a fitting tribute to the campaign’s famous champion. * Adapted from Dan McDougall, ‘The killing fields (ANGOLA)’, Scotland on Sunday, 28 September 2003.

Tragically, the visit to Bosnia would be the last working week of Diana’s life. Her death in a car accident at the end of August came the weekend before the opening of a diplomatic conference in the Norwegian capital, Oslo, which would successfully adopt a new international treaty banning the production, stockpiling, transfer and use of anti-personnel mines. At the opening of the conference, the chair called for a minute’s silence in her memory. Behind the scenes, though, British officials would grumble that they were forced to negotiate with one hand tied behind their backs for fear of being savaged by the press for scuppering ‘Diana’s treaty’. There was now little question that the UK would sign the treaty, whatever was in it, and they could do little to help the US in its futile efforts to fundamentally alter the thrust of the treaty text. Thus, after the conference had resisted late pressure from the US, the final text was agreed upon and adopted on 18 September 1997. In a testament to what remains a remarkable achievement, only a few weeks later, the NGO movement, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its work jointly with its assiduous coordinator, Jody Williams. As the year drew to a close, nations gathered once more in the Canadian capital, as ‘the Ottawa Treaty’ was opened for signature.7 On 3 and 4 December 1997, of the 150 present, more than 120 countries chose to sign the agreement banning anti-personnel mines, which would enter into force once 40 signatories had ratified it, a formal process requiring the deposit of a legal document with the treaty depositary, the UN Secretary-General. (At least at the highest levels, the UN had not taken umbrage at being sidelined by the Ottawa Process.) The treaty-signing conference at the beginning of December, a diplomatic triumph for Canada, was accompanied by a series of

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workshops that addressed many of the different aspects of mine action, helping to set the agenda for the years to come. Governments announced funding pledges for the next five years amounting to half a billion dollars – more than £300 million. The US (despite its refusal to sign the treaty), Norway and Canada were the largest contributors followed by others, such as the UK and Germany. In fact, although the actual amounts spent are difficult to quantify – and qualify – for reasons that will be discussed later, this figure has almost certainly been exceeded by actual contributions. Indeed, in total, an estimated $1.3 billion8 – more than £750 million – has gone into mine action in the six years since Diana’s death, with a peak in 2002 of more than $300 million (£190 million). Governments have certainly been generous. But has the money been used wisely? Could it have been used more wisely? This book tries to answer these questions. We will look at how – and why – mine action has evolved since its humble beginnings in Afghanistan at the end of the 1980s, following the pullout of Soviet forces. But, before we do so, here is a note on how the contents of the book are organised. HOW THE BOOK IS ORGANISED Following this introduction, Chapter 1 looks briefly at the global threat to lives and livelihoods from mines and unexploded ordnance. Particular attention is paid to the development and use of landmines. As Diana quoted Mark Antony from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, ‘the evil that men do lives after them’. It has become a cliché that truth is the first casualty of war. Accordingly, Chapter 2 reviews some of the many myths about mine action that have gained credence and balances them with the realities of some of the world’s biggest mine action programmes. We will see that the scope of the problem and the nature of the response are more complex than we might otherwise expect. Chapter 3 provides a potted history of mine action from Afghanistan (where it really began) through to the development of the International Mine Action Standards (IMAS) that guide the discipline today. Chapter 4 discusses the major components of mine action – ‘doing the job right’ – including efforts to standardise approaches to clearance, education, advocacy, assistance to victims and the destruction of stockpiled anti-personnel mines.

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Mine Action After Diana

Beyond these basic mine action tools and techniques, Chapter 5 looks at how, despite hiccoughs, mine action programmes are steadily becoming better organised and coordinated. ‘The art of managing chaos’ is based largely on the findings and conclusions of case studies of Afghanistan, Cambodia, Iraq, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. The case studies have been prepared by Nick Cumming-Bruce. Chapter 6, which reviews the interrelationship between mine action and the development world, suggests how mine action could better target its activities to ensure that it is ‘doing the right job’. The chapter has been written by a Canadian development economist, Ted Paterson. Chapter 7, a ‘who’s who of mine action’, considers the work of some of the plethora of actors engaged in mine action – from governments to NGOs via the UN, from the military to the Red Cross, from donors to the intended ‘beneficiaries’ (the communities that must daily live with the threat of mines and unexploded ordnance). Finally, Chapter 8 tries to bring the many threads together into an ‘audit’ of mine action. In assessing how far mine action has come, it also suggests a possible future for the discipline. Is the state of mine action today a legacy of which Diana would have been proud? After the main body of the text, a selected bibliography suggests to the reader a few of the key works in a domain that already boasts thousands of reports, books, briefing papers and press releases. An index completes the book. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book owes its appearance to the many individuals who gave generously of their time and insights, in particular Sayed Aqa, Peter Balmer, Brigadier (ret.) Patrick Blagden, Dr Robin Coupland, Bob Eaton, Eric Filippino, John Flanagan, Mike Kendellen, Richard Kidd, Alastair Macaslan, Noel Mulliner, Per Nergaard, Gro Nystuen, Shannon Smith, May-Elin Stener, Mary Wareham and Andrew Willson. In addition, a number of individuals provided information to the author, but requested anonymity. That he is unable to thank them by name in no way undermines his gratitude to them. The author would also like to thank the following for their written contributions to the project: Margaret Arach Orech, Lloyd Axworthy, Martin Barber, Vera Bohle, Nick Cumming-Bruce, Ambassador Martin Dahinden, Ambassador Thomas Hajnoczi, Peter Herby, Ambassador Steffen Kongstad, Ambassador Jean Lint, Heather Mills McCartney,

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Sara Sekkenes, Ted Paterson and Jerry White. As these were written specifically for the book, they are not sourced as endnotes. The quotations from Diana, Princess of Wales, at the beginning of each chapter are taken from her keynote address to a seminar ‘Responding to Landmines: A Modern Tragedy and its Solutions’, organised by the Mines Advisory Group and the Landmine Survivors Network in London on 12 June 1997. The author would also like to thank Richard Lloyd and Andrew Purkis for their unstinting support to the project. Last, but certainly not least, special thanks are due to Jack Glattbach for his judicious advice and editorial assistance. Of course, beyond direct quotations, none of these people necessarily agree with the views expressed in this book, which remain the author’s sole responsibility.

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1 The Global Threat Mines inflict most of their casualties on people who are trying to meet the elementary needs of life. They strike the wife, or the grandmother, gathering firewood for cooking. They ambush the child sent to collect water for the family… Diana, Princess of Wales THE LEGACY OF CONFLICT Landmines and the corresponding threat from other explosive remnants of war were not, of course, a new phenomenon in 1997. Every armed conflict of modern times has left many tons of potentially deadly unexploded ordnance scattered around former battlefields. Mines typically remain active for years, even decades, lying in wait for unsuspecting victims as per their design. And ammunition dumps may be abandoned to the benefit of enemy troops or left merely to rot, an irresistible temptation for scrap metal scavengers. As Ambassador Thomas Hajnoczi, who personally drafted much of the Ottawa Treaty, writes, ‘Anti-personnel mines take their toll among innocent people long after a conflict has ended. They impede the return of refugees, prevent land to be put to productive use and kill livestock, they forbid circulation on roads, they are a decisive impediment to reconstruction and return to normalcy.’ The worst of the contamination has resulted from regional conflicts and the proxy wars of the nuclear stand-off between the West and the Soviet Union. An overproduction of conventional munitions during the Cold War has meant easy, cheap access for governments and guerrilla forces alike. Proliferation has been fuelled by the low cost of standard anti-personnel mines, with average prices ranging from $3 to $15 (between £2 and £10). Sometimes used to target soldiers, mines have often been used to deliberately terrorise civilians and control their movements. As a result of the hundreds of armed conflicts since 1945, untold millions of landmines and pieces of unexploded ordnance (see Chapter 2) continue to contaminate Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe. The most heavily impacted countries are Afghanistan, Angola, 10

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Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, Iran, Iraq, Laos, Myanmar, Russia (Chechnya), Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan and Vietnam. There is significant contamination, although arguably the impact is less, from mines and unexploded ordnance in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Burundi, Chad, Colombia, Croatia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Georgia (including the breakaway republic of Abkhazia), Mozambique, Namibia, Nicaragua, Tajikistan and Thailand, among others. Dozens of other countries are also contaminated but the impact on the civilian population is now relatively limited or even nil: examples are Denmark (the Skallingen peninsula, with Second World War contamination), Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guinea-Bissau, India, Israel, Libya, Malawi, Pakistan, Peru, Rwanda, Serbia and Montenegro (including Kosovo), South Korea, the UK (the Falkland Islands) and Zimbabwe. In Angola and Mozambique, for example, wars fuelled by the desire for independence from colonial rule followed by internal strife fuelled by ideology and racist neighbours resulted in significant use of landmines. The government in each of the countries controlled the towns and laid protective belts of mines around them that killed or injured many of the people they were supposedly protecting. Meanwhile armed opposition groups with equally scant concern for the sanctity of human life deployed low-density ‘nuisance’ minefields in the surrounding fields and laid anti-tank mines on the roads, sometimes to target government troops, sometimes to target civilians, often indiscriminately, not caring who were the victims. For the civilian population, hungry and thirsty, caught between government and opposition, the consequences were dramatic. They would often be forced to go out into minefields looking for food or water or firewood, knowing that every step they took might be their last. With no clearance teams around, once injured and trapped in a minefield they might just stay there, bleeding to death and screaming in vain for help. For what help could be given? Family members might risk – and lose – their lives by going in. Sometimes a rope might be found and thrown in and the victim would have the chance to be dragged out, hoping that he or she would not set off another mine while doing so. More often, community members would feel constrained to watch helplessly from afar. Problems elsewhere in Africa and across the waters in Asia and the Americas typically followed similar patterns. The high- and low-

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intensity struggles against communism saw mines used as a weapon of choice, with civilians caught in the middle. European armies still spend huge sums of money each year clearing the explosive remnants of the Second and even the First World War – in such countries as Belgium, France, Germany, Poland, Russia and the Ukraine. Lives continue to be lost in this process, as mines and ordnance claim new victims, decades after peace is supposed to reign. In July 2003, a bomb dropped during the Second World War on the western Austrian city of Salzburg exploded, killing two bomb disposal experts and seriously wounding one other person. The 550-pound relic exploded as a bomb disposal team began unearthing the device that lay in an evacuated area by Salzburg’s central train station. Debris from the explosion was strewn for 500–600 yards but the only other damage was some smashed windows on nearby buildings.1 Some South Pacific islands still bear the scars of the Allied war against the Japanese in the early 1940s, while Egypt and Libya still bemoan the legacy of the North Africa campaign. As the New York Times reported in August 2003, the extreme heat that set records across Europe caused the level of Lake Constance in Germany to fall, exposing eight unexploded Second World War bombs submerged for more than half a century. German explosive experts removed the live bombs. ‘We have found four phosphorous bombs of British origin, several 200-pound American bombs and a 500-pound high-explosive bomb, also an American bomb,’ said KlausPeter Olsen, an explosives specialist. Local officials said a number of hand grenades from the two world wars were also exposed. The lake covers 220 square miles and is bordered by Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Mines and other munitions that have not been sold off are often left to rot in unsuitable storage facilities beyond their expiry dates. Sometimes they explode, even in peacetime, as in Ecuador or Nigeria, where storage procedures are woefully inadequate. And if these outdated, badly maintained weapons are used by militaries, whether in anger or in training, some will not blow up, leaving another deadly hazard for civilians. The physical impact Indeed, as Diana identified, usually it is civilians everywhere who bear the brunt of mine and unexploded ordnance contamination, especially after a conflict has supposedly ended.

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Too often, civilians die in agony far from any medical facility capable of giving them adequate first aid, or, more unfortunate still perhaps, survive their injuries for a life of disability and shame – one more burden on a family that already has too many. Landmines typically cause horrific injuries. As Heather Mills McCartney says, ‘Only when you have worked and lived in a war zone and become an amputee later, as I have, can you fully comprehend the devastation these weapons cause.’ But the precise nature of these injuries depends to a large extent on the type of ordnance that is detonated. As we mentioned in the introduction, stepping on a blast anti-personnel mine will invariably blow off one leg or sometimes even both, making you an instant amputee, disabled for the rest of your life. And despite the cinema’s attempt to prove otherwise, you can’t outrun or even ‘outdrive’ a mine. Mines are immediate and unforgiving. The type of mine that doesn’t detonate until you take your foot off it only exists in the minds of Hollywood directors. There are other ways of detonating certain mines, however. Fragmentation mines, whose primary method of causing injury is by slicing into your body with pre-formed metal fragments, may not make you an amputee, but they will shower your body with deep wounds, possibly causing a haemorrhage, maybe blinding you in the process. Bounding fragmentation mines are more powerful versions. When triggered, they spring up to about one metre above the ground and then explode. The lethal radius is normally greater than with static fragmentation mines. Both these types of mines are normally detonated by snapping a tripwire placed at ankle height or above. The physical effects of other ordnance exploding depend on the type of ordnance in question and the position of the body when explosion occurs. Many cluster bomblets, for instance, are designed to pierce tank armour, so they have little difficulty ripping a child’s body to shreds. Typically, each UXO incident causes multiple casualties. Margaret Arach Orech, a campaigning landmine survivor from Uganda, says that

although some things have changed for the better, others have not. The first hurdle a landmine victim has to face is accessing emergency medical care. Most medical facilities are located in urban areas whereas landmine incidents mostly occur in rural areas. And besides killing, injuries from landmines results in loss of limbs, sight, hearing and self

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esteem. The path travelled by a victim to becoming a survivor is a long and complicated one. There is a need for long-term commitment when providing assistance to landmine survivors. THE DEVELOPMENT AND USE OF LANDMINES The invention of the landmine Experts disagree as to the precise origin of the landmine, but Mike Croll, whose 1998 book, The History of Landmines, remains the most authoritative work on the subject, claims that modern landmines ‘trace their lineage from non-explosive predecessors such as the spikes and stakes that were employed by ancient armies’. Croll asserts that the term mine ‘was originally applied to the excavation of minerals from the earth. The technique and the term were borrowed by military engineers who dug mines during sieges and packed them with explosives to cause the collapse of fortifications.’ Contrary to popular belief, widespread use of anti-personnel mines first occurred on the battlefields of the American Civil War and not the First World War. Badly outnumbered in their struggle with the Unionists, Confederate troops needed to reinforce their defences to delay and imperil the Union forces: and landmines, or ‘land torpedoes’ as they were called, also permitted a withdrawal without sacrificing precious manpower in rearguard actions. Shocked by this new weapon, General Sherman would famously declare that, ‘This was not war, but murder!’ And in a salutary indication of the problems that would subsequently be confronted as a result of the use of anti-personnel mines on the battlefield, Croll notes that in 1960 five of these early landmines were recovered in Alabama. Nearly a century after they were laid, the powder was ‘still quite dangerous’. The First and Second World Wars On the First World War battlefields of Europe anti-personnel mines were not extensively deployed, largely as a result of the static trench warfare that predominated in the hostilities. Tripwire-activated mines were laced within wire entanglements early in the war but were found to be just as dangerous to the side that laid them and thus were quickly phased out. But the First World War did see the arrival of the tank as a new weapon of war – and the invention of the anti-tank mine. After the

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Battle of Cambrai in 1917, in which tanks were used en masse, the Germans started to mass produce anti-tank mines in tarred wooden boxes. In the Second World War, landmines were used on a huge scale. According to the US Defense Intelligence Agency, more than 300 million anti-tank mines were used during the war, including 220 million by the Soviet Union. Mines were integral to the famous battles at El Alamein and Kursk, among others. It is claimed that one German anti-personnel mine, the Schrapnellmine 35 or S mine as it was later called, ‘was probably the most feared device encountered by Allied troops’. Following the end of the war, demobilised soldiers introduced the term ‘minefield’ into everyday parlance, meaning a situation beset with problems. Within two years of the cessation of hostilities, some 90 million landmines had been cleared, mainly by prisoners of war. Often, to demonstrate that they had cleared all the mines, POWs were forced to walk hand-in-hand across the cleared areas. This was considered a reasonable incentive to ensure a high quality of work. LANDMINES AND UNEXPLODED ORDNANCE SINCE 1945 Since 1945, landmine design has increased apace with technological advance and by the 1990s more than 600 types of landmine had been

Photo 1

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Unexploded US cluster submunition, Kosovo (John Rodsted/Landmine Action)

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produced. Anti-personnel mines were used widely in both the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and both of these wars led to the development of new types of landmine. The Korean War, which saw a number of human-wave attacks against UN positions, resulted in the invention of the Claymore mine. When detonated, either by tripwire or by electric command wire, hundreds of steel ball bearings are hurled out in a 60-degree arc. The ‘lethal radius’ is 50 metres, meaning that anyone within this arc even half a football pitch away is likely to be killed. And you can still be injured up to 200 metres away. Vietnam was subjected to one of the most intense bombardments in the history of warfare and now, 28 years after the end of the war, still ranks among the countries most severely impacted by mines and UXO. The latest official figure for the extent of contamination, 16,478 square kilometres, representing about five per cent of Vietnam’s total land area, was first issued in 1998 and repeated in 2002. The Vietnam War also saw the first widespread use of remotely delivered or ‘scatterable’ mines dropped from aircraft by US forces seeking to stop the flow of men and material from North to South Vietnam through Laos and Cambodia. For the military, aerially delivered anti-personnel mines had a number of obvious advantages over their manually emplaced counterparts: they could be deployed rapidly, required little logistic support, and could be laid deep within enemy-held territory, causing disruption in troop movements and supply lines, all with minimal risk to the air-crews. But, at the same time, they represented a substantial danger to advances by friendly forces, not to mention the impact on the civilian population. Landmines alone are thought to represent a significant problem, but 90–95 per cent of the problem in Vietnam is said to be unexploded ordnance. Officials say that there are still some 300,000 tons of ordnance scattered around the country and that mines and unexploded ordnance affect all 61 provinces and major cities. Quang Tri province, site of the demilitarised zone between former North and South Vietnam, is assumed to be one of the worst affected areas. But other areas that suffered severe contamination include the border with China, Haiphong port, major supply roads that made up the Ho Chi Minh trail and areas to the north of Ho Chi Minh City. Other countries from the region were also abused in the US struggle against communism. Laos is one of the most heavily unexploded ordnance-contaminated countries in the world, mainly a result of intensive US bombing during the Vietnam War. Between 1964 and

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1973 the US dropped some two million tons of bombs on Laos, concentrating on provinces in the north-east and south-east along the border with Vietnam. It is estimated that about one-third of the ordnance dropped failed to detonate. A 1997 survey by Handicap International Belgium, found 15 of 18 provinces were affected by landmines and about one-quarter of all Lao villages reported the continued presence of unexploded ordnance: more than 900 villages (about one-third) had unexploded ordnance in the centre of the village. This remains the baseline survey for unexploded ordnance/mine clearance in Laos. On the basis of US bombing records and surveys, UXO Lao, the body set up to manage clearance operations, has estimated that some 87,213 square kilometres of land (easily more than the total area of Scotland, or the Netherlands and Switzerland combined) have a risk of contamination, of which more than 12,400 square kilometres are high risk. Laos also has 1,000 known minefields, according to the Mines Advisory Group, a British mine action charity, but it is government policy not to clear them because of the density of unexploded ordnance contamination and the need to concentrate resources on tackling priority hazards. Following its defeat in the wars in Indochina, the US continued to pour billions of dollars into corporate research and development laboratories to develop mines that would self-destruct within a preset time (usually 4–48 hours). According to one source, however, R&D had

nothing to do with the US ‘defeat’ in Vietnam and everything to do with preventing defeat in the Fulda gap or along the DMZ [Demilitarised Zone between North and South Korea]. The US developed landmines to help reinforce its conventional deterrence in Europe where NATO was stacked up against more than 120 Warsaw Pact divisions. This expenditure of US resources was considered very valuable by the Europeans at the time (who also committed considerable resources in this effort) and in the 1980s self-destructing mines were part of overall efforts to increase conventional strength as part of an overall effort to reduce reliance on nuclear options.2 The US, along with a small number of other countries, even developed landmines that serve as chemical weapons, each mine containing a quantity of nerve gas. (These have since been destroyed

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or are in the process of being destroyed in accordance with the requirements of the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention.) In July 2003, there were reports that during the Cold War the UK had actually considered burying ‘atomic’ mines in parts of Germany to thwart a Soviet attack. The plans were described by one authority as ‘somewhat theatrical’.3 In Afghanistan, Russia’s intervention led to a huge use of mines by both sides. Russia’s contribution included the infamous use of hundreds of thousands of scatterable anti-personnel mines known as ‘butterfly’ mines because of their shape. Although this was unintentional, these mines lured thousands of children into playing with them, often with tragic results as one of the wings contained liquid explosive that would detonate when squeezed. NEW CENTURY, NEW ENEMY … AND NEW CONTAMINATION As Afghanistan and Iraq have so ably demonstrated, the world is still adding to its mine and unexploded ordnance problem. ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’ has now deepened Afghanistan’s mine and unexploded ordnance problem. US cluster bomb strikes posed a particular hazard, causing casualties among deminers when clearance resumed as well as among civilians, despite being a tiny percentage of the overall UXO threat. The hazard posed by cluster bombs was made worse by the fact that, incredibly, the bomblets were initially the same colour as, and a similar shape to, food packages dropped by the coalition forces!4 US bomb strikes on ammunition storage sites led to widespread dispersal of unexploded ordnance in a number of locations. The conflict that erupted in Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks on the US inflicted major damage to the demining agencies and forced a suspension of all mine action. International and local NGO staff pulled out in the face of imminent US air strikes. Taliban and factional forces plundered UN and other demining agencies’ offices of millions of dollars worth of vehicles and equipment. Some demining agency compounds were damaged by coalition air strikes. As the ‘war on terror’ expanded, Iraq has recently added to its already significant contamination. Until its overthrow in the 2003 war, Saddam Hussein’s Baathist government was part of the global landmine problem, using these weapons extensively. In the early 1990s, during Operation Desert Storm, the conflict saw extensive use of anti-personnel mines by both Iraqi and Coalition armed forces. For

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its part, the US forces used aerially delivered GATOR mine systems, which contain both anti-tank and anti-personnel mines in a cluster bomb unit. Iraq’s most serious known landmine contamination exists along its northern border with Iran, dating back to the war with Iran in the 1980s, and along the Green Line that separated government and Kurdish forces. But Iraqi military records handed over to the Coalition show it was still laying major minefields in northern Iraq on 15 March 2003, four days before US and British forces invaded. A more severe and immediate problem is posed by the vast quantities of Iraqi explosive ordnance distributed by Saddam Hussein’s regime in urban and rural communities across the country, sometimes in vast military bunker complexes, sometimes in schools and mosques. As of September 2003, Coalition forces had got inside 10 of 96 known ammunition storage points. With the downfall of the Saddam regime, most of those munitions have been left unsecured, posing an extreme hazard to surrounding communities and an acute security problem for the Coalition. That threat was highlighted by the use of former Iraqi forces’ ordnance in the bomb attacks on the UN headquarters in Baghdad and on the Shi’ite leader in the holy city of Najaf, as well as in the escalating number of attacks on Coalition forces from mid-2003 using improvised explosive devices. After the war, the lack of electricity and cooking gas prompted civilians to loot ammunition storage points, stripping the wood from packing cases holding ammunition to use as fuel. Civilians also developed a thriving industry stripping brass and other metal parts from munitions for sale as scrap – and extracting explosives for use in demolition, often scattering propellant and explosive materials in the process. Children have also been found prising explosive charges from shells for the fun of igniting them. Unexploded Coalition ordnance, particularly cluster munitions, pose a hazard wherever the Iraqi army had established defensive positions, including many urban areas. Unexploded ordnance has claimed hundreds of victims in the aftermath of the 2003 war. Cluster munitions are munitions that are contained (‘clustered’) within a container and dispersed over a wide area once the container opens. They can be delivered by artillery, by multiple rocket launch systems, or can be air-dropped (‘cluster bombs’). They have been widely used by developing and developed countries alike, although the weapons have gained greater notoriety following their use in

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Kosovo in 1999, Afghanistan in 2001, and, latterly, Iraq in 2003, where they were used in their millions. With a ‘unitary’ bomb, the explosive force diminishes very quickly away from its point of impact. Often referred to also as ‘bomblets’ or ‘submunitions’, cluster munitions are ‘area’ weapons, meaning that they cause physical destruction over a wide area. According to the military, this means less need for pinpoint accuracy5 and ‘much greater value for payload’, with much improved effects on enemy personnel and armour compared to unitary bombs. The military planners know that some of the bomblets will not explode on impact as designed. Thus, the very quality that makes cluster munitions so attractive to the military – their capacity for area destruction – also makes them especially hazardous to civilians, given a failure rate that is frequently, possibly even typically, above ten per cent. In addition, the effects on military operations of unexploded cluster munitions include a threat to one’s own personnel, restrictions on movements (with consequent implications for tactical planning), and a need to clear facilities prior to their occupation. For its part, the US recognises this and has become the first country to commit to developing all new munitions with a 99 per cent or better reliability rate.6 A rethink on cluster bombs after Iraq?* Pentagon planners are rethinking how the military uses cluster bombs, because unexploded bomblets littering Iraq significantly impeded American troops’ battlefield manoeuvrability. Indeed, Marines trying to clean up unexploded ordnance in the Karbala region south of Baghdad say they are finding more deadly cluster bomblets than they expected, which are killing and maiming civilians and complicating U.S. reconstruction efforts. ‘It’s a big problem, and the military has come to recognise that it’s not just a humanitarian problem, it’s a military problem,’ says a senior Pentagon official recently back from Iraq.‘You’re creating “no-go” areas on the battlefield. I don’t think we appreciated that until this conflict.’ At a time of increasingly precise weaponry, cluster bombs are among the most indiscriminate – and thus controversial – conventional munitions. Bomblets left over from the first Gulf War killed 1,600 civilians and injured 2,500, according to a Human Rights Watch study. During and after the US invasion of Afghanistan, they killed or injured at least 129 civilians, the group says. These bombs also pose a bigger headache for the Pentagon in Iraq because, as an occupying power, US troops not only must live amid the danger but are

4

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responsible for the health and well-being of Iraqi citizens – which involves clearing the ordnance, a United Nations spokesman says. Cluster bombs are designed to destroy armour and kill troops over wide areas. The US showered between 1 million and 1.5 million bomblets on Iraq during the three-week invasion earlier this year. The military considers this weapon unsurpassed for attacking massed enemy troops.The trouble comes when the bomblets don’t explode, which can happen when they land in soft marshes, sandy deserts or thick foliage. The Defense Department hopes to start producing bomblets with dud rates of 1 per cent or lower by early 2005, an Army official working on the programme says. The Army also plans to equip some cluster bombs with precision-guidance kits to give commanders more control over where the bomblets land. And the Pentagon is taking a look at whether to use them as extensively as it has up to now. The Pentagon said its tests show that between 2 and 6 per cent of its bomblets don’t explode on impact, which it considers acceptable at present. The General Accounting Office has found so-called dud rates as high as 16 per cent, but Army officials call such estimates far too high. Precise rates in Iraq aren’t available, but U.S. Marine experts in Karbala say they believe dud rates in some places were as much as 40 per cent. Moreover, they are in places they generally aren’t supposed to be. The Pentagon had urged commanders to avoid using them in urban areas to minimise civilian casualties, but some populated areas are littered with unexploded munitions. While reluctant to second-guess Army battlefield decisions, many Marines in the Karbala region privately wonder why so many bomblets were dropped near civilians.The Marine ordnance-disposal team has found bomblets in date trees, vegetable gardens and inside homes, including closets. ‘It’s a little horrifying to walk into a house and see a family with children living with all these cluster bombs.’ *

Adapted from M.M. Phillips,‘Unexploded Bomblets in Iraq Create “No Go” Areas that Impede Manoeuvres’, Wall Street Journal, 25 August 2003.

Depleted uranium contamination – used, the military tell us, to penetrate the hulls of tanks – also requires study. In the 1991 Gulf War, the US dropped 290 tons of DU projectiles, particularly around Basra, and US Central Command has confirmed that DU has been used in the 2003 conflict. A study by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) concludes that anti-tank munitions used by the Coalition against Iraqi tank formations released DU into the environment. Risks to be addressed include widespread low-level contamination of the ground in areas exposed, possible contamination of ground water and the presence of fragments that may be handled by unprotected civilians. Although hotly disputed by the military, concerns remain that radiation poisoning may be the result.

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In April 2003, Professor Brian Spratt, chairman of the Royal Society working group on depleted uranium, said that a recent study by the Society had concluded that the soil around the impact sites of depleted uranium penetrators may be heavily contaminated, and could be harmful, for example, if swallowed by children:

In addition, large numbers of corroding depleted uranium penetrators embedded in the ground might pose a long-term threat if the uranium leaches into water supplies. We recommend that fragments of depleted uranium penetrators should be removed, and areas of contamination should be identified and, where necessary, made safe. He added:

We also recommend long-term sampling, particularly of water and milk, to detect any increase in uranium levels in areas where depleted uranium has been used. This provides a cost-effective method of monitoring sensitive components in the environment, and of providing information about uranium levels to concerned local populations.7 No comprehensive data on the victims of mines and unexploded ordnance in Iraq exists outside two of the three northern governorates covered by the UN’s northern mine action programme. But what figures have been compiled indicate extremely high casualties in 2003 in the weeks following the end of the war as large numbers of people moved back into previously restricted areas to check on family property. The casualties reported are thought to understate significantly the actual number. In a little under the month to 7 May 2003, the Mines Advisory Group operating in the north recorded 374 casualties, 204 of them children, in only one of its units. In four southern governorates, 324 casualties were reported from 16 June to 1 August. Many victims result from tampering with munitions, evidence of the thriving industry in scrap metal and explosives. FROM MINES AND UXO TO MINE ACTION In the words of the Red Cross, the ‘perverse effects of technology’ go far beyond death and injury caused by mines. Mines and unexploded

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ordnance block access to food and water and to pasture for grazing cattle, impede the provision of medical assistance and post-conflict reconstruction, and threaten returning refugees. In the introduction we noted that the UN was told in 1997 that the problem of mines and unexploded ordnance needed to be redefined to take account of the impact of landmines on communities and the coping mechanisms of individual families. In Chapter 2, we begin to look at the context for mine action by addressing some of the myths that have proliferated in mine action and comparing them with some of the realities encountered in the field.

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2 Mine Action Myths and Realities There are said to be around 110 million mines lurking somewhere in the world – and over a third of them are to be found in Africa. Diana, Princess of Wales The late Princess of Wales was not alone in repeating the claim that there are 100 million or more mines already in the ground needing to be cleared. But as this chapter tries to illustrate, the problem is not so easily encapsulated. So let’s look at what we’re really up against by disabusing ourselves of a few of the many myths that proliferate in mine action. As we will see, the realities of some of the world’s largest mine action programmes are infinitely more complex. ‘100 MILLION MINES IN THE GROUND’ The claim that 100 million or more mines were already in the ground was decided on by campaigners at a meeting in Montreux, Switzerland, in 1993. The same year, the US Department of State, following discussions with its embassies around the world, produced a report entitled Hidden Killers on what it termed the ‘global landmines crisis’. The report estimated that there were between 65 and 110 million uncleared landmines scattered through more than 60 countries. The following year it issued a second edition of the report, which noted that ‘the figure popularly accepted by governments, NGOs and the private sector has been 100 million landmines worldwide’. The figure was taken on as scripture in reports by the UN Secretariat to the General Assembly. It has been widely used and reused, a mantra that for several years became an uncontested reality, a compelling call to action. In fact, it soon became clear that this figure was significantly overstating the problem, at least as far as landmines were concerned. According to US and UN estimates, the world’s most affected country was Egypt with a reported 23 million mines. Who reported them? 24

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The Egyptian government. What was its agenda? Getting money from Germany and the UK to fund clearance operations. Thus it was in its interest to inflate the numbers, and inflate them it undoubtedly did, which undermined its moral case for assistance from those that had caused the problem during the North Africa campaigns of the Second World War. As time went on, even some of those heading the campaigns against anti-personnel mines began to realise that the figure of 100 million was inflated, and probably grossly inflated. Yet the decision was taken, rather disingenuously, to remain silent. Staff at the appropriately named HALO Trust took it upon themselves to rid the world of their misconceptions. They denounced the numbers publicly as absurd and even dangerous as they gave the impression that clearing mines was an impossible task. They prompted organisations to stop using the figure of 100 million and talk about ‘many millions’ or ‘many tens of millions’ of mines, or to say that the figure was simply irrelevant. So what is the true figure? Who knows? HALO Trust certainly doesn’t. According to Paddy Blagden, a former UN demining expert who humbly accepts part of the blame for the erroneous claim when under intense pressure from the UN Secretary-General to come up with a figure: ‘We know the figures are wrong, we just don’t know how wrong they are.’ Nor may ‘we’ ever. But campaigners were wrong to bandy around figures without making more effort to ensure they were accurate, and they certainly should have stopped as soon as they knew they weren’t. Yet – and here is the grain of truth that remained obscured – although the 100 million figure for mines appears to have been wildly inaccurate, the overall global problem of explosive remnants of war surely surpasses it. No one knows how many abandoned or unexploded bombs, grenades, shells and rockets pollute the earth’s surface, but the figure is certainly gigantic. For while the world has spent one billion dollars worldwide on mine action in the six years to 2003, in Iraq alone, the US Army is spending $287 million (about £180 million) in a single year to start disposing of captured Iraqi army ordnance. The project will cover only part of the thousands of tons of stockpiled munitions, and is considered as nothing more than a ‘down-payment’ – such is the extent of the problem.

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Mine action in Angola* The civil war in Angola lasted for 27 years, before peace was finally agreed in 2002. Mine action support for the country flagged after the resumption of the war in 1992 and again in 1994 when both parties to the conflict were implicated in renewed mine-laying. However, Angola continued to be one of the best-funded recipients of mine action support in the world. In total, between 1993 and 2001, Angola received nearly $90 million (some £55 million) in donor funding for mine action. Only three countries – Afghanistan, Bosnia and Cambodia – received more, each topping the $100 million mark. Mine action in Angola has reached a critical stage. It is necessary for the national authorities responsible for demining in Angola to rebuild credibility and international trust as the only way to ensure continued interest from donors in supporting mine action in that country. Greater commitment from the government would also assist the elaboration of a sustainable Angola mine action development strategy. A stronger commitment is also needed from international donors. The establishment of a donor board would be one way in which greater collaboration between donors and the government could be achieved. *

Adapted from information contained in N. Grobelaar (ed.), Mine Action in Southern Africa: Instrument of Development?, South African Institute of International Affairs, Johannesburg, 2003.

‘ANTI-PERSONNEL MINES HAVE NO MILITARY UTILITY’ Whatever the true number of mines and UXO around the world, the claim that anti-personnel mines have no military utility is patently absurd, since they would not have been used on such a wide scale if they weren’t useful. As the South African military, formerly major users of landmines, have stated: ‘Anyone doubting the effectiveness of an anti-personnel minefield should try it sometime.’ Indeed, the fact that Angola flouted international law by continuing to use antipersonnel mines despite having signed the Ottawa Treaty is a tragic testimony to this. Unfortunately, the very qualities that made landmines a weapon of choice in many conflicts – their abilities to create fear, to channel the enemy by denying him land and sustenance, and to inflict horrific injuries (thus slowing an advance as soldiers stop to help their screaming comrade who has just lost part of his leg in triggering a mine) – continue to play out their macabre theatre even when the conflict is, legally at least, over and done.

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For the British army, for example, renouncing anti-personnel mines meant renouncing a concrete operational capability, although there has been no situation where they would really have been needed since they joined the Ottawa Treaty. But given the very significant humanitarian consequences of antipersonnel mines, the Ministry of Defence ultimately accepted the argument that the treaty was a ‘price worth paying’. So, thankfully, have two-thirds of the world’s nations, a significant triumph for the international campaign against anti-personnel mines. It has often been said that international law only bans useless weapons. This is clearly not the case here. In the words of Chris Smith, a military analyst at the Centre for Defence Studies in London, anti-personnel mines have less utility than is sometimes claimed but more than we would often like to admit. ‘ONE VICTIM EVERY 20 MINUTES’ A second important plank of the campaign’s rallying cry was ‘one landmine victim every 20 minutes’ or, variously, 24,000 or 26,000 new mine victims every year. But the estimate was based on an extrapolation of one hospital in Afghanistan at a critical period in the repatriation of refugees. Only if the victims of all explosive remnants of war are included does it become a more credible estimate (though natural reduction and the impact of mine action has probably since reduced the true number, whatever it is). Yet figures in Afghanistan and Cambodia, two of the world’s most affected countries, have remained extremely high. In 2002, more than 1,200 mine and UXO victims (i.e. killed and injured) were recorded in Afghanistan and more than 800 in Cambodia. Moreover, these figures will understate the true problem as many victims will not be recorded, dying or being injured far from a medical centre that might, conceivably, keep note of the cause of the injuries. In Cambodia, more than 54,500 people were killed or maimed by mines/UXO between January 1979 and the end of 2002. Total casualties fell sharply after the Khmer Rouge insurgency finally collapsed in 1996, when the annual total peaked at 4,151, but the biggest reduction was in military victims. Over the three years to 2003, the number of casualties has remained stubbornly above 800 a year, 97 per cent of them civilians.

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Photo 2

Children at play in refugee camp, Eritrea (John Rodsted/Landmine Action)

The number of Cambodian child victims dropped steadily from 1998 to 2001 but actually jumped 26 per cent in 2002 over the previous year as a result of UXO accidents, which have also started to rise again. In 2002, more than one-third of victims were children under the age of 18. Although mines still account for over half the number of incidents in Cambodia, UXO now claims just over half the total number of victims and accounts for 86 per cent of child casualties. This reflects the particular menace posed by UXO: while mine incidents occur mostly in forest or woodland, often affecting only one person, the great majority of UXO incidents are a result of tampering – opening ordnance to access their explosives (used for fishing) and collecting scrap metal for sale. Most UXO incidents occur inside villages and often cause multiple casualties. The figures in Vietnam are even more shocking. A nationwide survey by the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs reported in September 1999 that at least 38,248 people had been killed and 64,064 people injured in landmine/UXO accidents since the end of the Vietnam War in April 1975 – indicating an average of 4,448 deaths or injuries a year. The number of accidents is believed to have peaked in the years immediately after the war, at a time of large movements of people, and

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to have gradually tailed off since then. Yet the Vietnamese government and the US State Department estimated in 2000 that landmines and ordnance were still causing around 2,000 accidents a year. Many accidents in remote areas are believed to go unreported. Contrary to popular belief, most of the victims of anti-personnel mines are not children but men engaged in subsistence farming. Women are usually a relatively small percentage of mine victims. Moreover, during conflict, mines typically kill and injure more soldiers than civilians – though, predictably, the situation reverses quickly once the conflict is over. Children are more prey to deaths and injuries from UXO, whether as a result of play or work. ‘ALL WE NEED TO DO IS GET ALL THE MINES OUT OF THE GROUND’ For a long time, the clarion call of many deminers, especially those with a military background, has been the overriding need to clear mines. Yet, with all due respect to these courageous individuals, it is now widely recognised that this is overly simplistic and, given the costs of mine clearance, unrealistic. As H.L. Mencken once remarked, ‘For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat and wrong.’ Thus, in the words of Paddy Blagden, we need to ‘stop thinking of demining as an activity in itself’. Sara Sekkenes, adviser on socio-economic aspects of mine action with the Oslo-based NGO, Norwegian People’s Aid, agrees: ‘Demining land for cultivation in a village surviving on subsistence farming provides little improvement if the farmers after decades of war have no seeds and tools left. They will go hungry despite the clearance of many hectares of productive land to a cost of maybe tens of thousands of dollars.’ She argues that the problem is larger than merely landmines and furthermore, when set in a context of limited resources, that priorities must be made based on qualitative information. The Afghanistan mine action programme, described in Chapter 3, is one example of the risks incurred when over-ambitious clearance targets are set. Clearance is still a mainstay of every mine action programme, but it must be used selectively and be well targeted. As Ambassador Martin Dahinden, the Director of the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining (GICHD), explains:

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Economic and social considerations were not very common when mine action started a decade ago. Quite often the most heavily mined areas were defined as priorities, instead of those with the highest number of victims or with the best socio-economic potential once cleared. Too little consideration was given to the benefit of an operation for the affected population. Since the end of the 1990s, socio-economic issues have become a major element in defining the landmine problem, setting priorities and evaluating the effectiveness of work done, and they will play an increasingly important role in the future. Population migrations and movements are also a particular headache for clearance operations in countries like Cambodia, and are likely to remain so for years to come. Settlers moving into western and north-western provinces of the country near the border with Thailand may know of (and are undeterred by) the general landmine risk but lack specific local knowledge of which areas have the worst contamination. UXO in parts of the north-east is no major hazard now because the provinces are thinly populated but will become a hazard as new roads open up the territory to new settlement. Changes to the socio-economic profile of provinces as a result of new infrastructure projects also complicate the task of mine clearance and underscore the need to broaden the inputs into planning. Demining agencies cite instances of having invested time and money in clearing land required for resettlement, only to return a year or two later to find recipients of the cleared land have left it to settle at a new location by a newly built road. And although not all deminers, especially those from the military, fully appreciate the Ottawa Treaty or its advocates, it is a necessary element in the overall response. According to Vera Bohle, a specialist in the destruction of UXO,

even by just clearing the areas with highest priority, we cannot fight windmills. To deal again and again with newly laid mines or fired and unexploded ordnance would be a task impossible to complete. It is still much easier to plant mines and to fire ammunition than to clear their explosive remnants. Mine clearance without a proper political framework and the support of all nations is condemned to become a Sisyphean task.

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‘IN MANY WAYS, MINE ACTION MANAGEMENT IS AS MUCH ABOUT INFORMATION AS IT IS ABOUT LANDMINES’ This claim, which comes from the pen of Ted Paterson, seems the most fantastic of all the myths we have considered. In fact, it is a hard reality. Any programme needs accurate information in order to plan effectively. So before you start to clear mines and UXO, you need to know where they are and what kind of ordnance you are up against: a threat assessment. The use of threat assessment in Kosovo is discussed in Chapter 5 by John Flanagan, the former head of the UN Mine Action Coordination Centre for the province. The ideal is that the former warring parties have carefully prepared and stored maps of mines that have been laid (other ordnance falls where it falls, of course, and no maps could reasonably be expected). But minefield maps are not often made, even by professional armies, and the warning signs that should protect civilians are all too rarely maintained. Not just an African problem: the case of Colombia Many people link mines and UXO just with Africa and Asia, when in fact it is a truly global problem. Although in some ways, the Americas have been spared the worst of the impact, there is still a residual threat in a number of central and southern American countries, such as Nicaragua, and in Colombia the threat is growing every day. One of the many unusual features of the drug-fuelled conflict in Colombia is the extensive role played by ‘home-made’ or artisanal mines, booby-traps and other explosive devices. Despite opposition forces being extremely wellfinanced (through drug smuggling, kidnappings and other activities), they have largely preferred to manufacture their own mines rather than ‘buy them in’. To its credit, the Colombian government has ratified the Ottawa Treaty, passed national legislation to ban the use of anti-personnel mines and, at last, has begun to destroy existing stockpiles. The danger they face is that their ‘war on anti-personnel mines’ is subverted into a propaganda battle against the guerrilla groups threatening them. Thus, the decision to call the national coordinating body, the ‘Anti-Personnel Mine Monitor’ rather than the Colombian Mine Action Centre, is regrettable. Nonetheless, the body has determined to strengthen its mine awareness programme (mine clearance being extremely difficult given that opposition forces control most of the country). Working in an ongoing armed conflict is also immensely challenging, as security concerns make information-gathering difficult, if not well-nigh impossible. And, as ever in such situations, civilians, the poor rural farmers in particular, bear the brunt of the conflict.

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Thus, dead and dying cattle and other animals become the markings of many minefields: their unwitting sacrifice is a graphic advertisement of peril. As refugees and other displaced people trudge home to see what, if anything, remains of their homestead, the first they may learn of the mine threat is when a family member detonates a mine or piece of UXO lurking in their backyard. In most cases, mine action has conducted surveys to identify the location of mines and minefields, UXO and former battlegrounds, and to help the programme to prioritise clearance priorities (see Chapter 5 for more on this topic). Early mine action surveys were often poor with unreliable data. For example, the general survey of mine contamination in Mozambique in 1994 has been widely criticised, and the results were not even inputted into a national database designed for the purpose. Since then, mine action has benefited from the development of the Information Management System for Mine Action (IMSMA), developed at the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology in Zurich under the management of the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining. The IMSMA combines a Geographic Information System (information plotted spatially on maps, such as the location of minefields and clearance teams) and a database that includes records of mine victims. But early efforts at information-gathering were rudimentary and did not benefit from such sophisticated technology. Thus, for example, the first attempt to do a survey of Afghanistan at the beginning of the 1990s saw ‘mapping packs’ being sent into the country along with NGOs. Only 50 packs were returned complete – from a total of 10,000 dispatched. Many early surveys sought to give a national snapshot of the threat and focused on the type of contamination without detailing its impact on communities – necessary information for priority-setting. More successful was the Mine Clearance and Planning Agency survey of Afghanistan, which included a considerable amount of other data in addition to hazard data. According to Sayed Aqa, then the head of the Afghan NGO, Mine Clearance and Planning Agency, the survey also served as a form of ‘verification’ as survey teams were separated from clearance teams thereby avoiding the risk, or perception, of figures being tampered with. When the Ottawa Treaty was adopted in 1997, one of the obligations on affected states that joined the treaty was to ‘make every effort’ to identify mined areas containing anti-personnel mines

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and then to clear them. A corresponding obligation was imposed on states ‘in a position to do so’ to provide resources for mine clearance operations. As donor states were unwilling to sign blank cheques, they wanted a baseline survey that would guide their support and enable them to assess progress in clearance. The indirect result was the ongoing series of national Landmine Impact Surveys. A Landmine Impact Survey or LIS is a comprehensive survey of affected communities in a given country or region, which scores the level of impact of mine and/or UXO contamination on each affected community depending on the extent of socio-economic consequences. Although blockages of access to water, agricultural land or pasture affect the impact scoring, the most significant factor is the number of mine and UXO victims recorded in a community over the preceding two years. Surveys have so far been completed in Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Chad, Mozambique, Somaliland, Thailand and Yemen, and are ongoing or about to start in Afghanistan, Angola, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Lebanon and Vietnam. In total, the enterprise has cost about $20 million (roughly £13 million). An evaluation of the LIS exercise is near completion, but it is already clear that the results of the survey are normally wasted afterwards (for the case of Thailand, see the summary of the Thai mine action programme below). As Eric Filippino, head of the SocioEconomic Section at the GICHD, points out, ‘They’re building a Ferrari for people who ride bicycles.’ Indeed, the typical follow-up on one national LIS is rated delicately as ‘shit’, according to one expert closely involved in the design and implementation of the survey. The accuracy of the LIS is sometimes contested, as it was in the case of the Mozambique survey, but its overall aim is not better data but better planning and priority-setting. So has $20 million been wasted? Certainly, the word impact has entered the vocabulary of mine action, where it is likely to remain and even increase in relevance. But as Richard Kidd from the US State Department has noted, the survey has been followed by the same level of mine action planning, or, more accurately, lack of planning, as before. In addition, the LIS is a survey of communities and does not include reliable technical information that will allow clearance operations to start up without obtaining more data. For this, programmes need a technical survey capacity.

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Technical surveys verify the presence of mines and UXO using dogs, deminers or machines or even just through a visual inspection of the contaminated land. They should also define the outer perimeters of the minefield or battlefield and therefore the extent of the clearance task. A good example of where a technical survey could have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars is Mozambique where contracts were let for the clearance of 2,000 kilometres of roads – but only six mines were uncovered after months of operations. Before a clearance task is given to an organisation or agency, it must be designated as a priority according to criteria set by the mine action programme as a whole. This is typically the task of the national mine action centre and is discussed further in Chapter 5. For some agencies, however, a further step is needed before clearance operations can begin. Norwegian People’s Aid – NPA – has recognised the need to make sure, as far as possible, that the land will actually be used once it has been cleared, and for appropriate purposes. As a consequence, NPA now aims to do a ‘task impact assessment’. Sara Sekkenes explains that this means that, prior to mine clearance, it must be established together with the community affected by the mined area that: the task is a priority; the mine clearance will have a positive effect on the community’s ability to improve its situation if the field is cleared; and that a post-clearance activity or land use is identified, including identifying who will actually implement the activity and if the necessary resources exist to carry it out. Only then, in theory at least, will NPA begin clearing the land. Mine action in Thailand: a summary Thailand was the first South-east Asian country to sign the Ottawa Treaty which it ratified in 1998 and went on to set up one of only two developing-country mine action programmes that are predominantly locally financed (Croatia being the other). Since then it has fulfilled its treaty obligations, completing destruction of its stocks of landmines in April 2003. Progress in mine clearance, however, has been more limited. Mine action in Thailand has been and remains for the moment largely the preserve of the military. The government considered mine action as a security issue properly handled by the armed forces, and the issue has attracted little interest from either politicians or the general public. In addition, the treaty was signed at a time when Thailand was reeling from the effects of a regional financial

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crisis and the government had no additional financial resources to spare for mine action, and it was expedient to draw on the resources of the military. Although Thailand is not generally recognised as a country with serious mine/UXO contamination, a national Landmine Impact Survey completed in May 2001 makes apparent an extensive threat from landmines to civilians on Thailand’s borders with Cambodia and Myanmar. A minor problem exists on the border with Laos, but contaminated areas on the border with Malaysia are judged to pose little threat. Unhappily, the LIS is seen in some quarters as a valuable resource that has gone largely to waste.The survey attempted to go further than most previous surveys by reinforcing the impact component, valuable for purposes of planning and prioritising, with extensive mapping and practical data of contamination, valuable to people actually clearing the mines. Provincial authorities, among the main potential beneficiaries of the impact survey, only received copies of the survey in English, and NGOs engaged in the mine action sectors say they have had little access to survey data. UNMAS also reportedly has boxes of the survey sitting in its New York offices but says it has no budget for distribution. The Thailand Mine Action Centre (TMAC), established in January 2000, drew up an initial 2000–2004 five-year mine action plan but it has failed to attract much government or foreign donor financial support and has therefore operated with far fewer clearance assets than the plan anticipated. Clearance efforts are concentrated on the Cambodian border. Continuing conflict along the Thai–Myanmar border, however, has deterred any mine clearance work and budgetary limitations have held back action on other borders. Although military control of mine action has made it harder to find foreign donor support, the Armed Forces Supreme Command overseeing TMAC showed no interest in proposals presented in 2001 by a Western technical adviser urging that the programme be put under civilian control. However, the present Director-General of TMAC, also spurred by the financial constraints on its operations, is working on a new proposal to ‘privatise’ TMAC, which he expects to submit to the cabinet in 2004. In September 2003,Thailand hosted the fifth annual meeting of States Parties to the Ottawa Treaty in Bangkok. Suggestions by a Thai general that Thailand was already seeking an extension to the treaty deadline for clearance were subsequently denied, but demonstrate some of the problems that the Thai mine action programme is facing.

Of course, weeks or months, sometimes even years after the land has been cleared, someone needs to return to the demined land to make sure everything that was supposed to happen actually has. This type of survey, known as the land use survey, has been pioneered by the HALO Trust. Currently, however, no organisation does it systematically, and this remains a significant lacuna in ensuring that the ‘outputs’ of demining (i.e. cleared land) become ‘outcomes’ – cleared land that is used by the civilian population to better their lives.

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A quality assurance officer at the Bosnian mine action centre once remarked nonchalantly to a small team, including this author, that he was too busy ‘getting the mines out of the ground’ to bother seeing whether demined land was actually being used productively. Hopefully, the day will come when no-one involved in mine action will ever dare to be so obtuse.

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3 The Evolution of Mine Action: From Afghanistan to International Standards This tracing and lifting of mines, as I saw in Angola, is a desperately slow business. Diana, Princess of Wales As Diana rightly stated, finding and destroying landmines is indeed a desperately slow business. It is also expensive. As we saw in Chapter 2, mine action is not just about getting the mines out of the ground. The costs of clearance and the time it takes has led to mine action moving away from trying to ‘solve’ (i.e. remove) all contamination to containing or ‘managing’ it. In the words of Martin Barber, the head of the UN’s Mine Action Service: ‘Mine action has grown over the past few years from a technical activity focused primarily on taking mines out of the ground to a complex and interdisciplinary field of action … The focus has shifted from estimating the number of mines in the ground to assessing their impact on civilian populations.’ But, for every country like France, Germany, the UK or the US, endowed with well-equipped and well-trained engineers schooled in mine clearance, there is another Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia or Vietnam. These are countries where, without international assistance, deminers are lucky to be able to wear even antiquated protection against mine blasts, where serviceable, modern mine detectors are few and far between, where safety procedures are ad hoc and sometimes incoherent, and where casualties among deminers are the rule rather than the exception. Seen in this light, we start to understand the challenges facing mine action. These become even clearer as we look at how mine action evolved. THE AFGHAN EXPERIENCE Understandably, mine action was not born as a coherent entity but grew incrementally and haphazardly from uncertain beginnings. It had its genesis in Afghanistan in the late 1980s following the 37

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Photo 3

Mine clearance, Cambodia (John Rodsted/Landmine Action)

withdrawal of Soviet troops because of the urgent needs to reduce dramatic civilian casualties from mines and UXO, and to remove obstacles to reconstruction. The focus of the world’s first mine action programme was initially on clearing mines, although survey and mine awareness (providing safety information to the civilian population) swiftly followed. Prior to this, mine clearance had been typically the domain of national militaries. Afghanistan was a different case, however, as there was no functioning Afghan army and the Soviet troops were not willing to clear mines before they left the country. A number of countries, notably Australia, the UK and the US, used their militaries to help train Afghans in clearance techniques. The training took place in neighbouring Pakistan and the trainees were said to be civilian refugees, although many of these ‘refugees’ were bussed to the camps by the ISI, the Pakistan Intelligence Services. In the British-run camp in Quetta, they were given two to three weeks’ training based on the British military engineers’ handbook. The training sought to cover area clearance – making an area safe for the civilian population – and not minefield breaching (with which the military are obviously more familiar). Breaching means clearing a path through a minefield prior to and during combat so that soldiers can, at considerable risk, make it through to the other side. It is not

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acceptable for humanitarian purposes as it will rarely clear all the mines from a given area. To distinguish clearance for humanitarian purposes, where the aim is total area clearance, from military breaching, Australians invented the term ‘demining’. This is the term used today, although it has been broadened beyond clearance operations to encompass marking and mapping of minefields, survey and community liaison (discussed below). As training equipment was lacking in the beginning, the Afghans were initially taught using toy metal detectors while the real metal detectors were being delivered. The real detectors were basically treasure hunting metal detectors manufactured in the UK and not specifically designed for mines. Training also included the use of a few small tools, such as a penknife and trowel. Basic medical training and record keeping were taught. The idea was that the refugees would return to their villages and clear the country of mines, almost spontaneously. It was destined to failure. Experience has shown that clearance operations either have to

Mine action in Afghanistan: a summary Regime change in Afghanistan and the international response to it has infused new life into a mine clearance programme that had run into severe financial constraints before the events of 11 September 2001. Donors have made available unprecedented levels of funding enabling demining agencies to replace millions of dollars worth of equipment lost or destroyed in the turmoil and fighting at the end of 2001 and to expand operating capacity. Mine clearance rates in 2002 were the highest recorded in Afghanistan. The question now is what is sustainable. The Mine Action Coordination Agency for Afghanistan (MACA) has prepared a strategic plan that calls for a further increase in clearance capacity. Its targets are to eliminate the mine/ UXO threat in all priority areas by 2007 and in low-priority areas by 2012. However, this looks more like a wish list than a firm prospect. These targets are predicated on the basis of donor support continuing at about the same level as in 2002 for the next five years. The slower arrival of funds in 2003 calls that expectation into question and with it the prospects for achieving operational targets. The targets set by the strategic plan are also prepared on the basis of outdated data. No-one knows now the precise extent of mine/UXO contaminated land in Afghanistan. The end of the war has opened up areas of the country that were previously inaccessible and will likely reveal new minefields. A ‘retrofit’ Landmine Impact Survey is now seeking to provide much-needed baseline data

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with which to review targets and priorities both for purposes of clearance and mine awareness programmes. Such a review of priorities would also be useful to find a balance between humanitarian demining and demands for clearance linked to economic reconstruction and development. Such demands are likely to increase as government administration grows in size at the centre and in the provinces. The problems that uncertain donor intentions create for planning mine action are compounded at an operating level by highly unreliable delivery of funds by the UN-administered Voluntary Trust Fund to demining agencies. Despite the surge in donor support, the fund’s payment of some Afghan NGOs is disgracefully in arrears, jeopardising their ability to maintain operations, let alone expand.According to some qualified assessments, these funding shortages are also compromising operating and equipment standards in the field. Capacity-building has emerged as a critical challenge. According to its strategic plan, the programme is supposed to be turned over to national management by the end of 2004. Afghan NGOs support eventual Afghan ownership of the programme but are sceptical about the timetable, warning that any move to put the programme under government control would be premature and potentially damaging. The Afghan government lacks the personnel and managerial capacity to run the programme, and NGOs warn that any move that compromises their neutrality would undermine what has proved a major source of security through years of conflict. Salary scales have also become a serious headache for Afghan demining agencies, which complain they are losing key staff to UN and other agencies such as USAID or foreign contractors offering substantially higher pay. This may seriously impair the operating capacity of some NGOs.

be carefully managed from outside or generated by the communities themselves, not left to the whims of unpaid or unmotivated volunteers. Following the initial setbacks, Martin Barber, then the head of the UN’s humanitarian operations in Afghanistan, proposed UN support for the creation of specialist Afghan non-governmental organisations (NGOs) for clearance operations. The intention was that these NGOs would operate in Afghanistan under international supervision from neighbouring Pakistan. The idea initially met with considerable resistance as it ran the risk of giving explosives to former (or even present) guerrilla fighters. There was little other option, however, and ultimately the proposal was accepted. These Afghan NGOs still form the backbone of the Afghan mine action programme today, which, despite the problems it is facing (see box, p. 39), is widely regarded as one of the best in the world.

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KUWAIT AND BEYOND From the poverty of Afghanistan, the mine action arena moved to the richesse of Kuwait. In 1991, following the end of the Iraqi occupation, the oil-rich state became the first country to attempt to buy its way to total clearance of the mine and UXO contamination that had resulted from the bitter conflict with its bellicose neighbour. More than $700 million (£480 million) worth of contracts were awarded to commercial clearance companies, some of which had been newly formed for the purpose. Significant problems were encountered as there were no standard procedures to follow and many people thought they could demine successfully because they had learnt how to breach minefields in the army. They were wrong. Hard lessons were learned the hard way, with unnecessary deaths and injuries among clearance personnel. Some contractors even had to return to complete the work properly. After Afghanistan and Kuwait, other countries sought assistance with their mine and UXO problem, especially following peace agreements and the arrival of UN peacekeeping troops. Cambodia was next in 1992 and became one of the world’s largest mine action programmes, followed by Mozambique and Angola. All three programmes proved problematic. Most difficulties were encountered in Angola. Following a ‘promising beginning’, the programme became mired in ‘interminable bureaucratic in-fighting on overall programme objectives and approach’ and ‘disputes over assigned division of labour and responsibilities’.1 The Angolan government didn’t really want many of the minefields cleared as it meant to carry on using mines in its bitter struggle against the internal opposition forces of UNITA. In return, the UN tried to organise the programme as if the government didn’t exist, an obvious recipe for failure. The legacy of these problems remains to bedevil mine action in Angola today. If Angola was bad, Mozambique was little better. Here, squabbling broke out between the UN and major donors, especially the US, which for reasons that remain obscure did not want a central coordinating body for mine action. A study of the programme suggests that the ‘experience of Afghanistan appears to have been ignored and the wrong lessons were learned from Cambodia’. Such were the extent of the UN’s difficulties that it felt constrained to set up a new ‘accelerated’ demining programme, known as the ADP.

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As a result, Mozambique was ‘carved up’ between the ADP and the two major clearance organisations operating there – Norwegian People’s Aid and the HALO Trust. As the UN acknowledged, this was no guarantee that the most urgent needs were being met according to rational priorities.2 Yet, despite obvious difficulties, the UN continued to expand its assistance to mine action programmes. In the mid-1990s, as the first Balkan wars came to an end, the UN set up programmes in Bosnia and Croatia. Bosnia’s programme has been much criticised – for poor results and seemingly endemic corruption – despite tens of millions of dollars of funding being poured into it. Its richer neighbour, Croatia, has been more successful and has backed away from its early, absurdly high demands for one billon dollars for clearance. As we will see in Chapter 5, it is also one of the few countries to put its money where its mouth is, contributing more of its own (or borrowed) resources to mine action than any other country receiving international assistance. Currently, the UN supports mine action programmes in more than 20 countries, mostly through the UN Development Programme. UNDP provides assistance to mine action in Angola, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, Chad, Croatia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Guinea-Bissau, Laos, Lebanon, Mozambique, Somalia and Yemen. In addition, the UN’s Mine Action Service (UNMAS) supports programmes in Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Temporary Security Zone between Ethiopia and Eritrea, Kosovo (legally, part of Serbia and Montenegro), Lebanon (in the south) and Sudan. THE DEVELOPMENT OF INTERNATIONAL MINE ACTION STANDARDS As mine action programmes expanded rapidly, it became clear that minimum standards were urgently needed in the profession, at least for clearance operations. The high number of deminer casualties and of missed mines during clearance operations, together with the need to specify acceptable performance in a clearance contract, spurred moves by the UN to elaborate a set of international standards. A conference in Denmark in July 1996 proposed a set of international standards for humanitarian mine clearance programmes, which were issued by UNMAS in March 1997. Initially the standards focused mainly on safety issues, both for the deminer and for the ‘beneficiary’ – the community hoping to use cleared land.

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The standards also included discussion of ‘quality assurance’ or ‘QA’ – techniques for making sure, as far as one reasonably can, that demined land is free of mines and UXO. This was rather new to many of the military personnel involved in clearance operations as QA tends not to be part of the military approach. But mine action techniques and approaches developed quickly, and a review and revision of the mine clearance standards identified that a broader standardisation would be needed. According to Alistair Macaslan, who persevered in pushing through the first draft of the international mine action standards, the first clearance standards were widely felt to be too prescriptive. Although safety standards needed to be very specific, other standards could be more like guidelines, giving necessary flexibility to each country to develop national standards tailored to their own needs. Macaslan pushed hard for an approach based on the ISO standards. ISO is the International Organisation for Standardisation, an international NGO dedicated to the development of standards in a wide variety of areas, both commercial and non-commercial. He believed that the lessons learned in more than 27,000 ISO standards would serve the mine action community well, and lead ultimately to the acceptance of the product as embedded international mine action standards. The result is the International Mine Action Standards, better known as the IMAS, which were drafted by the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining and first issued by the UN in 2001, with a second edition in January 2003. The IMAS cover hundreds of pages and a wide range of mine action topics from the establishment of programmes to the use of demining dogs, from training to testing of mechanical demining equipment. Despite the impressive detail, problems remain. National adaptation of IMAS remains to be achieved in the overwhelming majority of mine action programmes. The language of the IMAS is difficult, sometimes even for native speakers (although an easy-to-read guide to the standards is under development). So, as is done for other ISO standards, there is a need to support the written documentation with appropriate training. And it is important to be realistic: the search for perfection takes time and may lead to unnecessary loss of life. As Paddy Blagden points out, the ISO-type language ‘shall’ denoting an absolute obligation means in practice ‘must if you can’.

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He suggests that in emergencies and for soldiers, especially local forces, a simpler and easier-to-use version (‘IMAS lite’) would help to reduce the initial burst of victims without the need to follow the full IMAS to the letter. But mine action now has a detailed set of international standards to guide its operations and more standards are being added every year. Despite the complexity of language and some controversies over content, the IMAS are clear evidence of the determination of the mine action community to set itself high-but-achievable standards for its work. It used to be said that if you put three deminers in a room, you’d end up with four opinions, mostly about each other. IMAS has at least given everyone a common frame of reference. In Chapter 4, we look at the basics of mine action, what Ted Paterson has termed ‘doing the job right’.

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4 ‘Doing the Job Right’: The Basics of Mine Action So in my mind a central question remains. Should we not do more to quicken the deminers’ work, to help the injured back to some sort of life, to further our own aid to aid and development? Diana, Princess of Wales SO WHAT IS MINE ACTION? Before we discuss the basic jobs of mine action, let’s first look at how the IMAS defines it. According to the current definition,1 mine action refers to ‘activities which aim to reduce the social, economic and environmental impact of mines and UXO’. It comprises ‘five complementary groups of activities’, previously known as the ‘pillars’ of mine action: • humanitarian demining, that is, ‘mine and UXO survey, mapping, marking and (if necessary) clearance’; • mine risk education; • advocacy against the use of anti-personnel mines; • victim assistance, including rehabilitation and reintegration; and • stockpile destruction. We will now look at these various activities in turn, starting with the most costly of mine action activities – humanitarian demining. HUMANITARIAN DEMINING Much ingenuity has gone into making some of these mines… It might be less hazardous, I reflected after my visit to Angola, if some of the technical skills used in making mines had been applied to better methods of removing them. Diana, Princess of Wales 45

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The deminer’s toolkit As Diana remarked, demining techniques have still to catch up with the ingenuity of their opponents, especially landmines. Although the situation is slowly changing, the backbone of humanitarian demining remains ‘manual clearance’ – deminers clearing mines and UXO by hand. There are two other ‘tools’ in what is called the deminer’s ‘toolkit’ or ‘toolbox’: mine detection dogs and mechanical demining equipment.2 In theory, the mine action programme selects the right tool for the job, like a golfer choosing between a wood, an iron or a putter. In reality, as Colin King, a leading authority on demining techniques, has noted,

There’s a lot of talk about the toolbox approach, but in many cases, it’s meaningless; in reality, most deminers simply have to use whatever they’ve been issued. You don’t often see a programme manager going to an area saying, ‘Ah, right, I see we have this kind of vegetation, this terrain, these mines, so we won’t use that equipment – we’ll use this.’ That doesn’t happen in many programmes… At the moment, the closest thing to a true toolbox approach happens where you have a number of demining agencies operating in a region and swapping resources among themselves. If the programme is big enough, the mine action centre may also have some centralised assets to loan out.’3 Vera Bohle is also sceptical.

To deal with the already existing problems will be a challenge for the next generations of deminers. Surely, we need to work further on the improvement of efficiency in clearance techniques. The use of dogs or mechanical assets has been enhanced in the past years, but could still be improved. Other new technologies like groundpenetrating radar detection or the use of explosive detecting rats are being developed, but none of them is yet successfully used in the field on a large scale. The reality is that just clearing an area the size of a football pitch using manual deminers will likely take several months. First, the vegetation will have to be cleared (minefields are rarely shaped and trimmed like Old Trafford or Yankee Stadium). Then there may be

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Landmines destroyed in situ (John Rodsted/Landmine Action)

rocks or boulders that block the progress of clearance lanes (and even rocks had to be checked in south Lebanon where Israeli forces concealed explosive devices in plastic covers designed to look like rocks). And minefields are rarely marked with the skull-and-crossbones warning signs as they are in M.A.S.H., so you don’t automatically know where the outer limits are. Life in the minefield is rarely as simple and swift as we would like it to be. The mine action programme in Cambodia (see below), the

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second oldest after Afghanistan, shows that merely possessing good technical demining skills is not enough to guarantee an effective mine action programme. Remember one of the myths from Chapter 2: ‘All we need to do is get the mines out of the ground’. Cambodia is, regrettably, a good illustration of some of the pitfalls of adopting such an approach. Mine action in Cambodia: a summary The seven years to 2003 have seen improvements in the general environment for, and organisation of, mine action in Cambodia. The collapse of the Khmer Rouge insurgency in 1996 put an end to military hostilities for the first time in a quarter of a century. It allowed the Phnom Penh government to concentrate more attention on economic and social issues and freed the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces from combat, in which large quantities of mines were laid, for use in building infrastructure such as roads, in which large numbers of mines have to be cleared. The end to the conflict also enabled demining NGOs to operate in any part of the country without an excessive preoccupation with security. Yet, after a decade of humanitarian demining, Cambodia remains one of the world’s most mine-contaminated countries with one of the worst mine casualty rates. Clearance has accelerated in the last five years but has not kept up with either the pace or the direction of demand for land in an impoverished country with a fast-growing population. Even after improvements in productivity, the three demining organisations operating in the country – the Cambodian Mine Action Centre (CMAC), the HALO Trust and Mines Advisory Group – are clearing less than 20 square kilometres a year. Since 2000, the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF) has emerged as a major mine clearance agency, but lack of transparency in its operations makes it impossible to evaluate its contribution. In around 2000, the government started to use RCAF for road clearance and construction. But it is unclear how much of the area RCAF claims to have cleared involved new roads and primary clearance or roads that had been in extensive use and needed checking for mines. Demining agencies have adjusted the focus of clearance from supporting local community development needs to reducing casualties.They are now operating with smaller, more flexible, quick response units tackling community tasks. In 2002, the government set a target of zero casualties within ten years – but noone in demining circles expected to achieve it. The geographic concentration of accidents in the west and north-west should enable demining agencies to bring a significant reduction in victims. But incidents are almost certain to continue for many years beyond 2012. A corruption crisis in CMAC in 1999 set back operations but also had positive consequences. The crisis over misuse of funds and corrupt disposal of cleared land prompted donors to hold back support, leading to dismissal of the director and some managers, and a drastic cutback in staff and the scope of clearance work.Those painful decisions paved the way for a review and shake-

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up of the organisation in 2000 and several audits of financial and operational performance. CMAC emerged a leaner, more efficient organisation. Some of the initiatives spurred by the corruption crisis have proved valuable, including notably the creation of provincial Land Use Planning Units, but these need to be strengthened further and integrated more effectively into national economic development strategy.What is still lacking, however, is coordination of mine clearance organisations or a clear overall vision of medium to longterm goals around which to organise them. Politics is hampering the quest for solutions. The Cambodian Mine Action and Victim Assistance Authority, created in 2001 to set a national agenda and coordinate all agencies and sectors, remains largely a shell. Donor mistrust keeps it starved of funds. Little capacity-building has occurred within the authority and foreign technical advisers are largely responsible for what progress it has made. Although tens of millions of donor dollars have poured into demining, most clearance in Cambodia is thought to be undertaken by village or ‘spontaneous’ deminers. The RCAF have recently become increasingly significant in mine clearance and must be considered one of the sustainable long-term options. Yet little research has been conducted on village deminers and little thought is being given by the mine clearance community to an expanded role for the Cambodian army.

Manual demining Manual mine clearance has changed little from the 1940s. A person – generally a man, but sometimes a woman – passes a metal detector over a piece of land until the detector gives a reading (a ‘beep’), or prods the ground with a thin piece of metal hundreds of times a square metre until the ‘prodder’ meets with strong resistance. When a potential mine or UXO is encountered, the item is partially ‘excavated’ using a shaped trowel. If the presence of an explosive device is confirmed, a small quantity of plastic explosive is placed beside the device and detonated (‘destruction in situ’) or the device is defused and taken away for destruction at the end of the day at a site nearby along with all other explosive devices unearthed during the day’s work. What has basically changed since the Second World War has been the terminology, not the technology. We refer now to a ‘deminer’ rather than a ‘sapper’ (a penchant for civilian over military terminology). Certainly, metal detectors are far more sensitive than their lastcentury ancestors. But they still struggle to find predominantly plastic mines in high laterite soils (soils with naturally high iron content) where only the small fusing mechanism is made of metal – and they

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give a high number of false readings amid a battlefield strewn with thousands of metal fragments and objects. Technology is trying hard to provide the answer to these problems, and there are some potentially brighter spots, notably the ongoing development by a number of countries and companies of a metal detector with ground-penetrating radar (GPR) incorporated to eliminate metal fragment readings. But we’re not there yet. For now and for the most part, manual mine clearance is slow, frustrating and boring. Investment in research and development (R&D) (see the section on the role of donors in Chapter 7) has paid far higher dividends in terms of deminer safety. In the early days of mine action, deminers were given nothing other than flak jackets, which provide pathetic protection against a mine blast. The first Afghan deminers didn’t even receive those. Now developments have generated personal protective equipment (PPE in the jargon) that gives a high degree of protection. According to Paddy Blagden, a leading authority on mine action technologies, R&D directed towards PPE has probably taken safety as far as it can while still allowing the deminers enough flexibility to do their job. Nonetheless, there are still problems when working in extreme heat (because of the weight and thickness of the jackets) and in the rain (because the deminers’ visors get steamed up). But here we need to address another mine action myth – that mine clearance is inherently dangerous and that deminers will inevitably be killed or injured in large numbers. In debunking this myth, let’s think of driving a car. In this analogy, PPE is a safety belt (and possibly also air bags), intended to protect the deminer in case of accident, but preferably never actually needed. If you know how to drive, follow standard procedures (the Highway Code), don’t go too fast and don’t drive while drunk or otherwise intoxicated, you reasonably expect to reach your destination unscathed (as long as other drivers do the same). It is the same with mine and UXO clearance. Follow procedures (they’re known as standing operating procedures or SOPs), take your time, and don’t demine under the influence. If you follow these rules, you should look forward to a long and successful career as a mine clearer. Of course, drivers do make mistakes and so do deminers. As Vera Bohle tells us, ‘we are still human beings and make mistakes – which may be fatal in mine clearance’.

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Mine detection dogs Given the difficulty in finding mines using conventional metal detection equipment, it is no surprise that ‘man’s best friend’, the dog, has long been used to help. Dogs can detect ‘extremely low concentrations of many substances’ and can also ‘discriminate between a variety of substances… Dogs indicate the presence of a mine to their handler, who will then pass on responsibility for clearance to a deminer.’4 Animal lovers should note that dogs are very rarely injured in the course of their work, which includes running into and over live minefields, such is their mine detection genius. Despite costing thousands, and sometimes tens of thousands, of pounds each, the use of mine detection dogs can significantly increase the speed and effectiveness of clearance operations. It has even been claimed that incorporating mine detection dogs into a clearance programme can – depending on factors such as environmental conditions, type of tasks and the operational concept of each organisation – improve productivity by between 200 and 700 per cent.5 Dogs are not always appropriate, however. In some operational theatres it is simply too hot to use them, for instance in Kuwait and Sudan where temperatures can reach 50°. Dogs ‘are at their best when indicating individual mines, rather than concentrations of mines’.6 As such, they are best used for activities such as area reduction (checking suspected areas and identifying those that are actually contaminated and then delineating the specific minefield boundaries), and quality assurance of land after clearance operations. Research has also been conducted in Tanzania into the use of rats for explosive detection: ‘Early experience with African pouched rats showed that they could be sociable, easily trained, and that their ability to detect specific odours was possibly as good as, or better than, that of the dog.’7 As with dogs, vapours must be brought to the rat to study its reaction, but efforts are ongoing to use them in ‘free-running mode’, where they are let loose on a suspected area. With rats costing between one-tenth and one-thirtieth of the cost of dogs to buy, train and keep they could become a cost-effective method for mine and UXO detection.

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Mechanical demining equipment Nonetheless, people are often astonished that deminers’ or even dogs’ or other animals’ lives have to be risked at all. Why can’t we have machines to do the job for us? After all, veterans of the Second World War may remember that machines with flails attached to them were used to clear the Normandy beaches during the Allied landings in 1944. Have we really made so little progress since then? Sadly the answer is yes. Progress there has certainly been, but as Alex Griffiths, an expert at the GICHD, points out, the ‘holy grail’ of using machines to clear entire areas of all anti-personnel mines and UXO has gradually receded into the distance.8 Machines do, however, speed up mine clearance considerably . . . when they can be used. For many machines – especially those based on tanks or heavy agricultural equipment, some of which can also destroy anti-tank mines safely – are simply too heavy or too expensive or too difficult to repair in some of the developing world’s most mine- and UXO-affected countries. You can’t transport a 35-ton flail on many of the bridges in Mozambique or along roads in the Cambodian monsoon, even if the country could afford the costs of maintenance, diesel and spare parts. Sara Sekkenes, an adviser to Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA) on socioeconomic aspects of mine action, has summarised the technology trap this way:

Mine-affected countries in the developing world must be able to afford the tools. Spare parts must be locally available or able to be locally produced. Not only does this create jobs and a local market but high transport costs from expensive Western manufacturers can also be avoided. Last, but not least, high-tech, although efficient in its right environment, often turns out expensive, unsustainable and inadaptable. High temperatures, dust, humidity, unpredictable and low quality power supplies and all but clinical surroundings also successfully put an end to many high-tech operations. Paddy Blagden is even more succinct: ‘Never put into a live minefield anything that you can’t easily get out.’ Nonetheless, NPA, HALO Trust and other major mine action NGOs have successfully developed and used machines that can, sustainably, clear thick vegetation before manual clearance operations (‘ground preparation’), reduce the area suspected to be contaminated (‘area

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reduction’) and verify the quality of manual clearance (‘quality assurance’). And the GICHD has found that, on occasion, albeit unintentionally, when performing ground preparation by machine, the ‘holy grail’ has miraculously been attained. It suggests that under certain, as yet unknown specific circumstances the comprehensive clearance of an area using machines as the primary method of clearance may be achievable. Further research is needed to identify what those circumstances may be. Explosive ordnance disposal and battle area clearance Explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) operations involve finding and disposing of UXO and abandoned ammunition that has not been used – by destruction or otherwise rendering items safe, for instance by removing the fusing mechanism and explosives contained within. For some (including the IMAS), EOD is part of humanitarian demining. For others, especially those with a military EOD background, mine clearance is actually a sub-set of the broader discipline of EOD along with battle area clearance – the systematic clearance of a former combat zone of UXO. EOD is a largely manual activity, although some machines can clear smaller items of UXO along with anti-personnel mines. Certainly, EOD personnel are highly qualified, much more so than the average deminer. As a rule of thumb, it takes four weeks to train a deminer and three times as long to train anyone in basic EOD. Advanced EOD personnel will have many years of experience and training behind them and knowledge of fusing and explosives engineering that often far outstrips that of demining personnel. EOD operations can typically proceed more quickly than mine clearance, especially when rapid response teams are used, and are typically cheaper. A study of socio-economic approaches to mine action even found that in Laos, given continuing reduction in costs, UXO clearance could be justified on economic grounds alone, as the benefits of clearing fertile agricultural land would outweigh the costs per hectare.9 Despite this finding, which ought to have resulted in additional resources for the programme, as we see below, the Laos UXO clearance programme has run into significant funding difficulties.

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‘UXO’ action in Laos: a summary Laos is one of the most heavily UXO-contaminated countries in the world, mainly as a result of intensive US bombing during the Vietnam War. Between 1964 and 1973 the US dropped some two million tons of bombs, concentrating on provinces in the north-east and south-east along the border with Vietnam. It is estimated about one-third of the ordnance dropped failed to detonate, leaving millions upon millions of unexploded bombs that continue to kill and maim civilians today. Clearance of unexploded ordnance in Laos – UXO action as some prefer to call it there – is at a crossroads. Operations of UXO Lao are recovering momentum after disruption in 2002 caused by a cash flow crisis that resulted in the lay-off of about half its operational staff. The extent to which operations resume, and the future levels of donor support for them, will be shaped by government decisions that are pending on the structure and organisation of mine/UXO clearance. Since its creation in 1996, UXO Lao has developed technical proficiency in explosive ordnance disposal and UXO clearance but, like the Cambodian Mine Action Centre in Cambodia, it concentrated on and has proved more successful at building up operations and technical capacity than in developing the management capacity to sustain them. It also failed to lay down a medium or a long-term strategy – now in the process of being drawn up – contributing to donor caution in recent months. Weak UN support pre-crisis compounded UXO Lao’s problems and added to donor frustrations. UNDP has a key role in this sector: it co-chairs the national steering committee on UXO/mine action, it is principal fund-raiser for UXO Lao, manages the bulk of its finances and provides technical support in the form of UXO Lao’s chief technical adviser. More proactive attention to those responsibilities in 1999–2002 could have done much to avert UXO Lao’s problems. Despite the scale of ordnance contamination in Laos, the government in the past has not accorded UXO/mine issues a high priority. A political culture of consensus decision-making tends to stall or completely smother initiative. Before 2002, the government’s main interest appeared to be to reduce the presence and role of foreign technical advisers. It shows little interest in signing the Ottawa Treaty. It remains to be seen whether, and how far, the financial crisis in UXO Lao will provide the catalyst for change. For the future, Lao ministers are considering proposals drafted by UXO Lao to set up an organisational structure similar to Cambodia’s. It will involve splitting the role of regulator and operator, creating a new authority to set policy and oversee implementation – and leave UXO Lao to concentrate on its role as an operator. The Cambodian experience suggests that mobilising staff with appropriate skills and experience to fulfil the duties of a national authority may prove difficult. Postscript The Laotian cabinet has approved a draft strategic plan 2003–13, which provides for restructuring mine/UXO clearance and setting up a national authority. It now needs only the approval of the Prime Minister to take effect.There are concerns, however, that Laos is passing up an opportunity to overhaul UXO Lao and may be heading towards a Cambodia-style situation in which lack of donor confidence keeps the national authority starved of funds.

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MINE RISK EDUCATION If children can be taught at school, if adults can be helped to learn what to do and what not to do, in regions that have been mined, then lives can be saved and injuries reduced. Diana, Princess of Wales Mine clearance, as we have seen, takes time to achieve results, even when it is done efficiently. To mitigate the physical dangers posed by explosive remnants of war while the clean-up progresses, mine action from the earliest days of the Afghan programme has sought to make the civilian population aware of the dangers through campaigns of public information and education. ‘Mine awareness’, or ‘mine risk education’ (MRE) as it is called by the IMAS, therefore aims to instil safe behaviour among individuals and communities at risk by explaining the nature of the mine and UXO threat and what they can do to minimise the dangers, hoping that this knowledge will reduce the number of victims. The reality is rather more complex. Dramatic claims of success have sometimes been made for mine risk education, but these have tended to be largely unsubstantiated. In fact, there is precious little hard evidence for the effectiveness of MRE: in the words of Eric Filippino, ‘We’d like to believe it works, but we haven’t actually proved it yet.’ A decline in the number of recorded victims does not automatically mean that an MRE programme is a success. Nor, paradoxically, does an increase in recorded victims mean that the programme is a failure. There are several other reasons why the number of victims might naturally decline, in the absence of, or even in spite of, an education programme. First, people learn from their own experiences. Sometimes the best mine awareness is a mine victim. This may sound cynical, but it’s a reality that we react to external tragedy. Just as when a friend or family member is killed or injured in a car crash, we might ourselves drive more carefully, at least for a while, so it is with landmines and UXO. When a friend or family member is killed or injured, we will probably try to avoid the danger area, if we can. (See below the section on ‘determining needs’.) Mine clearance will also, obviously, lower the risks in a particular area. A programme officer working in El Salvador once remarked that they had reduced the number of mine victims to zero as a result of

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their education programme. She neglected to mention that all the mines had been cleared, so the achievement was hardly surprising. But why might an increase in the number of mine victims not mean a programme has failed? One reason could be a huge population movement during the programme cycle – refugees or the displaced returning en masse to their communities. The programme staff may have done their very best and managed to prevent a significant number of explosions, but even the best programme cannot guarantee safety. Seasonal work can also affect the risk and likelihood of accidents. And, despite persistent efforts by some organisations to prove the contrary, it’s not the number of posters printed that represents evidence of success. Behavioural change is more subtle, more complex, than simply the reaction to a benign slogan on a billboard. Determining needs So how then can we maximise effectiveness? The first challenge is to stop and think rather than just act – ‘Don’t just do something, stand there!’ in the words of knowledgeable development expertise. The first mistake that most awareness programmes make is to assume that people are getting killed or injured through pure ignorance of the mine/UXO threat. There are cases where people are simply unaware of the existence of mines and the dangers they pose, refugees for example, but this category is far rarer than the content and focus of awareness programmes would have us believe. More numerous are what the GICHD terms the ‘uninformed’, our second risk category.10 These are people who know about the existence of mines and UXO but don’t know (and haven’t been told) how they can minimise the risk to themselves, for instance by using only wellworn paths and keeping away from old military posts. If there’s one tree full of fruit in an orchard, it may well be for a good reason. Adolescents and former soldiers make up the backbone of our third category, the reckless. This is where people know about mines and how to reduce the dangers to themselves and others but consciously adopt risky behaviour, by tampering with ordnance or walking through a minefield. Sometimes over-ascribed to religious fatalism (‘It’s God’s will whether I am hurt or not,’) this risk category is a difficult one to influence. In most cases, however, risks are often taken knowingly and consciously – because the alternative may well be starvation. People have to cross minefields to get to the stream or the well for water to drink or irrigate crops, or to enter the forest to pick berries or

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collect firewood for heating or cooking. Or even to scavenge mines or unexploded bombs or shells for metal that can be sold for scrap, or for explosives to hunt or fish. This category, the intentional, is the hardest one to address, as the simple provision of information is not likely to be able to reduce casualties. It requires other types of relief or development intervention – redrilling a well in a safe area, for example, or providing firewood or food. When the most helpful thing a mine awareness team can do is to wish the afflicted community ‘best of luck!’ it is a reminder of mine action’s impotence. Although it isn’t generally mentioned, there is, potentially, a fifth risk category – what Eric Filippino calls the ‘misinformed’. This is where an organisation or agency, albeit acting with the best of intentions, gives wrong or misleading information that actually increases the risk to the civilian population. One flagrant example is where an organisation that should know better is alleged to have handed out stickers to children with ‘don’t touch’ printed on them and the children were instructed, or understood, that they should put these stickers on items of unexploded ordnance. One fervently hopes that no children were harmed before this campaign was stopped.

Mine action in Vietnam: a summary Nearly three decades after the war, mine/UXO contamination remains a serious hazard to Vietnam’s population and an obstacle to economic development. Mine action, however, is under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Defence and seen as an issue of national security. Organised mine action has been left largely to the Vietnamese army, which has considerable experience and expertise but limited financial or technical resources. The high number of casualties every year underlines the limited scope of mine awareness training undertaken so far.The experience of NGOs working in central Vietnam also suggests substantial numbers of people with mine/UXO injuries still require medical treatment and/or prostheses. Vietnam’s long war appears to have produced a measure of acceptance of mine/UXO contamination among the older generation who experienced the conflict and grew up alongside mines and bombs. A baseline survey carried out by the Catholic Relief Service in the districts where it works, in Quang Tri, for example, indicates most incidents involving children occur because of lack of knowledge, suggesting their families have not told them about the risks of mines or UXO. CRS is organising mine awareness training programmes in primary schools with a view to influencing the thinking and conduct not only

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of the children but of their parents and families as well. CRS says it appears that its education programmes led to a reduction in the number of people working as scrap metal collectors. The government is said to be considering establishing a coordinating agency to frame a national programme for mine action but as yet has taken no action. The contribution that foreign demining organisations have been allowed, or willing, to make in Vietnam is small. It is slowly widening but remains constrained by the challenging environment that foreign organisations encounter in Vietnam’s multi-layered government bureaucracy, with its slow procedures and an absence of reliable data on any aspect of mine action. The US has agreed to finance an impact survey to be carried out by the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, which would provide a comprehensive national database, assisting planning for all areas of mine action. But, in mid2003, after more than 18 months of talks, Vietnamese approval still appeared months away.

Having identified the prevalent forms of risk-taking behaviour, we need to discover and confirm the at-risk groups. As mentioned earlier, it is often believed that children are the most common mine victims. Not so, at least in most situations (though the figures in Cambodia are higher than average – see below, the text box on MRE in Cambodia). Yet children are almost invariably those who receive the most mine awareness education. Even when children make up less than five per cent of the victims, they may receive 80 per cent or more of the attention from a programme. This is simply unprofessional.11 MRE programmes should target those most at risk with a proportionate amount of their resources, not pander to emotionalism. Communicating safety Once a programme knows who is getting injured or killed and why, it can plan what to do about it. An education campaign should use all available media that are accessed by the target population – and at times they are likely to access it. If there’s no television outside the capital, don’t spend several hundred thousand dollars making a TV programme for rural communities. If the target population don’t speak the national language but a local tongue, the programme may need to get in touch with local radio stations to make sure the right dialect is used for the right people. ‘Horses for courses’ sounds such an obvious message, but it’s astonishing how often these basic communication mistakes are made.

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As Ambassador Martin Dahinden, the Director of the GICHD, has written, ‘Not many years ago, it was usual that leaflets, films and posters were dispersed without having been properly developed with the local population. Sometimes messages were wrong or focused on irrelevant issues like the technical functioning of a landmine.’ Indeed, although they share many similarities with other public education programmes, such as those that seek to minimise HIV infection or deter people from smoking, mine awareness programmes have typically recruited mine ‘experts’ rather than those with experience in education or communication. One study of the role of communication in mine awareness programmes in three countries,12 found ‘little or no evidence of the use of professional communication expertise’ and that programmes ‘tended to commit extensive funding to the production of media items ignoring the broader spectrum of communication channels’. Further, ‘with few exceptions, messages, communication channels and communication products are neither pre-tested nor field-tested prior to their use and distribution, seriously diminishing their relevance and effectiveness’. The context for mine risk education in Cambodia The number of child victims in Cambodia dropped steadily from 1998 to 2001 but actually jumped 26 per cent in 2002 over the previous year as a result of UXO accidents, which have also started to rise again. Although mines still account for over half the number of incidents in Cambodia, UXO now claim just over half the total number of victims and account for 86 per cent of child casualties.That reflects the particular menace posed by UXO: while mine incidents occur mostly in forest, often affecting only one person, the great majority of UXO incidents are a result of tampering – opening ordnance to access their explosives (used for fishing) and collecting scrap metal for sale. Most incidents occur within villages and often cause multiple casualties. As an example, one incident in Kratie province in 2002 killed one person and injured 14 others. Accidents are occurring not because people are unaware of the problem of landmines – many villagers are highly aware of the threat and have had some exposure to mine risk education programmes.They happen because of growing demand for land in a country where a mostly impoverished population has nearly doubled in the last 25 years and is still growing by 2.5 per cent a year. This means that Cambodia’s current 11.5 million population will grow by an estimated 1.7 more million people by 2006. Agriculture still provides most people’s livelihood and, in a country where UNDP estimates around one-third of the population live below the poverty

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line, land is crucial. Most accidents are occurring in provinces where there are large movements of people. Western provinces that have some of the worst contamination also have good-quality farming land.

Community liaison – from mine awareness to mine risk education A further problem with mine awareness has been that programmes have too often been conducted apart from other mine action activities, most notably clearance, in affected countries. Recognising the limitations of stand-alone mine awareness, the Mines Advisory Group took the lead in developing what is now known as community liaison.13 Andy Wheatley, one of the architects of community liaison, explains some of the reasons:14

A common experience of mine clearance teams has been frustration or miscommunication in dealings with the population near to areas being demined. Examples of these frustrations include: • The theft or disappearance of minefield marking material – resulting in delay and possibly danger to clearance teams; • Local herders or farmers crossing land being cleared, resulting in delay and possibly danger to deminers; • A community’s seeming ‘refusal’ to use land once cleared; • A community complaining that the ‘wrong’ area has been prioritised for clearance from their point of view; • Staff of clearance agencies being made to feel unwelcome, or treated with suspicion; and • A great deal of time and resources spent clearing suspect areas that later are found not to contain mines or UXO. Meanwhile communities have often claimed that they: • Are not informed what is going on – who the deminers are working for, who is in charge, why they are here and how land has been prioritised; • Are not consulted on when is a convenient time of year for clearance to start so as not to clash with seasonal use of land;

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• Are often not informed of when clearance is completed, or where clearance has been suspended owing to seasonal factors; and • Are not clear how land for clearance has been prioritised. Communication has clearly been a problem during mine action and what has become known as the community liaison concept has developed in part to overcome this. Under community liaison, teams move away from the mere provision of information to the community to a more systematic exchange of knowledge and experience, preferably working handin-hand with demining teams. It was first used systematically as a technique in Kosovo and by MAG in Cambodia, and is slowly gaining ground in other places, though not as quickly as it ought to. Indeed, given the number of organisations working there, Kosovo should be the most mine-aware place on the planet. As John Flanagan writes,

There is no doubt that at various stages of the programme there were a considerable number of organisations undertaking MRE activities (often more than were conducting clearance). The reason for this was that many people did not fully understand the role that MRE plays in mine action and, more importantly, the need to integrate it into the overall operational plan. Some saw it as being able to be conducted as a distinct, stand-alone activity. Accordingly, some organisations were funded to conduct small-scale activities, often as an adjunct to their primary project, without realising the context in which their activities needed to be conducted. This made the MACC’s role in coordinating activities – and, in cooperation with UNICEF and the organisations themselves to develop and enforce best practices for MRE implementation – even more important. Furthermore, in some instances, it was also a challenge to ensure that clearance organisations acknowledged the importance of integrating mine risk education with their clearance activities. The MACC encouraged clearance organisations to develop their own, integrated MRE capacities, but this was not possible in every instance. This meant that clearance and MRE organisations had to be ‘partnered’ by the MACC, further adding to the coordination ‘burden’.

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In short, the mine action community still has some way to go in making community liaison a strategic principle of mine action. In the words of Andy Wheatley:

Community liaison staff need to remember that the mine clearance organisation is a customer and must be treated as such. In many programmes, MRE staff bristle at the thought of being managed by, and accountable to, clearance organisations. However, ultimately, where clearance is being undertaken, community liaison teams are there to ‘grease the wheels’ and ensure activities are undertaken as smoothly as possible. Where friction exists (with either the community or the clearance personnel) the role of community liaison personnel is to resolve this. If community liaison personnel are viewed as tree-hugging yoghurt knitters who add little to the clearance process it is their responsibility to disprove this through quality work – a somewhat thankless but important task.15 The future of MRE and mine awareness Disappointingly, the UN has done relatively little in the last few years to professionalise mine awareness. It issued international guidelines in 1999, which reflected best practice to date, and drafted training manuals for programme managers and local instructors but their use was then suspended for reasons that appear murky and even spurious. After several years of work, international standards for mine risk education remain in draft form, although there were plans to complete a first edition of the IMAS on MRE by the end of 2003. Above all, given the lack of evidence that stand-alone mine awareness works beyond the immediate emergency phase, arguably, donors should simply stop funding it. UNICEF is the UN focal point for MRE and most of its mine action involvement is concentrated on this component. According to its 2003 submission to the Landmine Monitor (the ICBL’s mechanism for monitoring the implementation of the Ottawa Treaty) in 2002, UNICEF’s global financial requirements for mine action exceeded $17 million (more than £10 million) and in 2003 were forecast at more than $19 million (some £12 million). It’s hard to see how such a staggering amount of money for such an unproven activity can possibly be justified.

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According to the IMAS, community liaison is one of the ‘strategic principles of mine action’, but, with notable exceptions, there is little evidence of it being so. It is also supposed to be ‘a process designed to place the needs and priorities of mine-affected communities at the centre of the planning, implementation and monitoring of mine action and other sectors’. In practice, even when it is done, community liaison is largely seen as a way to smooth the way for deminers. In 2000, the author conducted a needs assessment for mine awareness in Chad for an international organisation. Aside from the north, where an internal conflict was ongoing, he found little need for traditional awareness activities, but identified community liaison combined with UXO clearance as two obvious activities that would quickly, and cheaply, resolve a small-scale problem of ordnance in the east. It wasn’t difficult to draft the recommendations, as the affected communities were articulate in detailing what they wanted to see happen. In visiting one community, the traditional leader welcomed my colleague from the national mine action centre, saying that it was ‘always nice to see him again’, but noted that it would be ‘even nicer’ to see him followed by an EOD team. The recommendations made in the report were ignored as the commissioning organisation said clearance was ‘not really its mandate’. The threat remained – and became just one more case where sometimes, beyond the rhetoric, the community’s voice is really only welcome if it tells mine action professionals what they want to hear. ADVOCACY AGAINST THE USE OF MINES If an international ban on mines can be secured it means, looking far ahead, that the world may be a safer place for this generation’s grandchildren. Diana, Princess of Wales After the failure of states to adopt an effective and workable agreement during consensus-based negotiations at the UN in Geneva in 1994–96, Canada led states into a free-standing process that agreed on an international treaty16 totally banning anti-personnel mines in less than a year. In doing so, it earned the opprobrium of its southern

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neighbour, which had previously been leading others on the issue of landmines. Thus, in October 1996, at the UN General Assembly, the US President was calling for a total ban on anti-personnel mines so that ‘children could walk the earth in safety’. Eleven months later, Bill Clinton was confronting the press to explain why he could not ‘in all conscience’ sign a treaty that might just achieve that lofty objective. The Ottawa Treaty was formally adopted in Oslo on 18 September 1997, signed in early December of the same year by more than 120 states, and entered into force as binding international law on 1 March 1999. Along the way, the Ottawa Process picked up considerable steam. Most enthusiastic were the African and Central American states; indeed, as the negotiations entered their end-game in Oslo in September 1997 they remained courageously steadfast in the face of mounting US pressure and Canadian panic. South American countries joined the treaty, albeit with some reluctance. Similarly, central and eastern European states, many of which had hoped that the US would manage to derail the process by sending it into the negotiating black hole of the Conference on Disarmament, ultimately came on board. Only Asia and the Middle East remained, for the most part, firmly opposed although, as we have seen, Thailand has been one of a number of positive exceptions, even if its efforts to complete clearance of anti-personnel mines within ten years look to be running into difficulties. Universalising the treaty As Lloyd Axworthy, Director of the Liu Institute at the University of British Columbia, and the former Canadian Foreign Minister who launched the fast-track negotiations of a ban, writes:

In December 1997, Canada hosted a treaty conference to pursue a ban on anti-personnel mines. Few would have fathomed that just six years later, the legally binding and permanent Ottawa Treaty is the most rapidly ratified disarmament accord in history, as more than 140 states have accepted the challenge to rid the world of these concealed, indiscriminate weapons.

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Thus, in the words of Ambassador Jean Lint of Belgium, the treaty is ‘a true success story’. By November 2003, more than two-thirds of the world’s countries had joined, with the prospect of several more becoming party17 to it in 2004 (campaigners are aiming for at least 145 states parties by the time of the first Review Conference in late November 2004). As a consequence, the ban on at least the use of anti-personnel mines is fast becoming a customary international norm, which, according to the rules of international law, would bind every state irrespective of whether it had formally joined the treaty or not. Although the formation of a customary norm is complex in international legal theory, even disputed, in essence the goal is for general (i.e. not necessarily unanimous) agreement among states that an act or prohibition is not just practice but a legal obligation. Thus, although torture goes on in many countries, it is almost never admitted and justified, but its prohibition is generally agreed to represent customary international law. In the case of anti-personnel mines, if and when a UN General Assembly resolution calling for all states to join the Ottawa Treaty is passed by consensus or acclamation (currently two dozen states abstain each year), this will be good evidence that the basic norm has become a customary obligation. The treaty has already had some impact on non-signatories.18 The US, for instance, has not produced anti-personnel mines since 1997, has destroyed some of its stockpiles and has not, seemingly, used anti-personnel mines since the 1991 Gulf War. Universalising the treaty has been easier than for other similar treaties because its provisions are basically clear. But as one authority has remarked under conditions of anonymity, ‘Not everyone dances the Ottawa Macarena’. Thus, major military powers such as China, India, Pakistan, the Russian Federation, the US and a few dozen others remain outside the treaty’s purview. The situation of Laos, which is one of that few dozen, is described in the box following. This means that the campaign to eliminate anti-personnel mines is still far from over. One of the major obstacles to ending the use of anti-personnel mines worldwide, as a 1994 UN General Assembly resolution has explicitly recognised, is the need for more humane alternatives to replace mines. As we say in one of our mine action myths, anti-personnel mines have a definite, if disputed, military utility, although there is general agreement that this utility is outweighed by the weapon’s humanitarian consequences.

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The UK, which was among the first 40 states to join the treaty, has looked at various technologies to achieve the capabilities of anti-personnel mines, but has not yet found weapons or tactics that, together, would fulfil the same operational tasks. The US has committed considerable funds to identifying alternatives but, in general, the Pentagon’s approach seems rather half-hearted. If it had been given a firm deadline after which anti-personnel mines would be replaced in its arsenals, it would surely have achieved it by now. A long-promised review of US policy on landmines was finally issued on 26 February 2004. Described by one leading campaigner as ‘about as bad as could be’, it cast aside any pretensions to an end to mine warfare by the US. The new policy set 2010 as the final date for the use of ‘persistent’ mines that can lie in deadly wait in the ground for decades (although any use of such mines would require Presidential authorisation), but decreed continued use, even after 2010, of mines that would be ‘rendered inert ... in hours or days, not years or decades’. In an attempted sweetener, it was also announced that US funding for mine action would double from its 2003 levels to $70 million (about £45 million) in 2005. Of course, a treaty doesn’t make everything perfect overnight. Until the ban on use of anti-personnel mines is universally accepted, there will continue to be new mines placed in the ground. As Diana correctly noted, the treaty will make life safer in the future, it won’t solve the existing problems or even prevent new ones. But according to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, as of July 2003, only Myanmar (formerly Burma) and Russia were laying anti-personnel mines. India, Pakistan and Nepal had all

Laos and the Ottawa Treaty Although Laos would broaden its donor appeal by signing the Ottawa Treaty, there is no sign yet of it doing so.The Lao government position, set out at the UN in October 2001, was that it shares international concern over the effect of indiscriminate use of anti-personnel mines, but ‘our view remains that states have the legitimate right to use such weapons for the defence of their national independence and territorial integrity’. Diplomats believe that this is essentially the view of the Lao military. In recent contacts with diplomats, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has appeared willing to review that position, but diplomats are unsure whether the gesture is cosmetic or indicative of a shift towards greater flexibility on the issue.

4

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Recently the government has sounded more positive but remains unwilling to shift its public position, even though ministers were advised this may impact negatively on donors. The original draft of Laos’ strategic plan stated as an objective that the country would actively consider acceding to the treaty and would in any event abide by its spirit. The government rejected that formulation and the cabinet-approved draft, employing text drafted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, states only that Laos ‘will carefully monitor’ the treaty’s implementation. Even if the Lao government is more receptive to discussion on the issue, diplomats believe it is unlikely to make any move until Vietnam does so – and Vietnam remains firmly outside the Convention.

stopped their mine-laying operations, and the government of Iraq had ‘ceased to exist’. Since the cessation of mine-laying operations by India and Pakistan in mid-2002, there has not been a single government engaged in massive, sustained use of anti-personnel mines.19 The tide has seemingly turned against landmines. The content of the treaty But what sort of a treaty have all these states agreed to abide by? Overall, it’s a very impressive piece of drafting with strong and clear provisions. It requires states to stop using, producing or transferring anti-personnel mines, to destroy existing stockpiles of the weapons within four years of becoming a party and to clear anti-personnel mines in the ground within ten years (or to ask other states parties to grant an extension). The obligations are largely unequivocal, although states are allowed to retain or transfer a small number of weapons for research and training in mine clearance and to send mines abroad for destruction. Defining an anti-personnel mine As we know, landmines include both anti-tank and anti-personnel mines. In fact, the situation is a little more complex since during the 1990s, as international law tightened up on the use of antipersonnel mines prior to the adoption of the Ottawa Treaty, states invented a third, broader category – anti-vehicle mines – with a view to minimising the impact of new restrictions on their arsenals. In legal theory, the distinction between anti-personnel mines20 and other landmines is not always easy to make. Discussions among

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states parties to the Ottawa Treaty on the extent of its definition of anti-personnel mines are ongoing and unresolved, although in practice there is broad agreement as to what are acceptable fusing mechanisms for anti-vehicle mines. According to the UK Ministry of Defence, for instance, tripwires, breakwires and tilt rods (all of which may be triggered by the innocent acts of a passer-by) should not be used as the method of detonation on anti-vehicle mines. More difficult to assess is the case of magnetic influence fuses, which although intended to detonate as a result of the presence of a tank, may also be triggered by the presence of far smaller quantities of metal. The UK is in the process of reviewing its anti-vehicle mines and has announced that if they are found to be too sensitive, it will get rid of them, though not, it emphasises, as an act of legal obligation.21 It has previously warned against what it terms ‘definition creep’ and argues that the short name chosen by the ICBL to designate the treaty – the Mine Ban Treaty – is, in this regard, ‘not particularly helpful’. The stockpile destruction deadline In March 2003, the deadline for the destruction of stockpiles elapsed for the first 45 states to join the treaty. It appeared that all save one made the deadline, though some left it rather late to fulfil their obligations. The prominent exception was Turkmenistan, a dictatorship in Central Asia formerly part of the Soviet Union. Having previously asked for an extension to the deadline to comply with its obligations to destroy stockpiles (none is possible under the treaty), Turkmenistan then claimed it did not need one (despite having several hundred thousand still to destroy) and finally announced that it was keeping some 70,000 anti-personnel mines for training in mine detection. Although a maximum number is not specified in the treaty, states are only allowed to keep a ‘minimum number absolutely necessary’, and it has been generally agreed that this means hundreds or thousands not tens of thousands. The UK, for instance, which has a significant engineering contingent in its armed forces, initially decided to retain 5,000 anti-personnel mines but later found that this to be too many. It has determined to reduce the number significantly. As few states had diplomatic ties with Turkmenistan, and it had taken to not sending representatives to the official treaty meetings (see below), parties seem to be at something of a loss how to proceed. However, in February 2004 the issue seemed to be on course for a

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successful resolution as the Turkmen Embassy to NATO wrote to the European Commisssion declaring that they would be destroying 60,000 mines within the coming three to four months. The clearance deadline As already mentioned, states are given ten years to clear anti-personnel mines that are already in the ground, although heavily affected states may apply for successive extension periods. (This is not the case with stockpile destruction – four years means four years.) To help make the challenging objective of total clearance a reality, states parties ‘in a position to do so’ – the term is not defined – must provide international cooperation and assistance (financial, human, material, technical, and technological) for mine clearance. A number of experts have already complained about the initial deadline set down by the treaty. According to Alistair Macaslan, for example, who heads Cranfield Mine Action, an organisation dedicated to building capacity for strategic planning and management in mine action (see Chapter 7), the ten-year deadline for clearance is not helpful because it might encourage unsustainable mine action based on unrealistic strategic plans (although, remember, a state party can ask for as many extensions as it needs to complete its clearance operations). The objective should be to remove the impact of all contamination as soon as is reasonably possible. In the words of Richard Kidd at the US Department of State: ‘If you’re working to mine-free as an objective you’re misguided.’ The legal solution is assuredly not to drop the deadline altogether but perhaps to construe it as achieving a situation where a country is indeed free of the impact of anti-personnel mines. And for strategic planning purposes, what is important is not so much the confines of the treaty but the broader danger to life and livelihood, whether it be landmines or UXO. This means clearing those minefields and battlefields posing the most immediate danger to the civilian population, making sure they have safe access to agricultural and pasture land, and that goods and labour can circulate without danger to life and limb. The residual threat can be dealt with over a much longer timeframe, as is the case in Europe with contamination remaining from the First and Second World Wars. Alistair Macaslan notes that the marginal benefit of donor dollars will decrease swiftly as, in theory at least,

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initial interventions will have the greatest positive impact on contamination. The first Review Conference of the treaty (see below) should begin to discuss this issue already and perhaps establish a working group to continue the process. Waiting until just before the deadlines begin to expire – in 2009 – when the second Review Conference of the treaty is likely to take place, should not be considered a serious option. Implementation mechanisms The treaty has a number of formal and informal mechanisms to support its implementation. The primary burden is on individual states to take the necessary measures to end the production, stockpiling, transfer and use of anti-personnel mines and to destroy stockpiles and clear emplaced mines. It was understood from the outset, however, that many affected states would need assistance in achieving this. For this reason, states ‘in a position to do so’ (i.e. donor states) are called on to provide international cooperation and assistance for stockpile destruction, mine clearance, victim assistance and mine awareness. A number of ways exist to monitor compliance with the treaty. First, states must provide quite detailed information to the UN every year about what they have done to implement their obligations. These ‘transparency’ requirements have sometimes acted as a catalyst to action. Second, annual meetings of the states parties provide a forum for the discussion of key issues surrounding the treaty. These formal annual meetings are supported by ‘intersessional’ meetings, held twice a year in Geneva and attended by states inside and outside the treaty, the UN, the Red Cross and the ICBL, among others. Once every five years, a Review Conference of the treaty should be held, the first being due to take place in Nairobi on 29 November – 3 December 2004. It is intended that the conference will be just that – an opportunity for review and not for amendment. It will take stock of what the treaty has achieved, and how much remains to be done, and should help to map out the process for the coming years. Third, the ICBL has established an effective NGO-based mechanism to monitor compliance with the treaty, the Landmine Monitor. Each year, just prior to the annual meeting of states parties, a new report is issued, detailing the landmine policy of every country in the world.

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According to Mary Wareham, who coordinates the process, the Landmine Monitor has established itself as the standard reference on the issue of mine action in every country. It has also given local researchers the courage to speak out forcefully on mine-related issues. Currently reports are huge tomes, of around 1,000 pages or more. After the Review Conference, reports will be smaller and more focused on affected states and those not yet party to the treaty. When negotiating the treaty, the decision was taken not to establish a secretariat to support its implementation, the idea being that resources should be committed to the field where they were most needed. In fact, this led to additional burdens being placed on states parties (correctly), with the result that a number maintained or even expanded their own staffing in capitals to deal with the issue. Subsequently, the advantages of some form of secretariat support were implicitly acknowledged by the states parties, and in the fourth annual meeting of states parties held in Managua in 2001, the recommendation was accepted to create an Implementation Support Unit. At the time of writing this had been up and running for two years at the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining, which hosts its staff and resources. It is funded from voluntary contributions. So far, treaty violations, even alleged violations, have been remarkably few in number. The most flagrant has been by Angola, which acknowledged continuing to use anti-personnel mines, and this was while it was only a signatory and not a full party to the treaty. Allegations have also been made against a number of other, mainly African countries. Nonetheless, the workability of the one article that provides, under certain circumstances, for mandatory investigations of alleged noncompliance without the consent of the accused state has sometimes been questioned. France, for instance, has pushed hard for the creation of a body to deal with such allegations. It is unlikely to be successful. In fact, few humanitarian treaties have strong verification measures, and stockpiles would be so easy to hide that on-site inspections would be of little value. Large-scale mine use, on the other hand, is so difficult to conceal (because of the time it takes to clear mines) that if the minelayer could be identified, it would then be easy to establish responsibility.

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Explosive remnants of war Beyond the concern of anti-personnel mines, there is a general problem with UXO and abandoned ordnance, and a specific problem with cluster munitions, none of which is covered under the Ottawa Treaty. In 2003, organisations worldwide, including Landmine Action and The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund, launched a major ‘clear-up’ campaign, calling for states to mobilise funds for clearance and to adopt new international law allocating responsibility. Success was swift, with negotiations in Geneva under UN auspices resulting in the adoption of a remarkable, legally-binding agreement in November 2003. Protocol V to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons addresses responsibility for what are termed ‘explosive remnants of war’ – meaning both abandoned and unexploded ordnance. Although some of the language could have been stronger, the protocol will represent a major step forward if it is implemented fully and in good faith. It allocates responsibilities for the clearance, removal or destruction of ERW, defined as ‘unexploded ordnance and abandoned explosive ordnance’, and calls for ‘all feasible precautions’ to protect civilians from their risks and effects. The Protocol has not yet entered into force but is likely to do so within two to three years. This leaves the tricky problem of preventing cluster munitions (bombs and artillery munitions) becoming unexploded ordnance. Here, there is a clear need to address the issue through additional international law and better unilateral practice. Possible negotiations (talks about talks, as it were) were starting in Geneva in the spring of 2004. Again, public and private pressure will be a determining factor in whether governments feel constrained to take effective action or just go through the motions. Banning them will not be easy as, according to Human Rights Watch, there are several billion – yes, billion! – submunitions in stockpiles in more than 50 countries around the world (China, Russia and the US are believed to all have more than one billion each). But they are so dangerous to civilians, particularly children (often far more so than landmines on the basis of available data), that action is urgently required, preferably through a worldwide moratorium on their use. In Kosovo, for instance, the region for which the most accurate data is available, research by an epidemiologist working for the

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International Committee of the Red Cross found that ‘as compared to those killed or injured by anti-personnel mines, those injured or killed by cluster bomblets were 4.9 times as likely to be under age 14. Incidents involving cluster munitions were also much more likely to result in death or injury to several people.’22 The UK appears at least willing to negotiate failure rates for cluster munitions – setting a legal minimum percentage of bomblets that do not explode on impact as per their design. As already mentioned, the US has committed to achieving a very low failure rate in new munitions. Some other countries appear less keen. China, for instance, has argued that it cannot achieve low failure rates for its cluster munitions, but, as other states have tried to explain, the Chinese will need to incorporate an independent secondary fusing mechanism in order to achieve this. This means that if the primary detonation mechanism is on impact with a hard surface (e.g. a tank), a secondary detonation mechanism could be a time-delay fusing system, such as an automatically functioning self-destruct device. One of the lessons of the Ottawa Process and the campaign against landmines, as Mary Wareham has remarked, is that everyone can play their part. Stopping the use and abuse of cluster munitions would undoubtedly be a fitting testament to the legacy of Diana’s work against landmines. VICTIM ASSISTANCE I visited some of the mine victims who had survived, and saw their injuries… What is so cruel about these injuries is that they are almost invariably suffered where medical resources are scarce. Diana, Princess of Wales The needs of victims Anyone who survives a mine or UXO blast needs first aid urgently. Of course, if you’re injured in the middle of a minefield, not everyone will be keen to rush in and drag you out. If you’re in a remote part of Angola, you may remain there for several days until you die of thirst or succumb to your wounds. In other cases, entire families have been decimated as one family member after another comes to help but succeeds only in falling victim to another explosive device.

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Those ‘lucky’ enough to receive first aid then need to get to a medical centre that can treat and dress their wounds properly. If the wounds are serious, surgeons may need to amputate one or more limbs, and that level of experience is hard to come by, even in Western countries. As a very rough rule of thumb, one in every three mine victims suffers an amputation. Dr Robin Coupland, one of the world’s leading authorities on mine injuries, recalls how much surgeons became dispirited by the need to perform amputation after amputation: ‘In the late 1980s and early 1990s, surgeons simply didn’t know how best to deal with mine injuries. They’re a completely different category of war wound. If we cut the leg straight off, the patient later suffered what we call “red cauliflower” syndrome as the stump mushrooms out preventing the fitting of an artificial limb.’ If you’re even luckier, after several operations you’ll receive physical rehabilitation. Amputees will be given physiotherapy and fitted with an artificial limb and taught how to use it – like learning to walk all over again. You may even be given vocational retraining – taught to perform an income-generating activity that may prevent you simply becoming another burden on an already overburdened family. And when you return to your community you may not be shunned, or taunted at school, or hidden away in shame in the family home. But not everyone is so lucky. In Vietnam, for instance, there appears to be a substantial backlog of people who have suffered mine/UXO injuries in need of treatment. Vietnam’s health system, although lacking resources, provides a far-reaching network of clinics and health centres that extends down to districts and communes. Yet from the cases coming to survivor assistance programmes there are many people with old injuries who have received little or no treatment or need new surgical procedures. Clear Path International, for example, reports the case of a 21-yearold male who had suffered severe burns from a phosphorus grenade as a young child and then had development of his limbs impaired by scar tissue but who had never received treatment. In August 2003, CPI staff reported meeting two men who had lost legs to mine/UXO explosions 25 and 30 years ago but had never received prostheses. The Landmine Survivors Network (LSN) – as it sounds, this is a network made up of individuals who have suffered, and survived, a landmine explosion – has extensive experience of the problems that are typically faced. They recorded that:

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• Most survivors do not have access to proper medical care; • The barriers many survivors face in finding employment are often more disabling than the landmine injury itself; • In some countries, landmine survivors, as people with disabilities, cannot inherit property, hold passports, give evidence at trials or be legal guardians of children. Meeting the needs In her speech to a conference on landmines in London a few weeks before she died, Diana noted that

making prostheses is a costly as well as a complicated business. For example, a young child [amputee] will need several different fittings as it grows older. Sometimes, the severity of the injury makes the fitting of an artificial limb impossible. There are never enough resources to replace all the limbs that are lost. To improve the situation of mine amputees, Heather Mills McCartney stresses the need to support local capacities:

Having worked in many war-torn countries, I have seen a great deal of charitable money go to waste through little fault of the charity providing it, but mainly due to a lack of experience in that particular field. As a result of my work over the years we have brought down the cost of artificial limbs in developing countries from $500 paid by some charities to just $50. The valuable lesson we have learned with regard to the fitting of limbs lost as a result of these atrocious weapons is that we have to create self-sufficiency amongst amputees and make use of local resources. This is essential if survivors are to live full and active lives once the charity leaves their community, as they so often do due to lack of funds. There are, though, concerns about the risk of concentrating assistance on tens of thousands of landmine survivors to the detriment of other war-wounded or disabled. However many they are, there are certainly not one million people being killed or injured each year by landmines and UXO. Although described by the Red Cross as an ‘epidemic of injuries’, landmines are therefore not to be compared to the global pandemic of AIDS or the consequences of malaria.

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But as Jerry White, LSN’s director, points out:

Public health oriented planners and policy-makers will always be able to prove that there are bigger problems and cheaper ways to help more people. It is true that there are more people who suffer from malaria or AIDS or TB than there are landmine survivors. The rights-based approach says that each and every human being has rights, not only those who belong to a group ‘worthy’ of attention. Even after every landmine has been removed from the ground and no more are being deployed, the victim assistance needs will persist. The human rights approach to disability leaves the cause of disability and prevention of disability out of the picture. There are also legitimate questions about the role of victim assistance in mine action. Sweden’s international development agency (SIDA), for example, has gone on record saying that victim assistance is not the task of mine action but of the public health system (although it also thinks it’s not the right time to change the definition of mine action). The UK’s equivalent, DFID, similarly supports assistance for mine and UXO victims through ‘well-established health and welfare programmes’. Others disagree. According to Ambassador Martin Dahinden:

Sadly, we have also to take note that the assistance to victims does not have the place it deserves in mine action. Landmine victims are prominent in public relation campaigns to gain public support for mine action. However, their needs and views are not taken into consideration as strongly as they should, neither by mine-affected countries and donors nor by the mine action community itself. Yet even Jerry White of LSN acknowledges that debate is ongoing:

When the article [requiring international cooperation and assistance for mine victims] was inserted into the treaty, amidst serious debate about its rightfulness there, no one knew how the victim assistance provision would be implemented. There were no clear definitions of what victim assistance is, and no plans for how implementation of the provision would proceed or how it would be measured and monitored.

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Casualty reduction in Cambodia The continuing high number of victims in Cambodia has prompted the government to focus attention on casualty reduction as a mine action priority. In 2002 Prime Minister Hun Sen set a target of zero casualties by 2012. NGO critics say the goal is unachievable because inevitably there will be some casualties resulting from landmines and UXO for many years after the deadline has passed. They reason that the deadline will raise false expectations and, more dangerously, may create a false sense of security among the public, who may misinterpret it as a sign the risk has passed. There is a realistic prospect, however, that Cambodia can sharply reduce the risk within a decade, helped by new approaches and by the narrow geographic distribution of accidents. Battambang province alone accounted for one-quarter of all Cambodia’s mine/UXO casualties in 2002. Cambodia’s 19 worst-affected districts lie in just six of the country’s 24 provinces, all but one of them located in the north-west and north. These provinces account for 70 per cent of total casualties. Demining agencies are focusing more on this issue and adjusting clearance strategies to match, augmenting their main clearance teams with smaller, more mobile units tackling smaller tasks and more responsive to local community requests. MAG, which set up a rapid response team in November 2002, will keep demining assets at their current strength but plans to deploy more mobile EOD capacity. The Cambodian Mine Action Centre is also augmenting its main clearance capacity, which consists of 48 30-man demining platoons, with six-man community mine action teams, equipped with two to three detectors – and with 17-man community-based mine risk reduction teams that focus on mine awareness but are equipped with six detectors to undertake smaller clearance tasks. There are hopes such initiatives are already beginning to pay off. The casualty rate in the 12 months to the end of March 2003 dropped below the 800 mark to 768, but it is too early to affirm a trend.

1998 Total Mine UXO Children % total Mine UXO

2,148 1,642 512 367 17 135 232

Cambodian mine/UXO victims 1999 2000 2001 1,153 731 425 321 28 111 210

862 461 402 280 32 75 205

813 407 421 235 28 62 173

2002 833 362 471 297 36 41 256

Source: Cambodian Mine Victim Information System.

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There was, and still is, debate about where victim assistance fits, who should be doing it, and how it should be funded. Recent analyses show that on a global scale victim assistance services are still woefully inadequate. Norway has been particularly supportive of victim assistance, contributing some 20 per cent of its mine action funds to the issue, a level it may even increase in the future, according to May-Elin Stener from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Norway would like to see the treaty spur greater action on behalf of victims and hopes that the intersessional meetings will achieve more concrete successes in the future. Others think the treaty has been a positive outcome, not only for mine victims. Mike Kendellen of the Survey Action Center in Washington DC, an expert on victim assistance, for instance, thinks overall funding has increased and that this has also helped others injured during war as well as the overall disability population. One of the outcomes of mainstreaming assistance within the public health system may be a sharp reduction in the level of assistance rendered. And the needs of mine and UXO victims will remain for decades to come, as the situation in Cambodia, described below, all too clearly demonstrates.

STOCKPILE DESTRUCTION The effort has paid off. In the past five years, more than 34 million stockpiled mines have been destroyed, mechanisms that will never injure any man, woman or child. Lloyd Axworthy Background Sadly, Diana died before she could see the treaty she had called for bear fruit, as millions of anti-personnel mines were systematically destroyed. Indeed, it was only in 2000 that stockpile destruction was formally added by the UN as the fifth mine action component, primarily as a result of the adoption and entry into force of the Ottawa Treaty.

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But what exactly does this component entail? The destruction just of anti-personnel mines? Or of all landmines? In the past, the UN Secretary-General has called for a ban on all landmines, not just anti-personnel mines. The IMAS glossary of terms leaves the question deliberately vague, referring only to stockpile destruction as ‘the physical destructive procedure towards a continual reduction of the national stockpile’. In fact, individual standards focus on the destruction of antipersonnel mines, although it is made clear that ‘a State or other entity holding stocks of weapons may wish to destroy explosive ordnance as part of a disarmament process, to implement a legal obligation, upon expiry of shelf life, or for reasons of safety’.23 Destruction techniques A wide variety of techniques exists for the destruction of explosive ordnance stockpiles.24 There were traditionally five options for the logistic disposal of ammunition and explosives; however, in the case of anti-personnel mines four of these options are banned by international treaty. The Ottawa Treaty does not permit the sale, gift or increased use in training of anti-personnel mines, and the ‘Oslo Convention’25 has outlawed deep sea dumping. Therefore, the international community is now left with destruction as the only available option for the disposal of anti-personnel mines. Physical destruction techniques available range from the relatively simple open burning and open detonation (OBOD) techniques, contained detonation and crushing to highly sophisticated industrial processes. According to the IMAS, the costs of demilitarisation of anti-personnel landmines range from $2 to $4 (roughly £1.25 to £2.50) each, depending on the type of mine, although certain states have quoted higher figures. Generally, open detonation is likely to be the cheapest means to destroy stockpiles of up to one million anti-personnel landmines. But, as the GICHD points out, this requires significant knowledge of explosives engineering as the shock wave caused by detonation may not destroy all the mines but throw some out and arm them (they are stored unarmed). Achievements and challenges As Lloyd Axworthy rightly points out, the destruction of 34 million stockpiled anti-personnel mines is a significant achievement, recognised even by those who are otherwise uncomplimentary about

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Mine action in Iraq: a summary Iraq had serious landmine and UXO problems before the 2003 War, and they have worsened substantially as a result of it. In addition the country emerged from the conflict with an additional hazard posed by astounding quantities of ordnance of all descriptions – from surface-to-air missiles to infantry weapon ammunition – distributed across the country, often amid civilian communities in schools, mosques and other public, unsecured locations. In Iraq, strict Coalition security precautions meant that among the problems facing clearance agencies in the initial post-war months, paradoxically, was a shortage of explosives for disposing of mines and ordnance. In the north, the UN’s Mine Action Programme limited its six EOD teams to emergency response only because of the shortage. In Baghdad, Handicap International said it left munitions disposal to US military EOD teams because it lacked explosives to do the job. As a result, by September 2003, the Coalition had 30 tons of munitions in one site awaiting destruction. Iraq is better off than some post-conflict countries in possessing valuable assets to deal with the problems, notably a well-established mine action programme already working in the north, an educated work force and oil wealth. It has been one of the few developing countries to have largely financed its own mine/UXO clearance. But Iraq’s ability to mobilise and use these assets effectively will require international assistance for some years. The ability of the international community to deliver depends on improving security. Most aspects of mine/UXO clearance and survey came to a halt with the evacuation in September 2003 of most international staff working for the UN, NGOs and commercial companies. Only the northern Mine Action Programme has national staff capable of running operations. After the war, the US resisted UN proposals for a major role in mine action. It preferred to keep control under the Coalition Provisional Administration, which created the framework of a national mine/UXO clearance programme under a National Mine Action Authority (NMAA), relegating the UN to a technical advisory role. Progress in this sector, however, was slowed by the lack of security as well as basic services such as telecommunications. The NMAA and its implementing arm, the Iraq Mine Action Centre, officially became operational from 1 August 2003, but five months after the war officially ended, these institutions were still taking shape (although this is actually fairly quick given the circumstances). Outside the north, mine action continued on a piecemeal, emergency basis with little contact between centre and south, and seemed likely to continue in that mode in 2004. NGOs undertaking EOD in Baghdad were still receiving tasks from the US military. A major imbalance exists in the structure of mine/UXO action in Iraq. Northern Iraq is already the scene of one of the richest and best-resourced clearance programmes in the world. Additional clearance is undertaken by Mines Advisory Group and Norwegian People’s Aid with independent funding. By contrast, only small-scale, emergency operations were under way in the rest of the country.

4

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The NMAA plans to keep its northern mine action programme at current strength and focus on building up local NGOs for the centre and the south.The transfer of ownership and control of mine/UXO clearance in the north from the UN to the Iraqi government will prove challenging and possibly disruptive. It will entail cuts in salaries paid by the UN, which looks in danger of prompting some of the most senior and experienced staff to quit.

the Ottawa Treaty. With Belarus and Serbia and Montenegro having acceded to the treaty in September 2003 (both becoming full parties on 1 March 2004), millions more stockpiled landmines have come within the strict destruction requirements laid down by the treaty. In Iraq, although it is not yet party to the Ottawa Treaty, the destruction of ammunition, including mines, is a major and pressing concern. In addition to the obvious dangers to the civilian population of having large quantities of live ordnance lying around unprotected, Coalition forces are also concerned about the use of ordnance against them. Yet, as Richard Kidd rightly notes, the US can point to significant achievements in Iraq amid the apparent chaos.

In all probability the US military has destroyed more munitions and mines in Iraq this year than the rest of the world’s destruction activities put together. The army engineer’s contract with commercial companies has destroyed more than 1,500 tons to date and is close to its 100+ tons per day capacity. This office is struggling to get complete figures, but hope to have them out at some point. In this chapter, we’ve looked at the basic components of mine action, and how they’ve evolved over time. In Chapter 5, we turn to how these components can be fitted together (‘integrated’ in mine action jargon) into a comprehensive programme to deal with mine and UXO contamination. As we will see, good technical skills are not enough if effective leadership and good management are absent.

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5 The Art of Managing Chaos: Mine Action Programming For this generation in much of the developing world, there will be no relief, no relaxation… The toll of deaths and injuries caused by mines already there will continue. Diana, Princess of Wales One of the main conclusions of the 1997 study of the UN’s mine action was that ‘A major impediment to effective mine action programmes is poor management.’ In this chapter, we will consider what constitutes good management, by reviewing the strengths and weaknesses of some of the world’s biggest mine action programmes. In particular, the chapter considers how to run a better programme, including setting its objectives; having the coordinating mechanisms necessary to manage it effectively; taking decisions on priorities; and – the ultimate objective of international assistance – handing the mine action programme over to the national authorities, lock, stock and barrel. Although steps have been taken to try to remedy the problems identified by the UN study, poor management still permeates many programmes. The international mine action community is still learning the art of managing chaos. ESTABLISHING A MINE ACTION PROGRAMME As has rightly been said, ‘any delay in tackling the problem of mines is at the expense of lives and limbs’.1 It seems almost superfluous, therefore, to record that a mine action programme should be set up as soon as it is possible to do so, typically immediately following the signing of a peace agreement (although some programmes operate successfully during ongoing, localised armed conflict). This demands, however, that the agreement makes appropriate provision for such a programme, including clear allocation of responsibilities, which has only rarely been the case. In Mozambique, for instance, the 1992 peace agreement that put an end to a bloody civil war made no reference to landmines.2 It 82

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Mine survivor in physiotherapy, Mozambique (John Rodsted/Landmine Action)

was understood by the UN and others that quick action was needed to address this problem, but such action was delayed for a variety of reasons. These included UN inexperience and inadequacies, the failure to secure agreement from the former warring parties for clearance and a bitter dispute between the UN and the donor community on the vision for the programme. Fundamental differences on its shape were not resolved, leading to a programme being launched under UN auspices in 1993–94 with no clear understanding of how it would be maintained or absorbed by Mozambican authorities. Once the decision to proceed has been taken, the first stage in establishing a mine action programme is to discover the nature and extent of the threat. Is it mines or UXO or both? Where are they and who are they affecting and how? Are roads blocked by anti-tank mines, or is the problem more one of agricultural land being contaminated? In Mozambique, however, ‘there was no assessment as such during the planning phase’, although a ‘reconnaissance trip’ was carried out.

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Threat assessment: the case of Kosovo* Threat assessment was one of five basic tenets for the Kosovo mine action programme; the others were risk management, integrated mine action, information management and quality management. The threat assessment approach had a number of aspects: First, it attempted to make best use of all available information to make an appropriate assessment of the likely mine/UXO threat, and to develop a clearance plan based on this assessment. Available information included Serb records, bombing data, and reports from local population/surveys/KFOR and other organisations. It was understood that a great deal of the information in the database was likely to be incorrect for one reason or another. However, it was felt that it was better to err on the side of caution, rather than withhold information from the database simply because we lacked the capacity to validate the information at the time. Therefore, we accepted that there would need to be some process put into effect to assess the information’s accuracy at a later stage. The process was based on continual collection of information, particularly using a survey team that was tasked to identify the credibility of the reports in the database. The clearance plan would be agreed with MACC operations staff, including changes to standing operating procedures and/or additional assets that would be required, such as machines or dogs. The intention of this approach was to ensure that most appropriate assets and methodology would be used to clear each area. For example, the purpose of manual mine clearance teams is to physically clear mines, not to prod around in areas that were never mined and do not actually constitute a problem. It was our desire to ensure that manual deminers were in fact working in minefields, and to the extent possible, in the mine rows (mines laid by regular or trained forces are likely to be in a standard pattern). Furthermore, a key part of any clearance plan is not only to identify the best assets to clear any given area, but to identify correctly the appropriate sequence in which these assets should be employed.This is a fundamental aspect of increasing the speed and cost-effectiveness of clearance operations. Major ‘constraints’ included: •

•

The number of mine clearance and MRE awareness organisations constituted considerable duplication of costs and made the task of coordination more difficult. There is little doubt that this approach, while ultimately successful, was not cost-effective. Some organisations provided by donors under bilateral funding agreements had limited operational experience, and some required a high degree of coordination. Many did not have a generic set of standard operating procedures that could easily be adapted to meet the requirements laid down in the MACC Guidelines for Mine and UXO Clearance Operations. Therefore some required a great deal of assistance in order to become operationally effective, and the MACC had limited capacity to provide this type of service.

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•

*

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The bilateral arrangements between many donors and the various organisations meant that the relationship with the MACC was based on cooperation and goodwill, rather than any contractual basis.This proved to be both a strength and a weakness of the programme, depending upon the relationships that were developed with each organisation. The decision in 1999 to assign responsibility for mine and UXO clearance to the Kosovo Protection Corps, which was formed of demobilised ethnic Albanian fighters, severely limited the options for development of the long-term capacity for EOD operations in Kosovo.The problem was compounded by the fact that subsequent KFOR Headquarters did not support the approach, and were concerned by the prospect of the KPC being trained in the use of explosives. Significant delays in the training of the KPC were caused by KFOR reticence to give approval for and to engage in the process as required.

Contribution from John Flanagan, former programme manager, UN Mine Action Coordination Centre, Kosovo.

The case of Kosovo, described by John Flanagan in the text box above, demonstrates the importance of collecting – and using – information to make mine action operational planning decisions. A programme also demands clear, attainable objectives. Examples of general programme objectives for mine action are preventing deaths and injuries or peace-building (especially in the humanitarian emergency phase), and, later, more developmental objectives, such as poverty reduction and economic growth. (Ted Paterson addresses in detail the contributions that mine action should make to development in the next chapter.) In Mozambique, the preliminary plan to tackle the mine problem was geared to meeting ‘the immediate needs’ of the UN’s peacebuilding mission and focused on clearing major routes, although without knowing if these routes were actually mined. The plan highlighted the importance of mine awareness and survey activities being undertaken at an early stage but did not clearly define objectives for them. Although the plan for Mozambique stated that when the UN peacekeeping mission ‘wound down’, project management would ‘eventually’ pass to the Mozambican government, it did not indicate when or how this could occur – or assess the government’s capability to assume such responsibilities. The plan did not specify whether the government, the former opposition armed force (RENAMO) and others were involved in, or even consulted on, its formulation.

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Initially, more success in programme set-up was met in Angola, the country that Diana visited in January 1997.3 To support the rapid establishment of a central coordination capacity, the UN appealed for funding to create a Central Mine Action Office (CMAO). The objectives of CMAO were to be: to coordinate all mine clearance and mine awareness education activity in Angola; to plan a survey of the mine problem in Angola; to obtain political and military clearance for all mine survey and clearance activity with both the Angolan government and the opposition forces; and to plan for schools to teach Angolan soldiers or ex-soldiers how to clear mines. The UN’s plan emphasised the need to train local personnel and noted that the transfer of knowledge and expertise should ‘form the nucleus of a national mine clearance capacity’. Thus at the outset, there was a commitment to develop an Angolan capacity to deal with the problem of mines. Sadly, despite good beginnings, the programme would later flounder. As the study of the programme for the UN noted,

some of the most significant delays can be attributed to poor leadership and management and a willingness to allow bureaucratic wrangling to determine what did and did not occur. The avoidable difficulties which have compounded the problem of mines in Angola are unconscionable.4 COORDINATING THE PROGRAMME The role of the mine action centre Once the programme is up and running its policy and operations must be coordinated as a number of different organisations and bodies will typically be involved in a mine action programme. In Kosovo, for example, more than 30 different organisations were operating in a province smaller than Wales. A plethora of weekly meetings was needed across the province to make sure everyone was ‘singing from the same hymn sheet’. Day-to-day coordination of mine action activities is generally undertaken by the national mine action centre (MAC), with overall policy and strategy being agreed by an overarching interministerial body known in the IMAS as the national mine action authority. The task of coordination – the ‘harmonious functioning together of different interrelated parts’ – generally includes accrediting operators

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to work (making sure they have the knowledge and ability to work according to the relevant standards), allocating operational tasks, and making sure all mine action work is performed to a satisfactory standard (quality management). There is growing, but not universal, agreement that a mine action centre should coordinate operations and not also implement them. In Mozambique, as Neuma Grobelaar writes,

The initial establishment of a national coordinating body in 1995 failed. It was replaced in 1998 by a new government-based body, the National Demining Institute (IND). However, it was only after the completion of a national mine impact survey in 2001 that the Mozambican authorities were able to coordinate mine action on a strategic national level, … eight years after the first clearance work began and after at least 13 different agencies, using their own survey methodologies, had engaged in mine clearance in the country. The UN’s Accelerated Demining Programme (ADP) is now in the process of being established as the national implementing agency which will form the basis of Mozambique’s long-term mine action capacity.5 As we saw in Chapter 4, UXO Lao is one example of how a central coordinating agency can fall short of its aspirations. Even more serious problems blighted its near neighbour, Cambodia, and its mine action centre. The role of outside ‘technical advisers’ In October 2000, as a result of lost donor confidence and funds, the Cambodian Mine Action Centre (CMAC) sacked its director and other members of senior management and was forced to lay off about half of its 3,400 staff. CMAC was largely created and run by foreign technical advisers – as were most NGOs allowed to work in Cambodia. At that time, a strong foreign technical advice or management component was indispensable. Khmer Rouge rule, ended by invading Vietnamese troops in 1979, left a shattered society. A high proportion of educated professionals and bureaucrats had died or fled abroad. The Khmer Rouge had systematically destroyed every component of social and economic infrastructure. Setting up any organisation at that time was a challenge. NGOs had to train most administration staff and book-keepers from scratch.

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Landmine survivor, Cambodia (John Rodsted/Landmine Action)

Cambodians with the skills and confidence to manage were few outside the government/communist party/military apparatus. But in the early 1990s the government did not accord any priority to demining at a time when it was still locked in a war with the Khmer Rouge and non-communist guerrilla factions. In addition to skills that were not available locally, foreign technical advisers (TAs) also provided impartial authority and decision-making capabilities. CMAC inherited strengths and weaknesses from that genesis. Its initial priority was to get deminers into the field to deal with emergency demining needs, and in that it succeeded. Under management of exmilitary TAs, it quickly built up operational capacity. After two years it had 1,600 staff, including 1,260 deminers, and two years later its strength was up to 3,400 staff. Such rapid expansion, however, kept the focus on day-to-day operations at the expense of building effective management, planning and administration, creating an opening for abuses that followed. Preoccupied with its own development, CMAC also never fulfilled its mandate of regulating and coordinating mine action in Cambodia as a whole. Building national capacity The rate of expansion also contributed to an excessive reliance on international staff. Since 1994, some 360 foreign TAs have worked

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in CMAC. The short, six-month rotations of many TAs became a major weakness of the system. Some commentators have even felt that their presence was more disruptive than useful to CMAC and that they left as the main beneficiaries of their assignment, although that view is not universally held. In any event, evaluation reports noted a tendency for TAs to get on with their jobs themselves rather than build local capacity. CMAC, remarkably, did not complete a Khmer-language translation of its standard operational procedures until the end of 2002, nearly ten years after it was set up. However, some TAs made a valuable contribution to CMAC and its present, largely Khmer management, now supported by a chief TA and three other TAs, is evidence of the capacity-building that took place in that decade. By the time the 1999 crisis broke, CMAC was already cutting back the number of TAs and replacing military advisers with civilians who had more management experience. Some assessments suggest the process may have gone as far as it can go and CMAC still needs to strengthen its management capacity. CMAC suffered eleven accidents in 2002, a sharp increase on previous years. In meetings with donors, CMAC management attribute the accidents to particular circumstances and deny it has anything to do with the absence of TAs. However, several cases have occurred of mines being found on land supposedly cleared in 2003, reliable sources say, and observers believe demining units have suffered from a slippage in operational discipline. The problem may partly reflect what qualified observers say continues to be largely ineffectual human resource management in CMAC. The situation is not helped by the reluctance of CMAC’s top management to sack staff for any reason. This state of affairs suggests further reduction in the number of TAs would be problematic. The earlier weaknesses of TA performance also reflected weaknesses in the management and support provided by UNDP. When CMAC was set up, UNDP was not interested in becoming involved. It only became interested when substantial donor funding became available to demining and, for the most part, did not exercise any supervisory function. Successive UNDP missions evaluating CMAC pointed out the weaknesses in its management, but there appears to have been little or no effort by the UNDP country office in Phnom Penh to follow up recommendations or to take preventative action in response to repeated warnings from TAs about the risks of abuse.

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CMAC has not returned to full strength but remains the biggest of the three demining organisations (the other two are the NGOs HALO Trust and Mines Advisory Group), with a total staff of 2,400 people. The 11.6 million square metres cleared by CMAC in 2002 exceeded its work plan by 14 per cent. Audits by KPMG helped to restore the confidence of donors sufficiently for them to provide $7.5 million (£4.8 million) in 2001 and more than $9 million (£5.7 million) in 2002. Setting operational priorities Despite the problems, in the early days of mine action, CMAC was held up as a shining example of a well-functioning mine action centre. In Mozambique, it is alleged that significant delays were encountered in the programme amid the UN’s failure to convince donors that a Mozambique Mine Action Centre was needed, based on the Cambodia model. Thus, in the case of Mozambique,

The inability of the UN and the donors to reach consensus meant that one of the poorest war-torn countries in the world was not given the help it needed to have a voice in the way in which the problem of mines was addressed. The absence of a central coordination mechanism meant that it was up to the mine action agencies and the donors to determine where and how resources would be allocated and used.6 Indeed, one of the main responsibilities of the MAC is to allocate limited resources to a seemingly endless list of tasks, a process known as priority-setting. Hard choices have to be made as not everyone who requests help will be able to receive it. Setting appropriate criteria Sometimes the criteria for these priorities are explicit; too often, they are unwritten or unspoken and appear to be subject to the vagaries and whims – on occasion even the financial interests – of the individual or individuals running the mine action programme. One organisation has suggested six guiding principles for setting operational priorities:7 effectiveness and consistency, and, if possible, responsiveness, transparency, comprehensiveness and cost-efficiency. The core of a priority-setting system is the method or approach used to assess the alternative tasks, then ranking or categorising these

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in order of priority. A good system for deciding how to commit mine survey and clearance assets will have at least the following two characteristics: • Effectiveness – The system for setting priorities should help managers choose those alternatives most likely to promote the objectives of the programme or project and, more fundamentally, to promote development in the country. • Consistency – The system should also make it more likely that different managers will make the same decision when facing the same alternatives, thus fostering fair and equal treatment for all citizens and communities affected by mine and UXO contamination. In addition, the following features are desirable: • Responsiveness – Managers obtain and consider the desires expressed by affected citizens and communities (selfdetermination), and those of other stakeholders (e.g. the national government and representatives from sectoral ministries, state or provincial governments, district/local governments, local and international NGOs operating in contaminated areas, and donors). • Transparency – The criteria used to assess alternatives are known to and understood by the stakeholders and there is regular reporting on the decisions taken, thus demonstrating there is no hidden agenda influencing decisions. • Comprehensiveness – Ideally, all mine and UXO contamination tasks should be considered when setting priorities. • Cost-efficiency – The benefits obtained should outweigh the costs involved in collecting and analysing the data required for prioritisation. There is, however, no such thing as an ideal system for prioritisation. Different mine action programmes and, sometimes, individual implementing organisations need to develop prioritisation systems that are right for them in a particular country at a particular time. Applying criteria systematically Among the most useful initiatives spurred by CMAC’s crisis was the creation of provincial-level Land Use Planning Units (LUPUs) with

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two key functions: (i) to prioritise clearance tasks on the basis of requests submitted by communes, villages and districts, and (ii) to issue documents that confirm ownership to the recipient, providing some security against land-grabbing by the rich and powerful. Grabbing of demined land does not appear to have been widespread. A 1999 HALO Trust survey found that virtually all the land it had cleared was used for humanitarian purposes. Still, the certification of end use that demining agencies receive from LUPUs helps to reassure donors. LUPUs now operate in four provinces and a municipality (Krong Pailin) that are the most contaminated areas of the country. After a tentative start, CMAC and the Mines Advisory Group say most of their clearance tasks now come through LUPUs. The LUPU system, however, is straining to cope with the demands and expectations of NGOs, donors and local communities. They suffer from an acute shortage of planning capacity and a lack of basic resources: they have no vehicles of their own and rely on demining agencies to visit minefields and clearance sites. Moreover, there remain gaps in the planning process. LUPUs function purely from the provincial level down. Central government institutions – such as the Ministry of Public Works and Transport, responsible for road development, and RCAF – do not work with LUPUs, yet the road issue is key in deciding provincial land use and a decisive factor in determining where people wish to settle. Nor do LUPUs have a clear relationship with the Land Ministry in Phnom Penh, which came into existence after LUPUs had already started operating. The policy body, the Cambodian Mine Action and Victim Assistance Authority (CMAA), also notes significant discrepancies between the reporting of the LUPUs and the deminers on what is being cleared. As a result, the future of LUPUs is now under consideration. The operation needs clear terms of reference and clear SOPs. These are likely to come eventually from the CMAA, which proposes to take over responsibility for LUPUs and has ideas of converting them into Mine Action Planning Units (MAPUs) and injecting some national priorities into its planning process. But the process and timeframe for resolving these issues has yet to be established. Quality Assurance (QA) A further important role for the mine action centre is to ensure that operations, especially for clearance, are maintaining the highest possible quality. In this regard, Kosovo has been instructive.

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In six of Kosovo’s districts, areas declared free of mines and UXO have since thrown up contamination that was seemingly missed in the clearance operations, leading to the need for new surveys and clearance from international NGOs. This has been an extreme embarrassment to the UN as well as to the donors. John Flanagan, a former New Zealand army officer, was the Kosovo Programme Manager, a role that he performed with great credit until the UN Mine Action Coordination Centre closed its doors on 15 December 2001. He recalls the programme’s QA travails thus:

During the first six months of operations, we had neither the funding nor the capability to undertake the type of QA processes now detailed as part of IMAS. However, such was the need for clearance activities to take place before the winter months, it simply was not feasible to wait for a donor to fund this capacity. Therefore, we relied heavily on the expertise and capability of the clearance organisations that were largely being bilaterally funded. We recognised the potential limitations with this approach, but it was a situation that could not really be avoided. In the second year of operations (2000), an organisation was contracted to provide a QA capacity and to train local staff in this role. The basis of the QA system was essentially to ‘audit’ the process used by the organisation to clear the land, rather than to ‘audit’ the cleared land itself. This meant that considerable emphasis was placed on the organisation having good SOPs, and effective systems and processes for the implementation of these SOPs during clearance operations. It was based on the theory that if SOPs were followed correctly, including all of the internal QC checks, there should be no reason to expect that mines or UXO would be missed. For example, the SOP of one particular organisation stated that their clearance approach and internal QC checks mean that every lane will be cleared/checked between three and seven times during the clearance activity. The MACC approach therefore sought to ensure that these measures were actually being undertaken. However, a number of problems were identified with the way in which the QA system was being implemented. Therefore, in 2001, the approach was changed and an international staff member was hired to take over the responsibility for training and management of the local QA inspectors. This placed greater responsibility in the

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hands of the local staff and fostered an improved relationship with many of the local staff working as supervisors within the clearance organisations. While some international personnel in the clearance organisations did have some difficulties with this, I believe that this approach was the more successful. The QA systems that accredited explosive detection dogs and medical personnel were also very effective. The EDD accreditation process was extremely thorough, fair, and provided a high degree of confidence that the dogs were performing to the correct standard. Dog teams were evaluated on a regular basis and the EDD QA Officer constantly monitored the performance of the dogs in the field. The Medical QA Officer monitored the activities of the medics on a regular basis, arranged for and assessed medevac [medical evacuation] exercises, and generally assisted with the training of the medical personnel. This forced organisations to treat the provision of medical support as a highly important activity. Overall, although there were some weaknesses in the QA system in the early period of operations, I believe the approach was valid. External QA is a highly contentious issue in mine action, particularly among some NGOs. The Kosovo approach to QA regarded the inspectors as ‘Community Constables’, not the ‘Riot Police’. They were there to improve the safety and effectiveness of mine clearance, not to impede or prevent it. HANDING THE PROGRAMME OVER TO NATIONAL OWNERSHIP One of the objectives of every mine action programme is (or should be) to turn itself over to full national control as soon as possible. That means foreign advisers, whether working for governments on a bilateral agreement, UN staff or NGO personnel should all leave as the government takes full responsibility for the programme. As we saw, Angola was one of the earliest programmes to expressly plan for an exit strategy, although things have not exactly gone to plan there since. Indeed, to date, the UN has managed to ‘close the door’ on a mine action programme only in Kosovo (and ever since there have been questions as to whether the UN left too early – see below); other programmes seem to be reliant on a never-ending procession of technical and chief technical advisers, as we have already seen in Cambodia.

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Not too early Given the costs of expatriate staff, if implemented correctly, an effective exit strategy for international assistance should significantly reduce the costs of the mine action programme. But too early a departure, as may be the case in Afghanistan, can have a dramatic impact on the programme. One of the objectives of Afghanistan’s strategic mine action plan is to turn the programme and its coordinating body, the Mine Action Centre for Afghanistan (MACA), into a national programme by 2005. No formula has yet emerged for a national programme but the Strategic Plan suggests MACA will become ‘a parastatal organisation under UN stewardship until the Government is confident that it is able to undertake full responsibility for the coordination role’. At the same time MACA management is gearing up for management and institutional changes. The current programme director and his deputy are due to leave by the end of 2004. In that year UNMAS will also turn over MACA to UNDP, which will appoint a technical adviser to support the programme. The objective of creating a national programme by 2005 is regarded in the demining community in Afghanistan as ultimately desirable but fraught with risk and probably unrealistic within the timeframe proposed. Afghan NGO managers in particular warn that turning the programme over to government control would be hazardous to the health of humanitarian mine action in Afghanistan. ‘The UN would be very stupid to do that in three to five years,’ the director of one Afghan NGO said. ‘If the programme goes to the government at the end of next year, that’s the end of it. I will say: “You can have my equipment but not my staff.”’ Demining agencies emphasise they have been able to operate effectively throughout the last 13 years in Afghanistan precisely because they were perceived by political and military factions as neutral and by local communities as both neutral and performing a valuable humanitarian service. Those community ties proved the best security for deminers in the provinces during the war years, and are again felt to be very much the best security at a time when Taliban and al-Qaida-linked hostiles are threatening the aid community, including deminers. Many NGO staff are therefore sensitive to any change in the programme that gives it more of a government identity.

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There are also concerns that increasing government control over mine action is premature at a point when the political outlook is so uncertain. President Karzai has endorsed the Ottawa Treaty and mine action as a national priority, but his government is weakened by ethnic splits and has little control over provincial warlords and militia commanders. Moreover the administration is committed to holding elections in 2004, which could see political interests with a different agenda gain the political ascendancy. A major objection, however, is the lack of capacity within the government. Individual ministers may be able to contribute effectively to discussions on national policy, but there is little or no capacity in government to make a positive contribution to programme management. MACA’s inability to recruit an assistant financial officer after months of looking exemplifies the very small pool of administrative, let alone management, skills available. The problems on this issue for MACA, the NGOs and every other organisation in Kabul are increasing as more international organisations open in Afghanistan and the discrepancy between their salaries and what demining NGOs can offer grows wider. In addition to the problems of getting paid by the UN, all the NGOs complained of losing some of their top, most experienced staff to international organisations such as Louis Berger or USAID that pay far more. … or you may have to go back Much to the UN’s chagrin, the ‘resounding success’ proclaimed by an independent evaluation of the mine action programme in Kosovo has been somewhat tarnished by subsequent events. Kosovo is not an independent state (although moves are afoot in the international community to move to final status talks) but is formally still part of what was the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and what is now called Serbia and Montenegro. It was effectively governed by the UN following the 1999 war between Yugoslavia and NATO. The Kosovo programme is still generally regarded as a major UN achievement, but even its firmest adherents concede that it was ‘handed over in an incorrect way’. In the final stages of the programme, deminers were laid off and, in accordance with the demands of NATO, the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC), a demobilised group of Kosovo Liberation Army fighters, was specifically trained to take over the remaining mine and UXO clearance tasks. It was assumed that they would be able and willing to achieve this. According to John Flanagan,

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One difficulty facing the MACC [the mine action coordination centre] was the lack of funding to sustain its operations beyond 2001. It was a constant difficulty to find donors willing to contribute to the cost of running the MACC, simply because so many donors were funding clearance or awareness organisations on a bilateral basis. Despite this fact, however, I now believe that it would have been advantageous to maintain the MACC for a further period of six to nine months in parallel with the KPC operations to ensure that the transition occurred as it was envisaged. In addition, it could also have been advantageous to retain a rapid response capacity that could have dealt with a number of the tasks that have since been identified. This would include some form of technical survey capability, which would be able to quickly confirm or discredit the presence of mines/UXO in a suspected area, and would have prevented the uncertainty that now exists in certain places. In this regard, rather than setting time-based objectives for transition to national authorities, it is more appropriate to clearly identify criteria that must be achieved. Accordingly, the UN has set an objective to develop these criteria that will be used for future programmes. In fact, as one authority claims, the ‘Kosovo mentality’ let the programme down badly. In short, the KPC has little or no incentive to risk their lives and limbs in clearance operations; they are paid the same whether they are gardening or demining. They therefore prefer to be gardening – or doing nothing – to the evident frustration of the UN and others. This failure has led to the organisation supervising the KPC, Handicap International, a French NGO with several years of experience in mine action, to carry on with some of the work itself. THE WAY FORWARD FOR PROGRAMME MANAGEMENT Since 1997, Diana’s pessimism about the future of mine-affected communities has proved sadly prophetic in too many instances. If the international community is, in the future, to avoid a continuance of the toll of deaths and injuries caused by mines, it will have to manage chaos – and the mine action programme – better than it has to date.

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In summary, a good mine action programme should: • be set up as soon as possible after hostilities cease (‘peace breaks out’); • use the best available information; • involve the key stakeholders; and • set and achieve clear, attainable objectives to manage the mine and UXO threat. The mine action centre should (ideally ‘must’): • coordinate the programme, benefiting from technical support to build a sustainable national capacity; • set operational priorities based on appropriate and transparent criteria that are applied systematically; and • ensure that quality of clearance is maintained – a single missed mine can undermine confidence in the entire operation. In Chapter 6, Ted Paterson takes us beyond the minutiae of mine action to understand the ‘big picture’, justifying why and how mine action programmes must do far more to support development by moving into the development ‘mainstream’. In addition to maximising human welfare (rather than taking mines out of the ground for its own sake), it should also help to ensure the continued funding of mine action, as political attention shifts to other priorities.

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6

Mine Action and Development: Doing the Right Job I would like to see more done for those living in this ‘no man’s land’ which lies between the wrongs of yesterday and the urgent needs of today. Diana, Princess of Wales In the previous chapters we looked at ‘doing the job right’ and how mine action should be managed. This chapter addresses the other essential for performance – doing the right job – by which is meant integrating mine action into development. This involves drawing up a ledger – benefits as well as costs – of mine action, which sounds common sense but is in fact quite daunting. Many key benefits of mine action – such as enhancing the sense of security of those in mine-afflicted communities – are difficult to assess, particularly in some quantifiable measure. But such a reckoning is needed for at least three reasons: 1. To show donors what their funding has achieved – and to make the case for continued support. 2. To get on to increasingly crowded development agendas in mineafflicted countries – and attract financial support and attention from senior government officials. 3. To assess performance against what ultimately counts (improving the well-being of those affected by landmine contamination) and improve this performance over time. HOW WE GOT TO HERE Mine action was born from a series of complex emergencies in the final years of the Cold War. Such emergencies are characterised by intrastate conflict, a blurring of lines between combatants and civilians, violence directed largely against civilian targets, fluidity in terms of conflict zones and populations on the run, and a breakdown of the 99

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modern state with the loss of legitimate authority over increasing swaths of the country. ‘War economies’ emerge as rival factions exploit natural resources, cultivate narcotics, launder money and steal humanitarian assistance to finance the conflicts. The international community has responded (sometimes with a distinct lack of enthusiasm or success) with humanitarian1 assistance and peacekeeping missions (often encumbered with additional peace-building tasks). In these situations humanitarian aid workers and military personnel have made strange bedfellows, united perhaps only in their disparagement of the many representatives of officialdom thrown into the fray. Unsurprisingly, the mine action community is a microcosm of this broader international response to complex emergencies. The members of this community include: • military engineers, whose outlooks reflect both their professional training and the command-and-control approaches of their employers; • aid workers, imbued with humanitarian principles of neutrality and impartiality, and including international human rights campaigners, often imbued with single-minded zeal; • representatives of donor agencies, trying to square the circle among humanitarian imperatives, national interests and political realities; and • information professionals wrestling with that modern analogue of making bricks without straw – how to turn sparse and suspicious data into usable information. Added to this mix are local entrepreneurs, for whom mine action can be both a duty and an opportunity; local deminers for whom, quite remarkably, prodding blindly at live explosives constitutes a survival strategy; and, of course, UN officials, juggling donors’ desires and poverty’s problems, often unsuccessfully. Thus the mine action community has certain distinguishing characteristics: • it is a multi-disciplinary endeavour involving a multiplicity of organisations; • it entails (in theory if not always in practice) a variety of components;

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• it adopts short-term mandates and humanitarian perspectives because of its origins in complex emergencies; • it has a high international profile, which implies generous funding. We will now focus principally on the last two points. The problems of short-term humanitarian programmes As most programmes have emerged in the midst of emergencies, mine action is funded mainly via the humanitarian aid channels of official development agencies, which normally provide money only for short-term projects of a year or less. This type of funding is appropriate when the situation on the ground is evolving rapidly, but it also constrains long-term planning and inhibits investments for which the payoffs occur in the long term. Such investments include building indigenous capacities, conducting comprehensive surveys of the contamination problem, and ‘luxuries’ such as socio-economic work to understand more precisely how landmine hazards are constraining development in the affected communities. Unfortunately, these are precisely the type of investments that prepare a programme to be transformed into a broader development-centred activity rather than one narrowly focused on landmines. Emergency aid, including most mine action funding, targets populations most at risk. Thus mine action programmes are inhibited from considering actions that would foster the long-term development of communities that are not at immediate risk of famine, war or disease: in strategic planning language, programmes are constrained from mixing the proactive (searching for and exploiting opportunities) with the reactive (responding to immediate threats to lives and limbs). Large-scale humanitarian crises engage the international community but such engagement also magnifies donor coordination problems and inhibits local ownership, while the rapid build-up to these programmes can overwhelm local capacities and prolong dependence on foreign expertise. Finally, generous funding – particularly when it is earmarked for mine action alone – creates a ‘Samaritan’s Dilemma’ in which the generosity of donors can make it less likely that the recipients exert the necessary efforts to help themselves – and remain dependent on handouts.

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The Samaritan’s Dilemma The Samaritan’s Dilemma is from Game Theory (like the more famous Prisoner’s Dilemma). In brief, a Good Samaritan is a person who is so deeply concerned about the welfare of others that – when faced with people in serious need of assistance – he or she will provide assistance irrespective of whether those in need do anything to help themselves. The dilemma is that the Samaritan’s assistance reduces the likelihood that the recipients will exert effort to help themselves.

In short, the task of integrating mine action into development implies a longer time horizon for planning, to enhance the attractiveness of investments that entail heavy short-term costs but promise substantial dividends in the long term. Mine action must broaden its focus to bring developmental opportunities into perspective alongside a concern for the vulnerabilities created by landmine contamination. And this requires that priorities be based principally on the needs expressed by the affected populations (demand-led) rather than the desire to maximise the efficient use of assets (supply-led). Tentative steps in these directions have already been made. But rapid progress has been constrained in part because the mine action community includes relatively few people who can analyse the socioeconomic aspects of mine action or who are development managers, long used to grappling with ways to enhance local capacities and ownership as counterweights to donor coordination difficulties – and, of course, by the ever-present Samaritan’s Dilemma. This suggests that mine action continues to be ‘ring fenced’ and viewed as a specialised, post-conflict activity by both recipient governments and donor agencies. The mine action community needs to make faster progress on this because, for a variety of reasons, international donors have started to press governments in many mine-afflicted countries to assume a larger role in their national mine action programmes. Reasons for this include: 1. Many countries now receiving international assistance for mine action do not represent complex emergencies. 2. Although a number of complex emergencies remain acute, stability of a sort has emerged for some: Bosnia, Cambodia and Mozambique, with glimmers of hope even for Angola and (more

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faintly) Afghanistan. At least the first three of these countries are now focused on development rather than post-conflict reconstruction, so their mine action programmes must ‘mainstream’ themselves if they are to get on to the ‘development agenda’. 3. With the possible exception of Mozambique, each of these countries faces contamination on a scale that will take decades, not years, to overcome thus requiring sustained effort over the long term. 4. Donors quite rightly baulk at the prospect of financing mine action in countries that are making only token contributions of their own. Apart from Croatia and Thailand,2 mine-affected countries have typically made little or no contribution to mine action activities. 5. ‘Recipient ownership’ is part of the new litany of the international development field. Greater local ownership is important if mine action programmes are to be sustained – in the long term by more realistic contributions from local governments and in the short term because donors will look at which development priorities espoused by the recipient government are actually backed with local money and high-level attention. The rest of this chapter will examine the nature of development and what we think we know about how mine action contributes to development, both in the narrow sense of economic growth and more broadly. This will lead into a preliminary attempt to measure our ignorance in such matters, and to suggestions about how to broaden and accelerate our learning. Finally, the chapter will discuss the mechanics of development planning and the ways in which mine action might interpose itself. A QUICK TOUR OF DEVELOPMENT3 A discussion about mine action’s contribution to development must make some effort to grapple with the concept of development. Put simply, it is an effort to increase the well-being of people who are in some way impoverished in the things that both sustain life and make it worth living. These good things in life are many and varied, including robust health, sufficient education, friends and family, cultural offerings, and so on. Because of life’s many-faceted nature, it is impossible to measure directly the precise level of well-being attained by an individual person, community or country.

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To assess a country’s development status and whether it is increasing over time we need to use substitute or proxy indicators that can be measured. Generally, money is the best single indicator as it can be used to purchase goods and services that meet many needs. Thus a country’s per capita income level is often used as a proxy for the level of an average citizen’s well-being, while the economic growth rate is used to gauge the rate at which a country is developing. But money cannot buy everything needed to live well or even to sustain life in certain adverse situations, so a calculation simply of economic values provides too narrow an accounting of development. The Human Development Index (HDI) published in UNDP’s annual Human Development Report provides a broader measure. The HDI is a composite of three numbers, each representing one important component of well-being: (1) a long and healthy life; (2) knowledge; and (3) a decent standard of living. But even the HDI does not incorporate all those things that reasonable people have reason to value, such as the right to vote and voice their opinions, or the opportunity to earn the respect of fellow citizens and the right to be treated with dignity irrespective of one’s accomplishments and abilities. For example, wouldn’t reasonable people living in a mine-contaminated community place a high value on an enhanced sense of security for themselves, their families and friends? Despite our difficulty in assigning a ‘hard number’ for this value, we shouldn’t neglect it entirely. We need some means for at least depicting the diverse components (including those difficult to quantify) that constitute the broad phenomenon termed development. For this purpose, we shall use the diagram provided in Figure 1, adapted from DAC, 2001 and Sen, 1999. Three basic points should be noted. First, each of the components (represented by the ellipses, which we will term spheres) is a good thing in itself: it has intrinsic value and makes a direct contribution to the thing we call development, as depicted by the solid arrows. Second, many of these highly valued things in life are inherently hard to measure and, hence, to arrive at a quantitative valuation. We must be on guard against the ‘what isn’t counted doesn’t count’ fallacy. Third, each of these components reinforces the others. For example, better health (part of the Human Needs sphere) increases people’s economic prospects by allowing them to work longer and

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Intrinsic contributions Instrumental contributions

Human Needs Health Education Nutrition

Socio-cultural Status Dignity

Figure 1

Natural Environment

Basic development

Economic Consumption Income Assets

Technology

Gender Relations

Development

Trust

Protective Security Security Vulnerability

Political Rights Voice Voting rights Transparency

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harder; similarly, higher incomes (‘Economic’ sphere) make it easier to maintain robust health by eating better or (collectively) installing water and sanitation systems and other primary health measures. Thus, in addition to their intrinsic values, each of the components has instrumental value as a mechanism for augmenting the others, thereby contributing indirectly to development. These instrumental values are depicted by the dotted arrows in Figure 1. Another feature that warrants emphasis is that the components of well-being are embedded in the ‘here and now’; a combination of the unique history and geography of each place on earth, which together constitute the specific (for want of a better term) ‘atmosphere’ within which development suffocates or breathes. Like different gases, the elements of this atmosphere intermingle in a complex fashion, are difficult to isolate in concrete terms, and – in spite of their important role in structuring behaviour – go largely unnoticed by the inhabitants as they conduct their day-to-day affairs. Included in these atmospheric features are things such as the natural and technological heritage of a place, the nature of gender relations in households and society, and the degree of trust that individuals place in other members of their family, circle of friends, community, ethnic group, and nation at large. The atmospherics of development can range from pristine to polluted, and can amplify or mute the transmissions among the components of well-being. For an obvious example, whether improved health care for women leads to substantial economic benefits to their households largely depends on the economic opportunities available to women in that society. It follows that, while at one level we can generalise about the mechanics of how mine action might contribute to development; there is no typical mine-afflicted country as each has its own atmospherics. Development is a dynamic process because the mutually reinforcing nature of the components of well-being means advancement in one reinforces progress in the others, which in turn sustain the initial advance. Thus, components of well-being are valuable both in their own right (intrinsic value) and instrumentally (to reinforce achievements in other spheres). For example, better nutrition leads to better health, which in turn reduces the time a farmer loses to sickness, allowing for bigger crops, better nutrition and another cycle of improvement. Virtuous circles are features of healthy development: achievements in different spheres of life magnify one another.

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But this process of mutual reinforcement can also lead to vicious circles, where problems in one sphere are transmitted to the others, spreading infection rather than well-being. An understanding of how achievements and failures are transmitted within the atmospherics of a particular place and time to create virtuous circles or break vicious circles is the key to good development initiatives. One final point on this issue. Individuals, households and communities are agents of their own well-being. It is their energies that will make or break most development efforts initiated by outsiders. Positive results are far more likely when the intended beneficiaries, whether local community members or national leaders, endorse and are active participants in the planning and monitoring of development activities, including mine action. Our view of development thus far is an isolated one. Selfdevelopment will everywhere and always be the core of a sustained process of improvement and, hence, sustainable development. But, as with mine action, the resources available to a poor country for its own development efforts can be supplemented by inflows from wealthier nations in forms such as money (official development assistance, private donations via NGOs and private investments by businesses), knowledge and new technology. This broader system of international development is depicted in Figure 2. Political, economic, human, socio-cultural and protective achievements

Results

Private investment

Sociocultural

Human needs Public investment

Consumption

Economic

Political rights

Atmospheric elements

National development system

Productive security

Private donations & investments

Official development assistance International community

Figure 2 The international development system

Maslen – Fig 2

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We can now use such diagrams to analyse some of the contributions that mine action could make to development, illustrating with evidence (where we have it) on how significant each of these connections might be. MINE ACTION DURING HUMANITARIAN EMERGENCIES This discussion focuses on demining activities and mine risk education (MRE) at the cost of ignoring the other planks of mine action, advocacy, stockpile destruction and victim assistance components. Including all components would make the picture far more complicated, but the essential logic would remain the same. Needless to say, I am not suggesting that these components – and particularly victim assistance – do not make contributions to development. In the context of our basic development diagram, the major mine actions (arrow 1a in Figure 3) are designed to enhance protective security. Mine risk education, marking of hazards, plus clearance for resettlement camps and routes taken by refugees lead to an intrinsic contribution to development to the degree that they save lives and limbs (solid arrow A). By employing local personnel and making �����������

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local purchases (arrow 1b), and by clearing farm land for refugees (2b), mine action also makes contributions to the local economy, reducing impoverishment (arrow B). Demining is also an instrument facilitating the delivery of humanitarian assistance, which then reduces deaths and disabilities from famine and disease. Thus there are two channels by which mine action leads to fewer deaths and disabilities – and they can be isolated from the main development diagram to ease comparison. (In this format, Figure 4 can be viewed as a ‘logic chain’ of cause-and-effect relationships or as a ‘value chain’ depicting how valued things are created. Both are common tools in programme planning and both relate strongly to the ‘results chain’ used by many donor agencies as the basis of their results-based management approaches.) The text box on p. 110 summarises the difficulties in measuring the direct impact of mine action on the reduction of deaths and disabilities. But in humanitarian emergencies mine action also contributes indirectly to the reduction in deaths and injuries by ensuring refugee camps are free of contamination – and by keeping transportation routes safe so that people can flee from conflict, and aid agencies can deliver life-saving supplies to prevent famine and disease. Indeed, far more deaths and disabilities may be prevented through this channel. Of course, mine action is only one of many contributions and cannot claim sole credit for the security, health and nutrition of refugees. But it is also likely that the relief agencies involved will have reasonably firm data on the numbers of people assisted. In fact, we shall see that there are relatively few and modest developmental benefits that can be directly attributed to mine action. Instead,

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Logic, value and results chains

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The evidence on mine action saving lives and limbs The human toll exacted by landmines and UXO has been well documented and was the principal motivation behind the campaign to ban anti-personnel mines. But what do we know about the direct contributions of clearance, marking and mine awareness to a reduction in the number of deaths and disabilities? Unfortunately we know little, at least in quantitative terms.Take the numbers of deaths and injuries from landmines, which often rise after the end of a conflict as refugees return along routes and to communities that may be contaminated. The numbers of accidents then decline for some years because people become aware of the hazardous areas and generally avoid these. This knowledge may come from MRE or because minefields have been marked by survey teams, but more generally from seeing landmines, hearing from other community members, or because some unfortunate person or animal has detonated a mine. Mine clearance also makes a contribution to risk reduction, but in heavily contaminated countries this is modest because only a tiny portion of hazardous areas can be cleared in any one year.* Complicating the matter further, in at least some countries, landmine accidents result from knowingly risky behaviour because people are driven by economic necessity. In other countries, the laying of new mines may be a factor in the number of injuries as people pursue ethnic vendettas or lay mines to protect their vacant homes, opium fields, etc. With all these factors influencing the level and trend of accidents, it becomes extremely difficult to isolate which factor has led to what portion of the decline in numbers. This could conceivably be accomplished with abundant data of excellent quality. Unfortunately, in most countries data on landmine accidents is incomplete and often of very poor quality. As a result of these complications, there is not a single study that has demonstrated any statistically meaningful link between the numbers of landmine accidents and any component of mine action** or mine action in general. *

**

For example in Bosnia, the Landmine Monitor report for 2002 reports that about 4,000 km2 are suspected of contamination, while less than 5.5 km2 was cleared in 2001, slightly more than one-tenth of one per cent of the suspected area (and perhaps only 2 per cent of the ‘priority 1’ contaminated areas)! One study for Afghanistan reported a correlation between MRE and landmine accidents (Andersson et al., 1998). Unfortunately, it was a positive correlation, so there were more accidents in communities that had received mine awareness training! Also, a number of people have voiced their concerns about the methodology used in the study.

mine action makes many contributions that must be combined with other initiatives – by individuals or organisations – to reap developmental benefits. It is these links with other initiatives that the mine action community needs to better understand if it is to enhance its development impact.

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A PICTURE OF MINE ACTION DOING DEVELOPMENT We will skip the post-conflict reconstruction and reconciliation period as a country makes the transition from war to peace (noting only that mine clearance of major arteries and facilities is often an important component of reconstruction) and look ahead to the beginning of reasonably normal development (see Figure 5). Investments in each of the spheres of well-being are being made to promote development. Secondary and tertiary connections among the spheres are increasing and strengthening. If this process proceeds long enough, and the ‘atmosphere’ heals sufficiently, development will become a dynamic, self-reinforcing process. Figure 5 lists a number of the benefits that might be delivered directly by, or spring from, mine action. But note that, except for the economic impact stemming from the local wages and purchases, these are all secondary benefits. �����������

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Some specific developmental impacts of mine action

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Mine action’s direct contributions remain unchanged when we switch from the humanitarian to development context: investments in protective security, MRE, survey, marking and clearance all are designed to enhance the security of those in the contaminated communities, but such actions do not determine the final use of the areas and facilities that have been made more secure. In short, the mine action community depends mainly on others to create the developmental benefits from mine action. Bearing this in mind, we can now turn to the evidence available concerning the potential magnitude of the typical benefits. MINE ACTION’S BENEFITS TO DEVELOPMENT: THE EVIDENCE TO DATE Measuring mine action’s contribution Mine action programmes will rarely have a measurable impact on a country’s macro (or overall) economic and development indicators. Even large mine action programmes represent only a small proportion of a country’s overall development effort. For example, in none of our set of mine-affected countries does mine action funding amount to even five per cent of official development assistance (ODA – foreign aid given by the wealthy industrialised countries) (see Table 1). And ODA itself, except for Mozambique, represents less than 15 per cent of these countries’ total economy (measured as gross domestic product – GDP). Thus, spending on mine action in these countries averages less than one-third of one per cent of GDP, which is too small to have a measurable impact on a country’s overall rates of growth and development. This does not mean, of course, that mine action programmes have negligible impacts; only that we have to dig deeper to examine the specific contributions such programmes make to development. Table 1

Mine action spending, foreign aid and GDP (in US$ millions)

Croatia BiH Cambodia Laos Angola Mozambique

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MA $ (est.)

ODA

GDP

MA$/ODA

MA$/GDP

$20 $18 $12 $8 $10 $10

$113 $639 $409 $243 $268 $935

$20,300 $4,800 $3,400 $1,800 $9,500 $3,600

2.67%4 2.50% 2.94% 3.29% 3.73% 1.07%

0.10%4 0.33% 0.35% 0.44% 0.11% 0.28%

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So we will begin with mine action’s direct contributions. The one isolated in Figure 6 shows the local wages and purchases made by mine action programmes, which further stimulate economic activity to the extent that these monies continue to circulate throughout local communities (the multiplier effect). This can be an important contribution, but it is not unique to mine action. One million dollars paid to, say, local deminers, will have much the same impact on the local economy as one million dollars paid to local workers on a road construction project. ���� ������

Figure 6

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Direct economic contributions of mine action

There are two situations in which the logic outlined above would �������������� need modification. The first is when there is a marked difference in the pattern of expenditures and (particularly) the proportion of imports between alternative projects. For example, if an extra million dollars in mine action funding is spent mainly on imported equipment and expatriate salaries, these expenditures would give little boost to the local economy. It appears that a high percentage of mine action funding does leak from the local economy via imports and expatriate salaries. Other things being equal, local authorities would prefer to allocate the available money to projects with lower import content. Thus the mine action community needs to be able to show why other things are not equal – and examine matters for which mine action possesses a unique or at least a comparative advantage. The second situation (relevant to development planners in choosing which type of projects to fund) is when donor money is earmarked for a certain type of project and would be lost to the recipient if that project did not go forward. Earmarking funds for mine action still appears common among donors. As noted previously, however, donors are aware that this creates a serious Samaritan’s Dilemma and are taking steps to reduce the incentive to treat mine action funding as a free good. In some cases, donors have simply stopped earmarking funds purely for mine action while, in other cases, they offer only ‘blended money’, in which

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funds earmarked for mine action are available to match general development aid money. In short, so long as donors earmark funds for mine action, even on a blended basis, then mine-afflicted countries have an additional incentive to support mine action programming. We believe the practice of earmarking will decline, and for our purposes here we will assume that any extra boost from additional funding is cancelled by the high import content into mine action relative to many other aid projects. We may now turn to the other direct contributions made by mine action: safe land and structures, marked hazards and MRE. These investments in protective security give rise to two intrinsically valuable things – a reduction in deaths and an enhanced sense of security – but, as discussed previously, we are as yet unable to determine how much a contribution mine action makes to the reduction in deaths and injuries. The enhanced sense of security is an extremely important contribution (to which we will return), but it is difficult to quantify such a benefit and it appears no-one has yet done so. Benefits quantifiable in monetary terms

Mine action

• Mine actions

Protective security

• Safe land & structures Economic development

• Less impoverishment • Higher living standards

• Fewer victims of landmine • Labour & skills of those • More money for saved from landmine economic investments accidents accidents Human needs • Reduced cost to • Improved health care health system

DEVELOPMENT

For the potential benefits in which mine action plays an instrumental role and that can be quantified in economic terms three channels have been examined to date (see Figure 7). All these potential benefits arise because mine action enhances protective security. The first stems from the direct use that could be made of land and structures declared safe after clearance or a reduction in the area suspected of contamination following survey (termed area reduction). The second and third economic benefits arise because mine action reduces deaths and injuries (although by how

Figure 7 Potential benefits measured in monetary terms Maslen – Fig 7

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much we cannot say). These benefits are: (1) the labour and skills of the people saved from accidents, which can be put to productive use; and (2) the savings to the health care system, which does not need to treat so many victims (these savings could come in the form of better service for others in need of health care, or in reduced health care budgets, freeing the money for other purposes). Cost-benefit studies of landmine clearance: land and structures In 2000–01, a spate of studies was commissioned to examine the contribution mine action was making to economic well-being in mine-afflicted countries.* The general methodology is straightforward**: cost-benefit case studies of representative types of land and structures are done and an estimate for the entire programme is generated by extrapolating the findings. In general the results have been encouraging. In Afghanistan (the most thorough study) for example, the economic benefit of the land cleared by the mine action programme in 1999 was estimated to be about $46 million against a cost of about $23 million. Thus an average of $2 in benefits was generated for each $1 in costs. Different types of land were evaluated (residential, irrigation works, roads, crop land, grazing land), and quantitative estimates were developed for the benefits in terms of the value of the land and animal losses that had been averted by clearance (this latter item was quite modest). However, there was a wide range of values within each of these land categories: for example, eight different case studies were done for both agricultural and grazing land. Figure 8 depicts the estimated benefits for each of the 28 case studies conducted. The very positive results estimated for clearance in Afghanistan stem from the fact that huge amounts of valuable land had been mined (e.g. urban areas, irrigation works, roads). Also, most agricultural crops are produced on the small proportion of the total land that is close to water sources. Other countries have different patterns of contamination and economic activity. In Bosnia, for example, many residential areas were mined or contaminated with UXO, but there are relatively few areas of intensive agriculture and the agricultural economy has not recovered much since the war. Therefore, the net benefits (i.e. after clearance costs) in urban areas are very high, but those from clearance of agricultural land are often negative. In Laos, urban areas are for the most part free of UXO contamination and there are three broad types of rice cultivation (the preponderant form of agriculture). These are, in decreasing order of productivity, irrigated ‘dry season’ cultivation, rain-fed ‘wet season’ cultivation and upland cultivation. In most cases, the clearance of the first two types of land is warranted on economic grounds alone, while clearance of upland rice growing areas is not. There also are some countries where the costs of clearance exceed the economic benefits for the bulk of the contaminated land. For example, Mozambique and Angola are sparsely populated and most agriculture has low productivity. In many areas there is ample land available, so farmers are not

4

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Estimated benefits from all case studies for Afghanistan

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116 Mine Action After Diana

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forced to cultivate land they suspect. In such countries, widespread clearance of rain-fed agricultural land is not warranted on purely economic grounds, but smaller, tightly targeted clearance of, say, water sites and irrigated crop land might well be justified on economic grounds. * The first of these (Harris, 2000) was seriously flawed and not to be trusted (see Paterson, 2001).The others were UNDP and GICHD (2001),World Bank and UNDP (2001), and GICHD (2001). ** Further detail is given in UNDP and GICHD, 2001, Chapter 3.

In broad terms, the cost-benefit studies described in the box indicate the proportion of contaminated land for which clearance is warranted in economic terms alone is affected by many factors including the pattern of contamination. But in general this proportion is: • higher when the country is comparatively wealthy (and thus, more productive); • higher when the country is more densely populated; and • higher when clearance costs are lower. None of the above conclusions should cause any surprise. Far more importantly, however, the findings suggest that much of the clearance being done by mine action programmes is justified in terms of the economic value of the land and structures alone, and clearance of certain types of land and structures is delivering exceptionally high returns in spite of the high cost of clearance. The studies also confirm that there are huge differences even within countries in the potential economic payoffs arising from clearance of different hazards, even for different hazards just within the ‘first priority’ category. This implies that large payoffs would accrue if assets were targeting more towards the valuable land. Three caveats require mention. 1. These calculations of economic values made possible by clearance or area reduction assume the land and structures will be put to good use shortly after the completion of the demining operations, which, of course, may not be the case. For example, people may flee the community if conflict resumes. 2. The calculations assume that the area suspected of contamination will not be used unless demining is done. 3. Data in most of the countries studied is extremely sparse and the researchers have had to make many assumptions (sometimes of heroic proportions) to obtain their estimates.

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Still, the preponderance of evidence suggests that well-targeted clearance and area reduction yields substantial economic returns in most mine-afflicted countries that remain at peace. In some cases, the returns are so large that any conceivable adjustments to the assumptions employed would not change the conclusion. Clearance, marking and MRE also yield economic benefits by reducing the numbers of accidents and thus the loss of human capital to the local economy. While the human toll of landmines has received an immense amount of deserved attention through the international campaign to ban landmines, and the burden such accidents place on fragile health systems has been widely written up, there has been little analysis of the economic dimensions of this, in part because (as noted previously) we as yet have no good way of determining the contribution that these components of mine action have made to the declines in landmine accidents observed in most mine-afflicted countries. If we cannot determine how many lives and limbs are saved, we cannot generate a good estimate of the economic value of the human capital this represents. That being said, we can summarise the limited findings to date. Cost-benefit studies of landmine clearance: lives and limbs The people ‘saved’ from landmine accidents are able to use their labour and skills in economically productive activities. Studies on the value of this are few because we cannot determine how many lives and limbs are saved by mine action, but some exist. In the Afghanistan study cited above, for example, the economic loss in lifetime production per death or injury from a landmine accident was estimated at only about $2,600 (£1,700). (There was also a ‘welfare loss’ added to put a monetary figure on the value of simply being alive and well, but this is a dodgy exercise.) It was then estimated (using heroic assumptions) that the 34.2 km2 cleared in 1999 would reduce the annual number of deaths and injuries by about 340. This implies a stream of annual benefits through this saved lives and limbs channel of about $885,000 which, over 15 years, came to about $6 million (£3.5 million) in ‘present value’ terms. This is small compared to the cost of clearance in 1999 (about $23 million/£13.5 million) and very small relative to the economic value calculated for the land and structures that were cleared in 1999 ($46 million/£27 million).* Other attempts have been made by economists to calculate the value of lost economic production due to landmine accidents that could be averted by mine action. Again, the potential economic benefits are quite small. In Bosnia, for example, the cost of lost production from all deaths and injuries caused

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by landmines in 1999 was estimated at less than $1.6 million (£0.95 million). In Cambodia, an economist came up with a lost production cost arising from 2,400 landmine deaths and injuries a year of only $241,200!** * **

All figures have been derived by the author from data in World Bank & UNDP, 2001, op. cit. Figures for Bosnia are from S. Mitchell (forthcoming) Death, Disability, Displaced Persons and Development:The Case of Landmines in Bosnia and Herzegovina.Those for Cambodia are from Harris, ‘Economics of landmine clearance: case study of Cambodia’.

A similar picture would emerge concerning mine action and the socio-cultural dimension of development (issues such as the opportunity to be recognised for one’s achievements and the right to be treated with dignity irrespective of one’s abilities and accomplishments). Victim assistance programmes do valuable work in terms of psycho-social and economic rehabilitation for landmine survivors and their families. But most of these activities are financed by international donors and typically the facilities and services so financed cover all those in the relevant classes of disabilities (e.g. amputees or visually impaired) and not simply the survivors of landmine accidents. Once again, the numbers of landmine victims in most cases will be dwarfed by those disabled by war, other accidents and disease, and the economic returns that could be quantified would almost certainly be negative (although no-one believes the value of such programmes should be assessed purely in economic terms). Costs of treating victims of landmine accidents One item that analysts have tried to generate estimates for is the burden that treating landmine victims represents to local health care systems.This burden is usually expressed in terms of the costs of medical care for those injured in landmine accidents. Estimates based on the amount of mine action funding provided for victim assistance typically are far too high because, except for a few instances, the facilities and services financed in this way provide services to all people with similar disabilities (e.g. prostheses centres serve all amputees not just victims of landmine accidents, who usually are in the minority). On the other hand, estimates built from the bottom up are generally too low as much of the data is missing. Bottom-up estimates generated for three countries* are given in Table 2. Medical costs of this magnitude are very small relative to total medical costs (for example, less than one-tenth of one per cent of total medical care costs

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in Bosnia). These quantitative estimates are, of course, terribly conservative. They do not include many items for which data were unavailable (such as the salaries of expatriate doctors in Afghanistan and Cambodia), but more fundamentally they do not include estimates for the value of care given by household members or others in the local community. Still, the numbers of landmine survivors are not nearly as great as other war victims, those injured in vehicle, farm and industrial accidents or, in some poor countries, victims of disabling diseases such as polio and onchocerciasis (river blindness). Such people are just as deserving of medical treatment as are landmine victims, and measures to reduce the incidence of, say, disabling diseases would often alleviate more disability, home care costs and suffering per dollar spent than does mine action. Table 2

Estimates of saved medical costs (in US$) Afghanistan

Acute care/injury Present value of continuing care/injury Total cost/injury (present value of lifetime care for injury, 2,000 including prosthesis) Present value of total medical costs 4,640,000 arising from all injuries in one year

Bosnia

Cambodia

4,495 950 5,445

550

218,315

26,400

In short, it should be clear that the comparative advantage of mine action relative to alternative expenditures of development dollars does not lie in the potential to reduce medical care costs for landmine victims. *

Figures for Afghanistan are derived from data in World Bank & UNDP, op. cit. Those for Bosnia are from Mitchell (forthcoming) Death, Disability, Displaced Persons and Development. Those for Cambodia are from Harris,‘Economics of landmine clearance: case study of Cambodia’.

Measuring our ignorance The limited evidence available to date suggests that mine action’s contribution in terms of land and structures that are safe to use is by far the largest potential benefit among those that can readily be quantified in monetary terms. In many countries, mine action appears to provide high economic returns and thus could be justified on economic grounds alone, assuming these potential benefits are in fact being realised.

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Unfortunately, few mine action organisations have systematic systems in place to monitor the use being made of the land and structures that have been rendered safe. This needs to be done as it represents the most concrete evidence available for both donors and the local government that mine action funding represents a sound investment in development. The evidence to date also indicates that there are extremely wide variations in the potential economic values of the land and structures that have been cleared. Even in countries such as Afghanistan where it seems clear that mine action is generating high economic returns, a great deal of clearance of low-value land is being done, while land and structures that are as much as 40 times as valuable remain contaminated. Priority-setting (or targeting) remains far from optimal. While deaths and injuries to innocent people are always human tragedies, the evidence suggests the economic burden of landmine accidents is modest compared to other common causes of untimely deaths and disabilities and small relative to the potential economic benefits from safe land and structures. We obviously have large gaps in our knowledge. Most glaring is our inability to date to gauge the effectiveness of any mine actions in terms of reducing the numbers of accidents. Some relevant research has been published,5 but the (very rough) figures in the Table 3 suggest we are far from a full understanding of the problem. Table 3 Rough estimates6 of landmine deaths and injuries per square kilometre of hazardous land

High priority Other Total Ratio: Total to Afghanistan total

Afghanistan

Bosnia

Cambodia

10.00 2.22 5.88 1 to 1

0.18 0.02 0.04 1 to 148

? ? 0.20 1 to 29

It seems improbable that, for example, there are 29 times as many deaths and injuries per area of contaminated land in Afghanistan as in Cambodia. Such figures may stem more from the poor quality and incomplete nature of data on both contamination and victims. If such basic data are not improved, it will be well-nigh impossible to draw firm connections between mine actions and the tragic carnage on innocent people.

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We also remain ignorant about two other contributions that mine action makes to well-being and, therefore, development, which seem fundamental and which are amenable to research that is likely to improve the integration of mine action into development. 1. The contribution that a variety of mine action interventions make to the sense of security that people in mine-affected communities enjoy (see Figure 9). To put the case simply, reasonable people accord value to their own sense of security and to their confidence that their family members, friends and fellow citizens will not be maimed as they conduct their daily affairs. While this value is not typically expressed in quantitative terms, there are techniques available to obtain a rough-but-reasonable measure of how much value citizens place on various types of public services. One approach (termed ‘willingness-to-pay’) has already been used to estimate the demand for public services in many developing countries.7 Such research could then be combined with surveys of communities before and after the delivery of some type of mine action to gauge the effectiveness of different actions.

Mine action

• Mine actions

Protective security

• Enhanced sense of security

DEVELOPMENT

Figure 9 Enhancing the sense of security 2. The second potential contribution that merits further research, particularly in countries recovering from internal conflict – the Maslen – Fig 9 effect mine action has on various aspects of a country’s political development, is illustrated in Figure 10. Mine action could create many potential benefits that would enhance political rights and reconciliation, thus helping to clear the poisoned atmosphere and, more generally, to stimulate democratic and transparent governance practices. Three points are perhaps of particular relevance. First, mine action could play a valuable role in providing employment to demobilised soldiers after an internal conflict. Demobilisation is often a key component in the peace-building and reconciliation processes. However, if rapid demobilisation is done without forethought or in a slipshod fashion it can further damage the social fabric because there may be few prospects for tens of thousands of young men who have experience with, and often

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Mine Action and Development: Doing the Right Job Mine action

• Mine actions

Protective services

• Responsiveness to ‘voice’ • Fair & equitable treatment • Absorption of demobilised combatants

Figure 10

123

DEVELOPMENT

Political development

• Increased government legitimacy • Social reconciliation • Greater political engagement

Contributing to political development

Maslen – Fig 10

access to, weapons that would serve them well should they resort to banditry. Demining is a labour-intensive activity and could absorb large numbers of these young men, providing them with employment, training, discipline and the opportunity to garner respect. Further, if hiring for mine action staff is done fairly, so that reasonably equitable numbers of each faction are employed, a strong message for reconciliation is broadcast. While many mine action programmes employ former combatants, there are few if any cases in which an explicit link has been made between mine action organisations and a demobilisation programme. There does does seem to have been any systematic research done on whether adherents to the different factions of an internal conflict have had equitable access to employment in mine action. Of course, it is difficult to coordinate effectively in the early post-conflict period, but it appears that this potential contribution by mine action has been largely unexploited. Second, mine action could support social reconciliation and the evolution of sound political processes at the local level by creating channels for those most directly affected by landmine contamination to have a voice in determining local priorities. Of course, mine action is not unique in this capacity, but the landmine problems faced by a severely contaminated community have features that suggest a community development process would pay significant dividends, both in terms of selecting appropriate responses to the various hazards and in fostering reasonably democratic and transparent processes for identifying community priorities. Landmine contamination in a seriously impacted community would be viewed

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as an important issue by a large proportion of the people and thus merit the effort to participate; the nature of the problems is likely to be reasonably clear and concrete; and local residents are almost certain to possess relevant information about which the mine action personnel are unaware. There is no one best strategy for eliciting ‘voice’ because communities and their power structures vary so much within and across countries. For example, in a post-conflict situation with a reasonably developmental regime in place, the best strategy may be to work via local government officials, helping legitimise the state. In other cases, linking with NGOs already engaged in community development activities might be a better approach. In some cases it might be necessary for mine action organisations to develop in-house capacity for this type of work, an approach the Peace Research Institute in Oslo (PRIO) is piloting in Mozambique. Another strategy adopted by Handicap International in both Afghanistan and Cambodia is to establish networks of community volunteers to serve as a link between remote communities and the mine action organisations. A word of caution: any such effort to give local community residents a voice in mine action priorities must be matched by a readiness on the part of mine action organisations to be responsive to their input. This has been a problem in a number of programmes in which the clearance organisations are structured to undertake large tasks efficiently, which requires significant logistical support. The lead time for planning such operations means these organisations find it difficult to respond within a reasonable time to community requests, while their preference for large tasks may mean they are unwilling to respond to any requests concerning small but potentially vital clearance tasks. Third, mine action needs to provide – and be seen to be providing – fair treatment to all affected communities and citizens. This means at least taking strong steps to avoid corruption and to deal decisively with any allegations that surface. This is not the place to dwell on the details, but allegations of corruption have been an Achilles’ heel in many of the oldest and largest mine action programmes, and failures to address this problem would represent the greatest single threat of a dramatic decline in donor support. Thus, elements of a research agenda should include the following issues intended to increase the understanding of how to enhance the contribution mine action makes to development:

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• Priority-setting systems to better target expensive mine action assets on those hazards that offer the greatest potential for advancing development. • Monitoring systems to determine what proportion of potential benefits are actually realised, and to uncover patterns that would further strengthen the targeting process. • Continued efforts to enhance the accuracy and completeness of data on landmine accidents. • Studies in mine-afflicted communities to determine – through willingness-to-pay and other approaches – the relative value residents place on mine actions to enhance their sense of physical security relative to other public services that might be provided. • Studies of how community-based priority-setting can enhance both the direct effectiveness of mine action and the supplementary contribution that mine action can make to community governance processes. • Multi-country studies on how mine action occasionally falls prey to corruption to develop ways and means for insulating the programmes from this menace. Also, in countries that have recently suffered from an internal conflict or where ethnic or regional tensions could explode into such a conflict, the following items should also form part of the research agenda: • Case studies documenting concrete examples of how mine action programmes have accelerated or inhibited peace-building and national reconciliation. • Case studies on how mine action programmes capitalised upon or missed opportunities to play a central role in the demobilisation process. Steps are being taken already along many of these lines, but need to be accelerated. More progress also needs to be made in adding social scientists and development management specialists to the existing mix of mine action disciplines and in making this diverse community work in a multi-disciplinary fashion rather than as independent services. The desired result is a broadened perspective that does not ignore such critical matters as safety, quality and efficiency but that

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also seeks to embrace the more challenging issue of developmental effectiveness. This requires people involved with the programmes, and vested with adequate authority, whose habits of mind cause them to ask the sometimes embarrassing questions, such as: why can’t our information system allow us to tell how much of a contribution we’re making to the reduction of accidents, and why aren’t we fixing this problem?; how can we assess the degree to which communities value mine action (and which actions) compared to better schools, clinics, water systems and so on?; and how can we be more certain that the land and structures we demine are used in the intended manner, by the intended beneficiaries, and at the intended time? When we see more people being rewarded for asking such tough questions and struggling to find answers, then we will know a mine action programme is well on its way to doing development in an effective manner. There is one other question that a development-oriented mine action programme should be asking, to which we will now turn: how can we coordinate more effectively with others doing development? MAINSTREAMING MINE ACTION The new aid architecture is built increasingly around such principles as donor–recipient partnerships with the recipient ‘in the driver’s seat’, a balanced focus on both poverty reduction and economic growth, results-based approaches to aid management, and sustainability. It is also dependent on greater selectivity on the part of donors to focus their scarce resources in those countries whose governments are committed to development and to those sectors that are likely to deliver the best results in terms of poverty reduction. Leaving aside for the moment that donor practices often fall well short of such a principled approach, the cornerstone for this aid edifice is recipient ownership. Developing countries are to take the lead in setting their objectives, deciding the appropriate strategy (now issued in what is termed a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper) and coordinating the donors. In theory, therefore, the country’s development authorities are the people generating the development plan that will clearly signal the extent to which mine action is a national priority. The mine action community will need to get on

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the agenda of these people if it is to stay on the radar of the donors to that country. How does this agenda evolve? All development strategies reflect some mix of top-down and bottom-up elements. The nature of this mix varies across countries but, because development is such a complex phenomenon, most practitioners have lost faith in the practicality of the national government collecting all the relevant information and formulating detailed development plans to implement the selected strategy. Therefore, what is now imposed from the top are the national objectives, the broad strategy for achieving these, and (the essential link between strategy and implementation) an allocation of funds in line with the strategy. Ideally, the latter is based on a medium-term expenditure framework that projects the fiscal revenues that will be available in the coming and future years, then sets sustainable expenditure limits for overall government spending and for each of the sector programmes, typically for a three-year period. These expenditure allocations should be based on more detailed strategies for each of the key sectors (agriculture, industry, transportation, health, etc.; the breakdown will typically follow that of the government ministries) – often supplemented by other strategies for ‘cross-cutting initiatives’ (e.g. rural development, which may require action by six or more ministries). The results of all this are then reflected in the national budget, covering a one-year period and providing legislative authority for spending, allocated among: • national ministries (typically with some detail provided on the programmes run by each ministry); • allocations for transfers to parastatal bodies, which could include state-owned enterprises (for electrical power, ports, railways, etc. and, in some countries, the mine action authority and centre) plus special bodies created for development projects that cut across ministerial lines (e.g. integrated rural development projects); • allocations to sub-national governments (provinces/states and, in some cases, districts) to provide resources for the delivery of some local public services. The amounts allocated to sub-national levels depend not only on the fiscal resources the national government can command, but also on the constitutional breakdown of authority between the central and sub-national governments, plus the fiscal authorities reserved

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for the sub-national governments (often minor items such as licence fees, building permits, and various other user fees). In theory, then, each sub-national government has the fiscal resources to discharge its responsibilities, most often including the delivery of local public services and land use control. These governments can then develop their own development plans, reflecting a balance between local needs and national objectives, and such details need not be reflected in the national strategy. An understanding of who has the authority over what development issues is absolutely critical if mine action is to engage effectively with the broader community of development actors. First, it determines what points of contact must be made for what types of decisions. The simple fact is that many of the development issues relating to mine action – and particularly those relating to land use – fall under sub-national authorities. Second, the pattern of political and fiscal decentralisation is likely to be mirrored in the approach that officials in the recipient government deem appropriate for the allocation of donor funds for mine action. In more decentralised countries, the inclination will be to distribute funds among sub-national governments and let them determine the priorities, with only broad guidelines or criteria imposed by the national mine action authority. Donor frustrations concerning the transparency of the prioritysetting process stem in some cases from their lack of understanding that the political framework of many countries dictates that such decisions fall largely to local officials. This then has been coupled with the failure of national mine action authorities and their international advisers to develop accountability systems that are adequate for holding local officials to account for these decisions. In fact, the most interesting of the current attempts to improve the alignment of mine action with development priorities have occurred at the sub-national level. In Cambodia, a follow-up project to the Landmine Impact Survey provided both the landmine databases and additional databases containing socio-economic and geographic information concerning each village to Land Use Planning Units (LUPUs) in four provinces. LUPU staff now respond to requests from both mine action organisations and outside agencies for data analysis. Each LUPU (which form part of the provincial administration) supports a Provincial Rural Development Committee and together they organise village-level exercises to select priorities and consultations with stakeholders such

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as NGOs working in the province. In Cambodia, this has tremendous potential for linking mine action to, say, poverty reduction because a ‘poverty mapping’ initiative has developed commune-level poverty tallies by combining Geographic Information System (GIS) data with a Socio-Economic Survey and the General Population Census. Another exciting experiment is taking place in Croatia. Like many former socialist countries, Croatia has large amounts of demographic, geographic and economic data available in GIS format, a strong tradition of physical planning and many well-trained professionals in the technical disciplines. Drawing upon all three, in 2001 the Croatian Mine Action Centre commissioned a pilot effort to develop a County Mine Action Plan using a mathematically sophisticated multi-criteria analysis to highlight those hazards that seem to offer the greatest development potential. For a third example, the Survey Action Centre working with Handicap International is conducting a pilot effort in Bosnia as an extension to a standard Landmine Impact Survey. As soon as a severely impacted community is identified via the LIS, a small team conducts a follow-up visit to document more thoroughly the nature of the socio-economic problems created by each hazard affecting that community and consults with residents and municipal officials to devise a plan outlining what type of mine action response is required for the most problematic hazards. The experiment in Bosnia is still under way and the full benefits of both the Cambodia and Croatia initiatives have yet to be garnered. This is no criticism as they were pilot efforts, but it remains to be seen how committed national authorities are to aligning mine action with development, as this may require major changes on how their programmes are planned and implemented. For example, mine action resources may have to be deployed in ways that increase the average clearance costs per unit of land, which will rankle some who have built their reputations on maximising efficiency and would need to rework their standing operating procedures, logistics systems, etc. These three pilot efforts also focus on sub-national levels, so a remaining hurdle is to strengthen the links between mine action and development planning at the national level. This is essential if the resources available to the overall programme are to be properly allocated among the different parts of the country and across the various sectors (agriculture, transportation, etc.), although in raising such issues mine action officials need to be well prepared for political

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resistance on the part of those provinces and sectors that would lose from such a decision. Getting senior government authorities firmly on side is also essential if mechanisms are to be established to hold local officials to account for their mine action decisions. And, in many countries, including Cambodia and Bosnia, mine action officials must be far more proactive in securing financial commitments from their government to allay donor concerns that mine action is not seen as a national priority. Differences between the pilot efforts in Cambodia and Croatia also illustrate a strategic dilemma facing all mine action programmes. Should a mine action programme build in-house capacity for socioeconomic analysis so it can determine its own priorities or should it remain a technical service that will receive guidance from development planning authorities who already have such capacity? Cambodia illustrates the problems associated with an in-house solution. The LUPUs remain isolated from the Land Ministry in Phnom Penh and from the national ministries responsible for key sectoral programmes such as roads. There is duplication, and the task of forging useful links between the LUPUs and these national ministries may be complicated by bureaucratic turf battles. In Croatia the mine action centre did not start by building inhouse capacity for the socio-economic analysis. Instead it advised the county and municipal officials that their governments retained the responsibility for the final selection of clearance priorities, but that the MAC would provide clear recommendations based on thorough technical and socio-economic analysis. The MAC then engaged a university professor as a short-term consultant to conduct the multicriteria analysis. This approach seems appropriate for Croatia because the country has reasonably capable governments at the national, county and municipal levels. The danger is that the MAC may not fully exploit the pilot effort because there remains no in-house unit championing the issue, and the exercise may appear to most MAC managers as a complex and bothersome diversion from what they perceive as their core task – to clear landmines efficiently. Each country will need to devise an appropriate response to this dilemma. In countries with reasonably capable and committed governments, the appropriate response is likely to be more along the lines adopted in Croatia. Substantial in-house capacity for socioeconomic analysis is probably not required. Instead, a good liaison

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unit reporting to senior management and charged with the task of forging the links with government ministries, parastatals and subnational authorities probably would suffice. These links could be based on working groups that bring together the sectoral and provincial planners (who will identify priorities based on socio-economic considerations) with mine action representatives (who will advise on technical solutions for the priorities identified). This approach would be aided if the liaison unit had a discretionary budget to engage outside experts to help draft the initial mine action plan to support each sector’s or province’s development programme. Conversely, in countries that lack a capable and committed national government, more in-house socio-economic capacity will be required. In countries where many ministries are incapable the mainstream is but a trickle and the mine action unit will need to take the lead on the analysis. Such analysis should be based whenever possible on information and participation from the appropriate ministries: the goal must never be to develop a mine action plan in isolation from the responsible organs of a legitimate government. Alternatively, where the government is not committed to development and poverty reduction, the mainstream can lead to a swamp. Some socio-economic capacity is needed to validate the priorities put forward by national ministries and sub-national governments to guard against corruption. One last point: in all instances mine action programme must make their case! They must do a better job of demonstrating – in quantitative terms where possible – the many and varied contributions mine action is making to development. Programmes also need to demonstrate results on the ground and not simply possibilities, which means they need to provide for follow-up surveys on a systematic basis to confirm the intended beneficiaries are making good use of the opportunities created by mine action. Mine action programmes that fail to make their case will be doing themselves out of a job before their job is done.

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7 A ‘Who’s Who’ of Mine Action The more expeditiously we can end this plague on earth caused by the landmine, the more readily can we set about the constructive tasks to which so many give their hand in the cause of humanity. Diana, Princess of Wales In the previous chapter, Ted Paterson outlined the case for a close intermeshing of mine action and development. The challenge of ‘doing the right job’ demands that mine action should strive to change lives for the better at a reasonable cost by positioning itself firmly within the development mainstream. Much of what Ted has to say will seem to the development community a glimpse of the blindingly obvious. This is not so for the mine action community. As Judy Grayson, previously the Deputy Director of the UN Development Programme’s Mine Action Unit in New York, writes, ‘the mine action community has traditionally kept itself quite separate from the development community’.1 Judy Grayson ascribes the separation (some would argue it is a chasm) to a variety of reasons: ‘One enduring factor is the distinct cultural differences between the broad groups that tend to work in the two fields … With the exception of mine risk education and advocacy staff, mine action personnel come primarily from military backgrounds, and are new to some of the basic concepts (and frustrations) of development work.’ Even Diana made reference to the background of deminers, speaking of ‘our team’ because ‘men … who volunteer for this hazardous work are usually former members of our own Services’.2 The largely military background is still a reality of mine action, albeit one that is changing. But for many, a military technical background still typifies the skills needed to counsel programmes with the objective of ‘getting the job done right’ taking precedence over ‘getting the right job done’ and certainly over ‘getting the job done as cheaply as possible’. Yet, as Judy Grayson rightly notes, the ‘cultural differences’ she identifies cut both ways. Although the ‘concept’ of mine action as a 132

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‘humanitarian and a development activity now has gained acceptance within the mine action community, this does not automatically imply that the development community has embraced the notion simultaneously with reciprocal and sudden fervour’. This chapter seeks to explain who makes up the mine action community – which, in total, provides employment for tens of thousands of people worldwide – by looking at some of the key actors and their contributions to the discipline. For our tour, we look at eight categories of actor: the mine-affected community, the military, the governments of affected countries, NGOs, commercial companies, donor governments, the UN, and other regional and international bodies. We begin with the stated target of all mine action, the mine- and UXO-affected community. THE MINE-AFFECTED ‘COMMUNITY’ In June 1997 experts from all over the world met in Bad Honnef in Germany ‘in order to draft a framework for comprehensive mine action programmes’. The result of the meeting was the ‘Bad Honnef Guidelines’, which propose a framework for possible, locally adapted, activities. One of the three central principles of the Guidelines is the participation of the mine-affected community:

Since the needs and aspirations of those people affected by mines and not the particular interests of the funders must be the starting point for all endeavours, mine action programmes require the appropriate involvement of those affected, at all levels and from the beginning. In 1999, NGOs reaffirmed their belief in the Guidelines, stating that

all initiatives in support of the elimination of landmines should … take into account the knowledge, experiences and social aspirations of the mine-affected communities, ensuring that community participation takes precedence over bureaucracy, and institutionalised approaches. We have already seen how the international standards, the IMAS, accord priority to community liaison, ‘one of the strategic principles of mine action’. The IMAS specifically note that community liaison

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involves communities in the decision making process, (before, during and after demining), in order to establish priorities for mine action. In this way mine action programmes aim to be inclusive, community focused and ensure the maximum involvement of all sections of the community. Thus, the community is the raison d’être for everything done in mine action, the ‘focus of all efforts’, the ‘entity to whom mine action is ultimately accountable’. According to the IMAS, the community’s involvement ‘includes joint planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of projects’. So, who or what is this amorphous body mine action calls the community, whose active participation it demands and to whom it seemingly pays such deference? As the Landmine Impact Surveys have found in country after country, delimiting a community is not as straightforward as one might surmise. Defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as ‘an organised political, municipal, or social body; a body of people living in the same locality’, its outer and inner limits are subject to diverse interpretation, argument and conjecture. Is, for instance, a poorly frequented café at a crossroads in the deserts of Yemen a community? The Survey suggests it is. How about a family homestead in rural Azerbaijan, where mother, father and grandparents, displaced returnees from the conflict with neighbouring Armenia, have eked out a few hundred square metres of isolated existence amid the surrounding minefields? The UN, for the moment at least, seems to say no. Participation: rhetoric or reality? In a number of instances, community development or involvement has been a primary, or at least secondary, objective of mine action. The Mines Advisory Group’s innovation of community liaison activities is a clear example of this. We have seen how Norwegian People’s Aid has sought to involve the community through its ‘task impact assessment’, a simple but potentially effective method of guaranteeing a minimum of community involvement in mine action. In addition, Handicap International, the French mine action NGO, and the International Committee of the Red Cross have both tried to make their mine awareness programmes ‘community-based’. The Kosovo mine action programme, albeit after prompting from NGOs, did make a serious and genuine attempt to make mine

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awareness and clearance teams work together in a coordinated fashion and tried to make the community’s views at least part of the planning process. For this, the UN’s mine action coordination centre deserves credit. In Sudan, Landmine Action has sought to develop cross-conflict community-based organisations to conduct mine action. Yet too often we cite the community as an integral part of mine action, when in fact it means a group of largely innocent bystanders, maintained in ignorance as ‘beneficiaries’ who should be grateful for everything done for them. In Azerbaijan, for instance, one of many programmes that proclaims its pursuance of the IMAS, a formal handover of demined land to the community does not yet take place, even via its local government representatives, much less a full involvement of the community in planning and executing mine action. They are by no means alone in this, but if the community is not convinced that the land (and which area exactly?) is safe to use, they will not use it and hundreds of thousands of demining dollars will have been wasted. But perhaps the greatest hypocrisy is in the general attitude of mine action towards what are often termed ‘village deminers’. These are unlicensed, untrained (at least formally) individuals who clear mines of their own volition from their own land and sometimes, for a fee, will clear neighbouring villages of at least some of the contamination threatening lives and livelihoods. Mine action seemingly adopts the approach of the ‘three wise monkeys’ – see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil – by ignoring the very existence of village deminers. Let’s look at the case of Cambodia to illustrate the point. Donors have invested tens of millions of pounds in mine and UXO clearance by demining agencies in Cambodia since 1992, but the consensus view in demining circles is that village deminers have cleared most of the mines. A 1998 CMAC estimate suggested village deminers had cleared a total of nearly 69.8 square kilometres since 1992 – more than CMAC, MAG and HALO combined (66 square kilometres by 1999). In the course of conducting the Landmine Impact Survey in Cambodia, Geospatial International Inc. found that 83 per cent of villages with a mine problem had benefited from clearance by village deminers.3 And yet, with the exception of a study by Handicap International,4 there has not even been any research conducted into why or how they operate, let alone into the issue of whether their expertise can

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be mobilised in a systematic way to the tasks of risk and casualty reduction. The Handicap International study found that deminers were nearly all male, mostly farmers (although most had served in the military and some had extensive experience of handling mines) and mostly cleared land for their own use, although sometimes they would clear for other villagers on request. Most (59 per cent) cleared only landmines, not UXO, and they cleared to gain access to land for farming, houses or resources such as water. They cleared land because they said they couldn’t wait for official clearance agencies, even though nearly three-quarters of the villages surveyed had benefited from some form of official clearance. International NGOs have veered away from taking any action on village deminers on the grounds that providing information about safer practices would only encourage more people to put themselves at risk by attempting clearance. Providing equipment or training is similarly unacceptably risky because of the problems in ensuring that equipment is maintained and clearance conducted to proper standards. NGOs could not put themselves in the position of accepting responsibility for accidents that occurred during or after clearance if risk had not been minimised by imposing international standards. The reverse side of that argument, however, is that clearance to international standards (IMAS) provides a ‘Rolls-Royce’ service that only benefits a small number of people. A strategy that relies exclusively on formal clearance only prolongs the hazard for a majority of people who don’t benefit and feel compelled to resort to alternative methods of tackling their problem, even when fully cognisant of the risk. The IMAS claim that community liaison ‘works with communities to develop specific interim safety strategies promoting individual and community behavioural change. This is designed to reduce the impact of mine/UXO on individuals and communities until such time as the threat is removed’. In truth, when the community determines a ‘safety strategy’ that mine action professionals do not agree with, the professionals tend to disengage. Village demining goes on whether approved or not and appears to be successful, at least in terms of progress in clearance. As we have seen, Handicap International is an all-too-rare example of an organisation that has showed a willingness to try to bridge the gap between the community and mine action. CMAC, as with other coordinating bodies in countries where this occurs (e.g. Afghanistan,

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Laos), should swiftly remedy the absence of dialogue with village deminers and see how their work can be supported and deaths and injuries minimised. THE MILITARY Some who cast doubt on the ability or appropriateness of the community to demine would prefer the military to take responsibility for this aspect of mine action: ‘They laid ’em, they can pick ’em up!’ Indeed, following on from Judy Grayson’s assertion that the separation between mine action and development professionals is a two-way affair, many development organisations defend their lack of involvement in mine action on the basis that mines and UXO are a technical military matter outside their expertise. This is, however, just another mine action myth. The reality is that although, of course, military forces have an important role to play in demining, they are not the only players, nor should they be. For, as many soldiers have found to their cost, laying mines is nowhere near as dangerous as clearing and destroying them. Clearance operations require specialist training, appropriate equipment and procedures, but they can be learnt just as well by a civilian as by a soldier. Advantages of the military Certainly, the military, local or foreign, can bring ‘knowledge of explosives, training and logistics’ to mine action, or more specifically to mine clearance and stockpile destruction. They also have the advantage of having their salaries already paid, thus constituting an apparent cost-saving for operations. Potentially of great significance is the contribution to peacebuilding that using the soldiers of former warring parties can make to an otherwise uncertain post-conflict environment. Although not formally linked to the demobilisation process, one of the early successes of the Mozambique programme, amid so many difficulties, was its joint training of troops from both the former government and former opposition force and their subsequent deployment in the same demining platoons. Sometimes, the mine action community has not looked closely enough at how the army might be better exploited in addressing mine and UXO contamination. The case of Cambodia is instructive in this regard.

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Conspicuously absent from any CMAC document, or from discussion inside or outside Cambodia of long-term options, is any reference to one of the critical assets in mine/UXO clearance in Cambodia: the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF). Most stakeholders seem either suspicious or generally wary of the role of the military, yet the RCAF also represents a major demining resource and one of the few obviously sustainable long-term options for mine/UXO clearance. Engineers have extensive mine and UXO clearance skills and its Engineering Brigade has some 288 deminers, but there are up to 10,000 troops with mine clearance experience in other army units deployed across the country. NGOs and donors have been put off looking at RCAF’s potential by the problems associated with Cambodia’s military. It is a politically powerful institution unused to paying much heed to the scruples or concerns of others: as a security agency it is ultimately a tool of an often unsavoury political agenda and, like the government, is said to be riddled with corruption. In terms of demining, it works quickly and cheaply, but anecdotal evidence suggests its deminers do not work to international standards, its operations have no transparency (so clearance records and claims cannot be verified) and there are concerns that assets may be used for lucrative, if illegal business, such as logging. However, the Engineering Brigade shows some signs of willingness to professionalise itself and upgrade standards. In 2003, for the first time, it sent some personnel to attend an explosive ordnance disposal course given by the US military at CMAC’s training school. It has also invested – presumably with proceeds from commercial mine clearance projects – in buying new detectors and taking advantage of training and maintenance available from the supplier. How RCAF’s mine and UXO clearance capacity is developed could be influenced by donors or multilateral funding agencies such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. RCAF competes for public works contracts on the basis of price. Low military salaries allow it to quote a price for clearance – 34 US cents (a little over 20 pence) a square metre – less than half the reported operating cost of CMAC. The US approach and the disadvantages of the military On the basis of these advantages, the US has tended to put the military at the heart of its mine action strategy. Its largely bilateral approach sees members of the army’s Special Forces receive a short

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training course in mine action, typically over two weeks, based on IMAS standards, at the US military base at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri.5 Special Forces’ teams are then deployed to a country that has requested its assistance in order to train the local military, spending several weeks helping the country to establish a mine action programme. The US has ploughed tens of millions of dollars into this approach, the results of which have been uneven. It is said that one in every three deminers was originally trained by the US. If true, this is an impressive statistic, but it says little about the quality of the training. The principal concern relates to credibility. The US Congress has imposed a ban on allowing the military to enter minefields as part of any training programme for other countries. The US military is therefore only legally permitted to clear mines as part of operational, not training, missions. How can you hope to teach someone to do something you’ve never actually done yourself? A number of other factors also lead us to question the quality of the training. 1. The US programme has, in the past at least, focused mainly on clearance operations. This was indicated by the frequent decision by host countries to call the coordinating body set up as a result of US assistance a ‘national demining office’, rather than a ‘mine action centre’. Partly this may have been motivated by US embarrassment at the UN definition of mine action, which includes advocacy to ban the use of anti-personnel mines and stockpile destruction, neither of which are part of the US approach as it is not party to the Ottawa Treaty. Happily, this situation has now changed, as is evidenced by the case of Iraq, where the US approach has followed the recommendations of the IMAS. Further, the US military’s approach to mine risk education, as with other militaries, seems out of date. Its psychological operations branch concentrates excessively on the high-tech production of printed media such as posters and leaflets, an unsustainable and typically inappropriate approach in a developing country. Too often, militaries in general (not just the US) subconsciously or consciously replace the word ‘communication’ with ‘propaganda’. 2. The US assistance focuses on the clearance of landmines as opposed to UXO. Sometimes this may be appropriate, sometimes not. In Laos, for instance, the initial US training was directed to a problem that had not, or hardly, existed. The overwhelming threat

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is from ordnance dropped by the US in the 1960s and 1970s, but Lao staff were trained in skills that were of little use to them and had subsequently to be retrained in basic explosive ordnance disposal techniques. Indeed, the Department of Defense may consider broadening the content of its assistance packages in the future. 3. The motivation of the Department of Defense and its trainees may also be open to question. Beyond the humanitarian imperative, it is accepted that the US humanitarian demining programme is ‘a vehicle to achieve wider purposes’ – exposing US Special Forces to other languages and cultures, and training foreign counterparts in US methods of working. This is not wrong per se, but it has been suggested that the programmes might continue even if there were no humanitarian benefit. It does imply, though, that other priorities besides clearing mines may compete for the trainers’ and trainees’ attention. On the other hand, the idea that has circulated in more than one country to have benefited from US assistance is that sometimes these programmes serve as cover for covert intelligence-gathering operations – an idea dismissed as ‘malicious rumour’ by the State Department.6 4. There is – admittedly inconclusive – evidence to support the assertion that a mine action programme should be under overall civilian control:7 indeed, many programmes that began life under the management of the military have since changed, or at least considered changing, to civilian management. As Ambassador Dahinden asserts, ‘civilian authorities are better placed for longer term capacity-building and the setting of priorities based on socioeconomic factors’. Turning over to civilian management Thailand, one the countries assisted by the US military, is a good example of how things can go awry when a government puts all its mine action ‘eggs’ in a military ‘basket’. After joining the Ottawa Treaty, Thailand set up a National Mine Action Committee and then the Thai Mine Action Centre (TMAC) in January 1999. The government considered demining a securityrelated issue that was naturally the remit of the military and left it largely to the Armed Forces Supreme Command to pursue as it saw fit. With a financial crisis under way, the government had few funds available to devote to mine action, leaving the military to set up the operation from its existing budget and whatever assistance it could

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mobilise from foreign donors – thus also removing much incentive for the military to treat mine action as a priority. The inability to attract foreign funding has helped to spur a move to turn TMAC into a civilian agency. In 2002, a UN-supplied technical adviser working with TMAC made recommendations to the Armed Forces Supreme Commander to convert it into a civilian operation. Details of what he proposed are not recorded but the military did not show any interest in following up those recommendations. The UN, for its part, did not send another adviser after expiry of his contract. The present Director-General of TMAC, Major-General Gitti Suksomstarn, is recommending that TMAC be privatised. General Gitti provides few details of the privatisation plan but says he is proposing TMAC should keep its name while becoming a civilian-run agency reporting to the Ministry of Defence, not the Armed Forces Supreme Command. It would continue to operate with military demining teams but would also start regular training of civilian deminers. In the meantime, TMAC’s shortage of funds has left it unable to develop the database it received on completion of a national Landmine Impact Survey. Two years ago TMAC had five staff, including a database manager and network manager paid by UNDP to run the database. However, the contracts of the database manager and network manager expired at the end of 2002, and the military declined to pay their salaries, which, at 36,000 baht (about $868, some £500) and 30,000 baht ($722 or £400) a month far exceed Thai government official salaries (about $150/£95 for a graduate with a BA, $180/£110 a month for an MA). This state of affairs appears to represent more a waste of a costly asset than a setback to mine action planning and implementation. For example, the value of the Landmine Impact Survey database for subsequent operations has been limited by the fact that all data, originally collected in Thai, was translated into and published in English, and is therefore unusable by most provincial authorities and many personnel in the demining units.8 NGOs working on mine awareness programmes said they suspected the database was not being kept up to date. The only civilian agency active in mine clearance in Thailand is the Chatichai Choonhavan Foundation, which was set up in 1993 and became involved in demining in 2001 when it sent 20 volunteers recruited from the provinces for training by TMAC in manual clearance – the first TMAC training of civilians.9

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The group operates with up to 15 deminers deployed in two teams and plans to recruit another team of 15. Its deminers receive food and upkeep but no salary. Despite such austere terms of engagement, many villagers have expressed willingness to assist demining but have so far lacked training opportunities. Exploiting the military asset As Ambassador Dahinden, writes, ‘The use of the military in mine action has been a controversial issue since the beginning.’ But perhaps, the US approach aside, most informed opinion has swung too far against the use of military forces in mine action. Indeed, the UN is currently reassessing its policy on this issue. Let us hope that in the future the use of military forces will be guided by a dispassionate assessment of their strengths and weaknesses in the different aspects of mine action, rather than an ideological bias in favour or against. GOVERNMENTS OF AFFECTED COUNTRIES The responsibility of the government Even with the pros and cons of using militaries, the International Mine Action Standards declare that ‘The primary responsibility for mine action lies with the Government of the mine-affected state.’10 This does not relieve a foreign nation that uses landmines or creates UXO to escape its moral and, in certain circumstances, legal responsibilities.11 But nor does it allow a country to shrug its shoulders and do nothing to tackle contamination on its territory on the basis that the ‘polluter should pay’. The Ottawa Treaty makes clearance of anti-personnel mines an obligation to be fulfilled by the state whose territory is affected,12 but it also requires international cooperation and assistance to support that state. Yet, so far, of the affected states parties to the treaty, only Costa Rica has managed to complete clearance of anti-personnel mines. Many states are too ready to sit back and wait for the cheques to come rolling in. And, contrary to a number of experiences, having the UN pay the salaries of what are, in truth, government officials stationed at the mine action centre (and inflated salaries at that, much higher than typical government rates) is not capacity-building. A positive or hindering factor? As the IMAS state, ‘The responsibility of the affected State is normally vested in a national mine action authority which is charged with the

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regulation, management and coordination of a national mine action programme.’13 This demands active government involvement and contribution to mine action, but, as pointed out in Chapter 6, it rarely happens – and not only as far as funding is concerned. In Vietnam, for instance, a country that remains outside the Ottawa Treaty, the government has seemingly been a retardant force in mine action. Since around 2000, Vietnamese officials have shown interest in the possibility of setting up a national mine action authority or board to coordinate humanitarian demining. In 2000, officials visited Cambodia, Laos and Thailand to look at the national mine action programmes in those countries. So far, however, Vietnamese authorities have taken no action. The US State Department agreed in 2000 to finance a nationwide landmine impact survey by Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation and earmarked $6 million (£3.85 million) for what is expected to be a three-year project once started. The two sides signed a memorandum of understanding in January 2003, the first between the Ministry of Defence and a US NGO, but, after more than 18 months of talks, had yet to agree terms. Once agreement is reached with the Ministry of Defence, the deal will still need endorsement by other ministries and the Prime Minister’s Office. As a result, final approval is several months away at a minimum and implementation is unlikely to start much before the end of 2004. The project will create a national IMSMA database that can provide the basis for planning and prioritising all areas of mine action – and a basis for donor countries to target support. The database will incorporate US archive data on aerial and naval bombardment of Vietnam, now being converted into an appropriate format by a US company, Federal Resources. It will also provide a victim database identifying the location of accidents. Most clearance is undertaken by the Ministry of Defence’s Mine Technology Centre for Bomb and Mine Disposal, generally referred to by its acronym BOMICO. Vietnam’s military deminers and EOD staff have considerable experience and are said to work fast and cheaply, despite limited technical resources. The military’s clearance procedures and demining casualties are not known and methods probably do not conform to IMAS. But a more than 1,500-kilometre section of the Ho Chi Minh highway was reportedly cleared in about ten months, a fraction of the time that

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would have been required by substantially more expensive IMAScompliant Western demining organisations. The involvement of foreign organisations in mine action is limited in size and geographic scope, not least because of the challenging environment posed by a suspicious security establishment, labyrinthine bureaucracy at the central and provincial level, and corruption. These conditions are said to have deterred some agencies that were at one time interested in supporting mine action in Vietnam. NGOs say typically it takes about 18 months from first submitting a proposal to receiving approval from the Prime Minister’s Office and may take several months from that point to commence operations. The counterpart organisation for foreign NGOs working in Vietnam is not central government but the External Relations Department of the province in which they work. If an organisation plans to broaden the scope of its work into another province, it has to negotiate a new agreement with authorities of that province. Those who have engaged in negotiation with Vietnamese authorities say humanitarian considerations sometimes appear subordinated to considerations of money. Negotiations are typically accompanied by demands for ‘administration’ fees. When the country can pay As we saw in Chapter 6, Croatia is one of the few countries that has been willing to commit its own (or borrowed) funds to mine action (see also below). Potentially, another notable exception is Iraq, where the US is pursuing a civilian approach to mine action. The potential wealth of the country, despite critical ongoing security problems, makes the situation in Iraq more akin to that of Kuwait than Afghanistan. It remains to be seen how effectively the US will be able to promote mine action by the future government of Iraq, given an apparent determination to keep the UN in a subordinate, even subservient role. Despite the challenging scale of the task, Iraq has significant assets with which to address it. It is oil-rich, has an educated work force and in the north it already has one of the most lavishly funded mine action programmes in the world. Thus it is quite possible that Iraq could greatly reduce at least the impact of contamination within a relatively short time, perhaps even a year or two. The major uncertainty is how quickly these assets can be mobilised and put to work in Iraq’s volatile political environment.

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NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANISATIONS In most cases, however, governments cannot pay for more than a small percentage of the costs of mine action and so are forced to rely on external donors. In many instances, these donors have preferred to channel their resources through some of the major mine action NGOs. Below we look briefly at a few of them. The strength of NGOs is in their ability to respond quickly to problems and to interact effectively with local communities. This has made NGOs one of the cornerstones of the international relief and development fabric. Their weaknesses can be a fractious nature, with a reluctance to submit to the coordination of national or international authorities – and mine action is no exception. Overall, however, NGOs have had a huge and extremely positive involvement in all aspects of mine action, except for stockpile destruction. There would not have been an Ottawa Treaty were it not for the campaigning NGOs, and they have been responsible for much of the survey and clearance of mine-affected areas and battlefields in the developing world.

Photo 7

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Cambodian Campaign to Ban Landmines (John Rodsted/Landmine Action)

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There are several thousand NGOs worldwide working on one or more aspects of mine action (1,400 are members of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines alone). Together, they have been responsible for most of the innovations in mine action over the last 15 years. Their enthusiasm and commitment have been essential in galvanising political will and donor dollars to support mine action, and this will continue to be the case. As is increasingly noted with concern among some states, despite sometimes limited accountability, NGOs wield enormous influence in the international arena – a voice and a contribution that cannot be ignored. It is, however, noteworthy how few development NGOs have been involved in mine action, other than in relation to victim assistance; thus demining, including survey, and to a lesser extent mine risk education, have largely been driven by specialist NGOs. This will surely have to change if the vision of mine action becoming part and parcel of development is to be realised. Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA) employs 2,000 staff in 11 countries at an annual budget of $35 million (£22.4 million). In Angola, for example, NPA provides some 70 per cent of the demining capacity. NPA is currently rethinking its approach to clearance with the idea of putting machines at the centre of its operations. Previously, it employed largely former military personnel for its operations, though this is now changing. NPA has a separate development division that pre-existed its involvement in mine action. It employs a full-time development adviser, who has been working in particular on strengthening its priority-setting procedures. The UK-based HALO Trust, a bastion of British ex-military males, has been responsible for many innovations in mine clearance techniques, as well as pioneering the post-clearance land use survey. Initially, it was largely reliant on manual demining. Although it has had a significant mechanical capacity for many years, it has only had a mine detection dog programme since 2000. HALO has tended to stay away from mine risk education, although it appears that this may be changing,14 and present and former staff have previously been critical of the Ottawa Treaty.

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Handicap International (HI), one of the six co-founding organisations of the ICBL, is a large organisation founded in Lyons in France in 1983, which now has offices in Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland and the UK and with liaison offices in Denmark and the US. Its total budget in 2002 was around €54 million (roughly £39 million). Originally specialising in medical care for the disabled, it now has also a significant mine action capacity, including for demining, victim assistance, advocacy and mine risk education. In total, the organisation manages some 240 projects in around 40 countries. Landmine Survivors Network (LSN) was founded in the US 1997 as ‘one answer to the need for victim assistance’. As Jerry White, who co-founded the organisation, points out, it is the only international organisation founded by landmine survivors for landmine survivors, and works to empower individuals and communities affected by landmines to recover from trauma, reclaim their lives and fulfil their rights: ‘Over the past six years, LSN’s work has shown that in order for survivors to truly reclaim their lives, assistance must be provided to address health needs, provide opportunity for economic independence, and promote the rights, dignity and social integration of survivors.’ Mines Advisory Group (MAG) was set up by a former British officer, Rae McGrath. Rae left the UN in Afghanistan to work on development projects and found that the presence of mines was obstructing his work. Initially, he was told that demining was a military affair (remember one of our opening myths), but MAG has proved this to be wrong. MAG’s incorporation of community liaison into mine action and its nomination of a community development specialist to head its programme in Laos mark its determination to strengthen the role of the community in mine action. The Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation (VVAF) was set up by Bobby Mueller, a Vietnam veteran disabled in the war who has since dedicated his life to peace-building and reconciliation. He co-founded the International Campaign to Ban Landmines at the beginning of the 1990s, and VVAF continues to play an active role in advocacy for a global ban on anti-personnel mines, especially addressing the issue of alternatives to landmines.

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VVAF also has extensive assistance programmes for the victims of war, particularly mine victims. The organisation has fitted hundreds of thousands of prosthetic limbs in countries around the world, and contributes to broader rehabilitation, notably through sporting initiatives. In addition to such international NGOs, a plethora of local NGOs have been set up over the last decade, some of which have been extremely successful and have deployed their knowledge abroad. We saw earlier the importance of Afghan NGOs, which have since used their expertise in Yemen among other places. International NGOs have been less successful when they have tried to set up specialist local mine action NGOs. The Bosnian NGO, ‘APM’, which Handicap International tried to establish in Bihac in north-western Bosnia, proved a difficult experience for HI, although APM is still functioning as an organisation. COMMERCIAL COMPANIES Although commercial companies cleared, more or less effectively, Kuwait of its significant mine and UXO contamination following the defeat of the Iraqi occupation by the Coalition in 1991, there was initial concern that ‘commercials’ were somehow inappropriate for mine action. First, there were moral concerns as mine producers and exporters – even, on occasion, minelayers – sometimes made sudden Damascene conversions to humanitarian causes. This concern seems to have dissipated in recent years. Second, commercials are in the business to make a profit, which means that fulfilling a contract may take precedence over the needs of the community. If, for example, a commercial company finds the presence of previously unknown mines or UXO outside the scope of an area stipulated in a clearance contract, but which are equally a threat to an affected community, they are within their rights not to clear it. Arguably, NGOs might be more likely to remain to ‘finish the job’, despite the additional costs. NGOs are also more likely to consider community liaison an important part of their work, although we should be careful not to exaggerate the reality of this. There are a number of well-known international commercial clearance companies, especially from South Africa, the UK and

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Zimbabwe, such as BACTEC, European Landmine Solutions (ELS), Mechem and Mine-Tech. The experience of Kosovo has shown that commercial companies and NGOs can work together effectively. Local commercial clearance companies also exist in many countries, and notably in Bosnia and Croatia form the backbone of the clearance capacity. A recent example of where commercial companies have worked effectively has been south Lebanon, following the withdrawal of Israeli troops.15 In July 2003, clearance began on the last major tract of mined areas in the southern border district after the United Arab Emirates agreed to continue funding the ‘Operation Emirates Solidarity’ programme, monitored by the UN. The original agreement between Lebanon and the UAE called for the removal of landmines and booby-trapped explosive devices from four areas running from the coast to south of Khiam. An operation to remove cluster bombs, dropped by Israel probably during the 1978 invasion, from the Bayyada cliff top on the coast was taking an unexpectedly long time. The bombs were dropped in a criss-cross pattern by Israeli aircraft probably during March 1978. The other two sites of cluster bomb attacks were around Al-Tiri near Bint Jbeil and Qantara near Taibe, at the time both strongholds of the Palestine Liberation Organisation. The Israelis constructed their naval radar base on the cliff top in 1979 when Bayyada fell within the enclave of the Israeli-allied militia of Saad Haddad. The demining and cluster bomb removal operation takes on added significance given that the Bayyada cliff top is prime undeveloped real estate with panoramic views of the coastline up to Tyre and beyond. DONOR GOVERNMENTS The level of funding Mine action has, to a large extent, been bankrolled by a small number of donor governments. The International Campaign to Ban Landmines estimates that in the decade 1992–2002, a total of $1.7 billion (more than one billion pounds) of donor funds has gone into mine action – most for clearance operations – including $1 billion (some £650 million) in the six years since Diana’s death. This is an extraordinarily generous sum of money for what is, in reality, one small component of overall humanitarian and development interventions.

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Two caveats should immediately apply, however. First, these figures probably include a certain amount of double counting as mine action funding has been notoriously opaque, and also includes many military contributions, which are typically extremely expensive. Second, significant expenditure is for research and development (R&D) in mine action, which typically brings little or no direct benefit to affected states as the funds are generally expended in the donor’s own country. We will look at the effectiveness of R&D spending below. Much of the funding has been prompted, directly or indirectly, by the Ottawa Treaty.16 Indeed, as a number of major donors have found, one of the downsides of the treaty is that affected states may have signed it with expectations of ‘a cheque in the post’ – in addition to any existing development budgets they get from donors. A number of donors, however, will only support mine action in countries that are states parties to the Ottawa Treaty, as they are more confident that new mines will not be laid, at least by the government.17 Thus, for example, the Maputo Declaration adopted at the conclusion of the first meeting of the states parties to the treaty, stated, among other things, that: ‘Know that, as a community dedicated to seeing an end to the use of anti-personnel mines, our assistance and cooperation will flow primarily to those who have foresworn the use of these weapons forever through adherence to and implementation of the Convention.’ There is also general agreement that it will be difficult to sustain the high level of funding to mine action over the long term. In the words of one authority, ‘the rollercoaster only has momentum for a certain amount of time’. He hopes that the problem will have been cracked by the end of the decade. Similarly, Richard Kidd at the US Department of State believes that funding will decrease over time, but hopes that this is because the pressing needs have already been dealt with. The US has been the single largest donor with $700 million (£449 million) in claimed funding, followed by Norway. Canada, which pledged $CA100 million (more than £40 million) as the treaty was being signed in 1997, has just renewed a five-year commitment but this time for $CA72 million (just under £30 million). The UK is planning to provide £10 million ($15.6 million) a year for the foreseeable future and hopes that additional funds from development budgets (‘mainstreaming’) may even increase this figure. In addition to significant funding, Sweden, like a number of

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other countries, has contributed in-kind expertise, especially through SWEDEC. What is donor mainstreaming? The previous chapter addressed the issue of mainstreaming mine action in affected countries into the broader development world. The corollary of this approach is that donors should also mainstream their funding support into country development programmes. The idea of mainstreaming is that part of the development budget should be allocated for mine action activities that support developmental activities or objectives, rather than mine action operating as a stand-alone activity justifiable on its own terms. This is not as simple as it might sound. For example, Andrew Willson, the desk officer for mines at the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), believes that if DFID achieves this aim within five years, it will have done well. In Canada, the issue also needs a lot of education. Many country development officers still see mines as a military issue (the mine action myth is both prevalent and persistent!). May-Elin Stener, who coordinates Norway’s foreign ministry funding for mine action, hopes that the Ottawa Treaty Review Conference will prove to be the foundation for increased/sustainable resource mobilisation, i.e. through a proliferation of sources. Shannon Smith of Canada’s Department for Foreign Affairs and International Trade agrees, pointing out the importance of greater World Bank involvement in supporting mine action. She also notes the need to educate donors that UXO clearance and mine clearance are part of the same whole, despite the World Bank’s Development Assistance Committee guidelines that separate out UXO clearance as ‘weapons disposal’.18 Research and development (R&D) In the words of Sara Sekkenes,

After many attempts within R&D to create and develop state-of-theart, multi-efficient mine clearance technology we can now see the results in the field – almost without exception these are new variations of old technology. The silver bullet has not yet been found.

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Why has the world met so little success in cracking the problem of landmine detection? In part, in the words of Paddy Blagden, because it is a ‘damn hard problem’. Finding a few grams of explosive attached to a small metal detonator set in a plastic or metal casing amid a battlefield of metal fragments is not easy. In addition, the economics do not favour those searching for the silver bullet. As a Canadian study in 2002 demonstrated, there is no natural significant market for detection technologies despite the scale of the problem; so the commercial profit incentive is just not there. A minority opinion claims that R&D has made fairly significant advances in detection technology. Most other experts believe variously that the money committed to detection technologies has been ‘wasted’, ‘poorly directed’ and has led to ‘nothing practical’ and ‘no tangible results’ for the field. Despite these assessments, there is general, though lukewarm, agreement that R&D needs to go on but unanimity that it must be used more effectively. Paddy Blagden, for instance, doesn’t believe that mine action will ever produce much better productivity and safety without a better set of detection tools. The challenge that confronted mine action at its birth remains to taunt its adolescence. THE UNITED NATIONS The UN has become ever more heavily involved in mine action over the last decade. From its inauspicious beginnings with just one ‘demining expert’ in 1993 (the term was applied to evade the obstructions from UN bureaucracy that would otherwise have severely delayed the appointment and therefore action), the UN now plays a significant role internationally in mine action, expending considerable sums of money annually, not least to pay for the dozens of staff it employs. At the global level, the role of the UN is, by its own admission, primarily one of coordination through the development of guidelines and standards, the collection and dissemination of appropriate information, and the mobilisation of financial and technical resources. Although many agencies are involved in one way or another with the 1998 UN policy on mine action, in reality there are four agencies

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that have a major operational role in mine action: UNMAS, UNDP, UNICEF and UNOPS. Their roles and mandates are now explained. The role of UNMAS UN mine action is coordinated, in theory at least, by the UN’s focal point, the Mine Action Service. UNMAS is situated within the Department of Peacekeeping Operations in New York, which coordinates the work of the UN’s ‘blue helmets’, although none of its staff is a serving military officer. UNMAS currently employs 28 staff, a number of whom are seconded from supportive governments.19 Martin Barber, the head of UNMAS, was formerly the head of the UN’s humanitarian operations in Afghanistan, UNOCHA, so has a long experience of mine action and the challenges it faces. UNMAS also coordinates UN resource mobilisation efforts and manages the Voluntary Trust Fund for Assistance in Mine Action (VTF). We saw how inefficient the VTF can be in getting the money in the field to where it is needed with respect to Afghanistan, a reality that is tacitly acknowledged by one of UNMAS’s major supporters, the UK’s Department for International Development. UNMAS issues a Portfolio of Mine Related Projects annually, which outlines the mine action programmes and projects supported by the various entities of the UN system, and which aims to assist in mobilising the voluntary contributions required for their successful implementation. The portfolio has been criticised by a number of major donors (who requested anonymity) as ‘a complete waste of time’ and ‘an irrelevance’. Its focus on single-year contributions (because of UN internal accounting procedures) also runs counter to the sustainability of funding that mine action badly needs to be effective in planning and implementation. More positive are the annual meetings of mine action programme managers, organised with the support of the GICHD and the Swiss government, which allow a useful dialogue between the 30 or so mine action programmes worldwide. In some ways, UNMAS’s dilemma mirrors that of a national mine action centre – should it stick to setting policy and ensuring the quality of others, for instance through the IMAS, or should it also try to implement programmes? As already mentioned, as of 2003, UNMAS was supporting mine action in Afghanistan, the Democratic

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Republic of the Congo, the Temporary Security Zone between Ethiopia and Eritrea, Kosovo, south Lebanon, Sudan and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia where UNMAS support ended by the middle of the year. There are many who believe the organisation would do better by developing a coherent strategy for the future of mine action and the UN’s role in that. The sense remains that the UN in general, and UNMAS in particular, has preferred to expand its activities rather than overhaul them. The role of UNDP According to UN policy, UNMAS is involved during the emergency phase of a mine action programme and then the UN Development Programme takes the programme on through the transition to the development stage and, theoretically, the UN’s exit strategy for technical support. (The anomaly in this has been in northern Iraq, where UNOPS has played a leading role as explained below.) UNDP’s Mine Action Team, located within its Emergency Response Division in New York, comprises only four people, as the organisation is heavily decentralised. This has advantages but also disadvantages (some within the organisation did not even know that UNDP was involved in mine action). The team’s new head, Sayed Aqa, is aiming to promote the mainstreaming of mine action within UNDP and the broader mine action community, and has started work on a study of this issue. This will include working with donors, although, as he acknowledges, they are not always receptive. The majority of UNDP’s support is through the provision of technical advisers (TAs). This has not proved itself a particularly effective method of capacity development as in some cases there has been little effort to pass on skills to national counterparts. Part of the reason is pure arrogance – as the TA thinks he (it’s normally a ‘he’) can do better and that the counterpart is incapable of learning. There has also been substantial neglect in schooling TAs in cross-cultural managerial expertise; in several cases they have been merely interviewed on the phone and sent off without any specific orientation at all. It has been noted that, despite paying lip-service to the development orientation of mine action, mine action centres are typically headed,

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or supported by, technical advisers who are serving or former military personnel. The UN claims that this situation is changing, Laos being one of a number of more positive examples. And Sayed Aqa makes a distinction between new or relatively new programmes, such as Iran and Jordan, where (military) technical expertise is needed, and more advanced programmes like those of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Mozambique and Yemen, where a more development-oriented thinker is needed. The role of UNICEF UNICEF, the UN Children’s Fund, is the UN focal point for mine risk education, being a major funder and service provider at field level, and also has an important role to play in advocacy and victim assistance. Supported by an expanding team (now five) at its headquarters in New York, UNICEF is undertaking, supporting or planning mine awareness education and advocacy activities in nearly 30 countries. In the area of mine risk reduction, UNICEF seeks to facilitate, but not necessarily itself implement, programmes. UNICEF is particularly active in school-based and other child-focused components of community mine-awareness programmes. It is continuing to develop international standards for mine risk education, which will form part of the IMAS when they are completed. In the late summer of 2003, UNICEF’s involvement in mine action gained notoriety in UN circles as it seemingly attempted to take a leading role in the UN’s mine action in Iraq. Concerned at developments, the other agencies dispatched representatives, including the head of UNMAS, to accompany UNICEF headquarters staff on a mission to Iraq, during which one was seriously injured at the bombing of the UN offices in Baghdad. As of writing, the repercussions of this incident remain to be explored. The role of UNOPS The UN Office of Project Services (UNOPS) has mainly been a procurer and contract negotiator for mine action (as it is for other work done by the UN), but in northern Iraq it was also an implementer of mine action through the ‘oil for food’ programme run by the Office for Iraq Programmes at the UN in New York.

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In 2003, the northern Iraq programme was in the third year of a 20year strategy designed to eliminate the impact of landmines and had planned rapid expansion from 28 to 58 manual clearance teams (each with 16 deminers), with further expansion to 81 manual clearance teams in 2004. Those expansion plans, however, were overtaken by the war, and targets for containing the impact of landmines will need to be reviewed to take account of additional contamination arising from the 2003 war. The programme currently still has 28 manual clearance teams, and expansion appears to have been replaced with more emphasis on increasing efficiency and productivity. Table 4

UNOPS Mine Action Programme, northern Iraq 1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003*

Area cleared manually** 123,054 978,302 778,059 956,859 674,140 405,937 3,540 16,618 Area permanently marked*** AP/AT destroyed 190 1,340 2,071 4,702 1,167 334 UXO destroyed 148 2,575 904 374 253 29 * ** ***

Up to 31 August Square metres 000 square metres

Source: UNOPS MAP, Northern Iraq.

The northern mine action programme, by its own admission, was slow and expensive. By one estimate, clearance costs were in the region of $20 (£12.80) a square metre. In the opinion of a senior international adviser to the programme, its biggest handicap was that it had never suffered a shortage of money – personnel were spoilt and less enterprising in tackling clearance issues than in more cash-strapped programmes. Productivity also was low, even allowing for difficulties of terrain and climate, high levels of metal contamination, civilian tampering with mined areas and movement of mines from their original location, for instance, by flooding. Nearly two-thirds of the operating area is hillside, which has to be cleared manually. In 2003, teams were clearing an average of 1,200 square metres for each mine found. In the summer, heat limits working hours; in the winter some areas become inaccessible or unworkable. The programme, however, also faces a number of major challenges that could affect its operational capacity. Foremost among these is the

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false economy that the UN helped to create by paying salaries that average $500 (£320) a month, ten times the local average salary for a professional, rising to $1,500 (£960) a month for senior national staff. The Coalition Provisional Authority made clear it considered those salaries unsustainable and declared deminers would move on to a government civil service pay scale that would cut salaries in half or more. Northern MAP foreign staff considered it probable that salary cuts of that magnitude would prompt many of the most experienced and qualified staff to leave for employment opportunities arising elsewhere with the huge expenditure planned for reconstruction, not least since the CPA was also reportedly hiring for some posts at UN-level salaries. Saraj Barzani, the head of the Iraqi programme, however, was confident most would stay. The Ministry of Planning, responsible for setting civil service pay scale, had awarded a substantial pay increase to government employees in September 2003, and another increase looked possible in 2004. The future role of the UN in mine action It is easy to criticise the UN for its failures – inefficiency, arrogance, stifling bureaucracy, ill-directed policy, just to name a few – but it is also important to understand the constraints under which it is working, for it is subservient to the demands (and whims) of its member states. One of the suggestions made to the author for the future role of the UN in mine action is to create a single agency to deal with mines and UXO. It might be named the UN Mines and Explosives Safety Service (although this would make a rather unfortunate acronym – UNMESS) and would aim to centralise the policy and operational tasks related to all explosive remnants of war. Certainly, the current situation is an unhappy one, with regular bouts of internecine warfare between the various agencies concerned stifling rapid action and effective reaction to new threats. The idea that mine action easily ‘matures’ from emergencies (therefore the responsibility of UNMAS) to development (therefore the responsibility of UNDP) with the ongoing cooperation and support of UNOPS and UNICEF looks good on paper but fairly bad in reality. (And just which type of situation is Sri Lanka, for instance? Emergency or development? It’s just coming out of conflict, but the conflict has been relatively localised.)

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But the cake cuts both ways. As the UN has found in other domains, an external agency can be seen as a solution to an infection/disease, but the body then has a tendency to reject the outside intervention. And even a new agency would still need to coordinate with others to be effective. So changing the UN mine action set-up without a very good reason (and a very good alternative) may be reason enough not to change at all. OTHER REGIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL BODIES We finish with a short review of some of the other bodies involved in mine action. The Organization of American States The Assistance Program for Demining in Central America was created by the Organization of American States (OAS) in 1991, in response to requests by Central American countries affected by anti-personnel landmines (Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua). The OAS subsequently decided to create a new programme area called Comprehensive Action against Antipersonnel Mines (AICMA by its initials in Spanish). Its focus, like that of the US, has been on military-to-military training programmes and, as a result, the OAS has become the major regional mine action actor in the Americas. Although in theory, it addresses a wide range of mine action activities, including mine risk awareness education, minefield surveying, mapping, marking and clearance, victim assistance and support for a total ban on anti-personnel mines,20 its expertise has been best deployed in training national counterparts in clearance and advising on stockpile destruction techniques; in other areas of mine action its record is more patchy. The European Union The European Union, through the Commission, has been a major – and increasing – contributor of funds to mine action worldwide. In 2002 it gave €42 million (around £30 million) to mine action (this is separate from and in addition to member states’ contributions), a near 50 per cent increase on the previous year. At the end of 2002, the Commission adopted a new three-year Mine Action Strategy for 2002–04, including budget lines for €105 million (some £75 million) over the period 2002–04. In 2002, the largest

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recipients of aid were Afghanistan (some £7 million) and Angola (around £5 million). The EU has supported Landmine Impact Surveys in six countries, including Afghanistan and Azerbaijan. Beyond the provision of funding and support for the Ottawa Treaty, however, the EU has done relatively little to promote the development of mine action, and does not appear to have followed the success or otherwise of its investments in mine action with any great attention. The International Committee of the Red Cross The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was one of the leading organisations in promoting the adoption and entry into force of the Ottawa Treaty, as part of its commitment to the development and implementation of international humanitarian law. It also played a critical role in promoting the successful adoption in November 2003 of Protocol V on explosive remnants of war and will be equally key to ensuring that both the letter and the spirit of legal undertakings are respected. Besides its leading legal and advocacy role as the guardian of the Geneva Conventions, the ICRC is one of the world’s leading organisations in providing assistance to the victims of war in general and mine and UXO victims in particular. In 2002, the ICRC supported 67 hospitals treating war-wounded in 18 countries around the world. In addition, the ICRC has probably helped fit artificial limbs to more mine victims than any other organisation; in 2002, its clinics fitted almost 17,000 prostheses to amputees, of whom 60 per cent were mine victims. Together with national Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the organisation has also become a frontrunner in mine awareness programmes in nearly 20 countries (it rejects the term mine risk education and sticks with the original name as used in the Ottawa Treaty). Peter Herby, who leads the Mines/Arms Unit within the ICRC, remarks that,

As mine action becomes increasingly global and professional it must never lose sight of its humanitarian calling: to save lives, to end the suffering of innocents, to restore human dignity and to give hope to war-torn communities. The framework of all such action must be

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the permanent and global elimination of the perverse little weapon that is the anti-personnel mine. The Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining The GICHD is a Swiss body, somewhat akin to an international organisation, dedicated to research and operational assistance to mine action. On its staff are some of the world’s leading experts on humanitarian demining and mine risk education. Ian Mansfield, the GICHD’s Operations Director, was heavily involved in the Afghanistan mine clearance programme and has also worked in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Laos. The GICHD facilitates the intersessional Ottawa Treaty working groups, annual meetings of mine action programme managers and, once every two years, the meetings of states parties to the treaty. Cranfield Mine Action One of the lessons from the study by the now-defunct UN Department for Humanitarian Affairs was the need for management training in mine action. Cranfield Mine Action, based at the British army’s royal military college near Swindon, now has both senior and middle management training courses, both several-week-long crash courses based on an MBA (a masters degree course in business administration). Cranfield is about to do an evaluation of the benefits of these courses, although the director, Alistair Macaslan, points out that it is rather difficult to measure their specific impact. He also sees the establishment of international networks between programmes as an important side benefit. Mine Action Information Center The Mine Action Information Center at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, was established as a ‘centre of excellence’ in information exchange around ‘humanitarian mine clearance, victim assistance, community risk reduction, refugee resettlement and other landmine-related issues’. Given the US position, it is perhaps understandable that it has tended to steer clear of the Ottawa Treaty and the stockpile destruction the treaty requires. The MAIC has also played a significant role in mine action, through its online resources and trimestrial publication, the Journal of Mine Action. There remains a suspicion that it is a little too US-centric, although it would probably contest this assertion.

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8 The Results of the Audit The world is too little aware of the waste of life, limb and land which anti-personnel mines are causing among some of the poorest people on earth. Diana, Princess of Wales In the preceding chapters, we have looked at how and why mine action developed in order to understand better the complexities of the threat posed by landmines and other explosive remnants of war, these persistent vestiges from the horrors of armed conflict. But how successful has it all been, this billion-pound enterprise that employs tens of thousands of men (and a few women)? It is time now to present the results of the ‘audit’ of mine action. ACCENTUATE THE POSITIVE Let us begin with the positive side of the ledger by recounting mine action’s achievements, for there are many that can be ascribed to its name. ✓ Thanks in no small measure to Diana’s contribution, no longer is the world ‘too little aware of the waste of life, limb and land which anti-personnel mines are causing among some of the poorest people on earth’. The public conscience knows and rejects landmines as a legitimate method of warfare. Indeed, it is becoming increasingly sensitised to the broader dangers from all the other explosive remnants of war that are fired yet fail to detonate on impact – cluster bombs and other unitary ordnance, mortar shells, and grenades whether rocket-propelled or cast by hand. ✓ Mine action has resulted in millions of these devices being destroyed or neutralised over the course of the past 15 years. In 2003, the HALO Trust, just one of many mine action actors, celebrated the destruction of its millionth item of explosive ordnance. Every single destroyed device is a potential lifesaver. But mine action has also restored hundreds of square miles of land to safe use by communities, cleared thousands of miles of roads to allow safe passage of goods 161

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and labour, and given new limbs and new hope to tens of thousands of amputees. ✓ The number of victims from mines and unexploded ordnance has decreased over the past years. Although, as we have seen, it is difficult to ascribe any particular percentage of this decrease to mine action, this is welcome nonetheless. ✓ Casualties among deminers have also reduced globally (although, worryingly, in countries such as Cambodia they have gone up recently), seemingly the result of better training, international and national standards, good monitoring by technical advisers and better personal protective equipment, the result of well-directed research and development activities. (Mine action doesn’t know, of course, how many so-called village deminers have been killed or injured and whether that number is increasing or decreasing.)

Photo 8

Landmine survivor, Cambodia (John Downing/Landmine Action)

✓ Thus, more generally, mine action has demonstrated a remarkable willingness to learn from its mistakes. Studies of different aspects of mine action have been reinforced by annual meetings of mine action personnel allowing them to learn from each other, a necessary forum in a fast-evolving discipline and a credit to the UN that organises it.

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✓ Machines and dogs are being used more strategically to locate and, in the case of machines, to destroy mines and UXO, supplementing the efforts of many thousands of human deminers although, as Vera Bohle notes, their use could still be improved. Nonetheless, the threat assessment approach used in Kosovo and now being employed in other countries seeks to ensure that most appropriate assets and methodology are used to clear each area. John Flanagan tells us:

the purpose of manual mine clearance teams is to physically clear mines, not to prod around in areas that were never mined and do not actually constitute a problem. Furthermore, a key part of any clearance plan is not only to identify the best assets to clear any given area, but to correctly identify the correct sequence in which these assets should be employed. This is a fundamental aspect of increasing the speed and cost-effectiveness of clearance operations. Of course, weeks or months or sometimes even years after the land has been cleared, someone needs to return to the demined land to make sure everything that was supposed to happen actually has. ✓ This ‘making sure’ work, known as the land use survey, has been pioneered by the HALO Trust. ✓ Targeted mine clearance can also be justified on economic grounds, as a number of cost-benefit studies have found. This will be affected by many factors including the pattern of contamination. But in general the proportion is: • higher when the country is comparatively wealthy (and thus, more productive); • higher when the country is more densely populated; and • higher when clearance costs are lower. The studies also confirm that there are huge differences, even within countries, in the potential economic payoffs arising from clearance of different hazards (even for different hazards just within the ‘first priority’ category). This implies that large payoffs would accrue if assets were better targeted towards the more valuable land. ✓ With their much-improved task impact assessment mechanism, Norwegian People’s Aid is now working together with mine-affected communities to make sure that clearance tasks have real priority and will have a tangible and positive effect on the community’s ability to improve itself.

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✓ The mine action community has largely accepted current wisdom that mine action seeks not to remove all contamination but to manage its impact on civilians. In Richard Kidd’s words, ‘If you’re working to mine-free as an objective, you’re misguided.’ European countries are still clearing contamination from mines and other unexploded ordnance left over from two world wars. Therefore we are entitled to ask: if European countries couldn’t manage to clear everything in ten years, why should developing nations be expected to do so? ✓ In learning its lessons, mine action has also innovated. Some of the most interesting, current attempts to improve the alignment of mine action with development priorities have occurred at the subnational level, as Ted Paterson has recorded: • In Cambodia, Land Use Planning Units (LUPUs) in four provinces now respond to requests from both mine action organisations and outside agencies for data analysis. Each LUPU (which is part of the national mine action authority rather than the land ministry) supports a Provincial Rural Development Committee, and together they organise village-level exercises to select priorities and consultations with stakeholders such as NGOs working in the province. This has tremendous potential for linking mine action to, say, poverty reduction because a ‘poverty mapping’ initiative has developed commune-level poverty tallies by combining Geographic Information System data with a Socio-Economic Survey and the General Population Census. • Another exciting experiment is in Croatia. Like many former socialist countries, Croatia has large amounts of demographic, geographic and economic data available in GIS format, a strong tradition of physical planning and many well-trained professionals in the technical disciplines. Drawing upon all three, in 2001 the Croatian Mine Action Centre commissioned a pilot effort to develop a County Mine Action Plan using a mathematically sophisticated multi-criteria analysis to highlight those hazards which seem to offer the greatest development potential. • A third notable innovation is in Bosnia where the Survey Action Centre is working with Handicap International on a pilot effort to extend uses of the standard Landmine Impact Survey. As soon as a severely impacted community is identified via the LIS, a small team makes a follow-up visit to document more

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thoroughly the nature of the socio-economic problems created by each hazard affecting that community and consults with residents and municipal officials to devise a plan outlining what type of mine action response is required for the most problematic hazards. ✓ A treaty banning the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of anti-personnel mines has been secured and has entered into force as binding international law on the two-thirds of the world’s states that have joined it. It is well drafted and well supported. ✓ As a consequence, treaty violations have been few, and it is even claimed that it has already had an impact on the behaviour of nonsignatories, notably the US. Whatever the truth, the fact that, among states, only Myanmar and Russia were laying new anti-personnel mines by July 2003, is very welcome. ✓ More than 30 million stockpiled anti-personnel mines have already been destroyed in accordance with the treaty, an impressive achievement – although nearly ten times more remain in stores in China, India, Pakistan, Russia and the US. ✓ Even many of its harshest detractors (most former military men pained by the influence of civilian lobby groups on weapons selection) concede that the Ottawa Treaty is a remarkable achievement that will, as Diana forecast, make the world ‘a safer place for this generation’s grandchildren’. The challenge remains huge, but the tide has surely turned against landmines. ✓ The international campaign against anti-personnel mines, ‘a bonfire waiting to be lit’ in the words of Red Cross surgeon Robin Coupland, has thus been a genuine success. Although the world has not yet achieved universality of acceptance of a total ban on the weapon, progress has been swift, many would argue astonishingly so. It has often been said that international law only bans useless weapons. Given an obvious, although limited, utility, this is clearly not the case with anti-personnel mines. ✓ As Ambassador Steffen Kongstad has written,

Today, when we are faced with deadlock and polarisation in various international and multilateral processes and fora, the Ottawa Process stands out even more as a unique, constructive, cooperative, pragmatic undertaking where the focus is on practical results. As a

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result of our collective efforts, a new international norm is taking hold and making a difference on the ground. ✓ NGOs have continued to campaign for a mine-free world. Landmine Monitor, the monitoring arm of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, has effectively monitored compliance with the treaty and supported its universalisation. Advocacy needs now to concentrate on tackling the issue of explosive remnants of war, especially UXO. The NGOs have once again picked up the flame and are running with it, as an NGO campaign on explosive remnants of war was being launched in November 2003. As Mary Wareham of Human Rights Watch has remarked, one of the lessons of the landmine campaign was that ‘You don’t have to be an expert to make a difference – anybody can play a part.’ ✓ Even the annual intersessional Ottawa Treaty meetings, disparaged as dull and even irrelevant by some, have proved valuable educational tools for diplomats and donors as they struggle to grapple with the challenges of implementing what their governments have signed up to. Refocusing and revitalising is undoubtedly required to make these meetings more effective, but, at the same time, the process must be pursued: there is no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. A move towards more informal workshops on serious themes – clearance and community liaison strategies, universalisation and mainstreaming of mine action – would surely ensure that the meetings were more than just a good opportunity to network. ✓ Significant funding for mine action has been secured from donors – thanks to public and private generosity stimulated by the cause and by the ban. Nearly two billion dollars (more than a billion pounds) might seem to some an excessive figure – although perhaps it should not be when one country, the US, has had to spend several hundred million dollars to destroy ordnance in just one other country, Iraq. ✓ Despite problems with its current, narrow definition, mine action has a name (albeit biased away from major threat of unexploded ordnance), a common purpose and a set of rules – the International Mine Action Standards – by which it should abide. Indeed, the very existence of the IMAS is proof of progress: it will be all the more so once they are universally understood and applied appropriately. ELIMINATE THE NEGATIVE Yet, if mine action did indeed come of age in 1997, it is still some way from full maturity. Programmes are, too slowly in some cases,

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moving away from a fanatical concentration on anti-personnel mines to encompass all explosive remnants of war. Those that remain fixated are sadly missing the point. Only a comprehensive approach to the post-conflict munition threat will be effective. ✗ All too often the targeting of mine action has been unacceptably poor. Mine seeking – the search for fields with a high density of mines and UXO rather than those with a high impact on the civilian population – is less of a problem than it used to be, but still goes on in certain countries and among certain organisations. Although, as the head of UNMAS justly notes, the focus of mine action ‘has shifted from estimating the number of mines in the ground to assessing their impact on civilian populations’, it needs to shift still further. This is largely a management issue. As we have learned, ‘in many ways mine action management is as much about information as it is about landmines’. ✗ Thus, although mine action surveys have improved in the quality of data they generate, the use of that data has rarely fed through to better planning. Thirteen million pounds out of more than one billion does not seem too much to spend on landmine impact surveys – until we know that the information they have produced has hardly been used to influence future work plans. Effective information is the vital ingredient for mine action maturity. ✗ Good management is also about being realistic, and mine action has sometimes badly let down the communities it purports to serve. • In Cambodia, for instance, the government in 2002 set a target of zero casualties within ten years – but no-one in demining circles expects this to be achieved. Incidents are almost certain to continue for many years beyond 2012. • In Afghanistan, excessively optimistic predictions about future funding may lead to serious problems for the programme in years to come. As Laos found out, maintaining resource levels is not just about good productivity. ✗ The major obstacle to mine action efficiency remains detection technologies. As Ambassador Martin Dahinden points out,

the most challenging technical issue in mine clearance has been, and still is, the detection of the mine (and not its disposal). An important lesson learned is that solutions are not to be expected from cutting edge technologies, but rather from simple applications like the use of

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dogs, rats or the intelligent combination of existing detectors – the silver-bullet solution does not exist. ✗ Despite certain improvements in demining techniques, the muchhailed toolbox approach is still more rhetoric than reality. Mine clearance consultant Colin King says,

There’s a lot of talk about the toolbox approach, but in many cases, it’s meaningless; in reality, most deminers simply have to use whatever they’ve been issued. ✗ The mine action community has to engage with what, in certain countries, appears to have been the backbone of demining capacity – the community itself. Although tens of millions of donor dollars have poured into demining, most clearance in Cambodia is thought to be undertaken by village or ‘spontaneous deminers’. In other countries, the situation may be similar. ✗ Mine action must exploit all the potential assets at its disposal, which includes the military. Inappropriate in most cases for mine awareness (as soldiers tend to focus on technical issues such as identifying different mine types), armies certainly have a role to play in clearance, marking and even technical survey, where they have done little to date. • In Cambodia, for instance, the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces have recently become increasingly significant in mine clearance and must be considered one of the sustainable longterm options. Yet little thought is being given by the mine clearance community to an expanded role for the Cambodian army. ✗ Mine awareness education, if (as seems likely) it will continue to be implemented by NGOs and international organisations, still needs to be better targeted using communication expertise and lessons learned from other public health education activities. A good ‘needs assessment’, conducted early in the life of the programme, would go a long way to righting many of the wrongs of awareness education. ✗ Contrary to popular belief, most victims of anti-personnel mines are not children but adult males engaged in subsistence farming, so they should be better targeted in awareness programmes. Children must still be educated on how to prevent accidents, but since they are more prone to deaths and injuries from UXO, the programme

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should reflect this, and should not concentrate on them excessively or to the exclusion of others more directly affected. ✗ As we have seen, mine awareness has its limitations, and has arguably been overdone and overfunded, creating ‘mine panic’ in Kosovo, for example. A far more promising line of action is community liaison, which should be expanded and standardised as a matter of urgency. As Ted Paterson writes,

Individuals, households and communities are agents of their own wellbeing. It is their energies that will make or break most development efforts initiated by outsiders. Positive results are far more likely when the intended beneficiaries, whether local community members or national leaders, endorse and are active participants in the planning and monitoring of development activities, including mine action. ✗ According to the IMAS, community liaison is one of the ‘strategic principles of mine action’, but, with notable exceptions, there is little evidence of it being so. It is also supposed to be ‘a process designed to place the needs and priorities of mine-affected communities at the centre of the planning, implementation and monitoring of mine action and other sectors’. In practice, even when it is done, community liaison is largely seen as a way to smooth the way for deminers. The NGOs, who are largely responsible for this innovation in mine action, must continue to promote it and improve its effectiveness. ✗ Training, especially in management techniques – ‘capacity development’ according to the jargon – remains one of the major failings of mine action. When it is done, it is rarely done well, and it is all too rarely done at all. ✗ Technical advice is just that – advice – such as that given by a barrister to a client. The barrister’s intention is not to put himself or herself out of a job by passing on all the knowledge at their disposal – conversely, the aim of capacity development is exactly that. TAs, honest in their endeavour, are placed in a system that is simply inappropriate and, in broad terms, ineffective. ✗ If management capacity is not sufficiently developed, the programme cannot be handed over to the national authorities as intended. Under current plans, Afghanistan runs the risk of a premature handover, with consequent dangers for the programme as a whole.

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✗ Overall, mine action still does too little to justify its effectiveness. Although quality assurance of demining operations is becoming more integrated into mine action programmes, currently no organisation or mine action centre conducts ongoing land use surveys systematically. This is an entirely unacceptable state of affairs given the expenditure on clearance and the ease with which such surveys can be done – a simple visit to the area might be enough in many instances, at little or no cost to the programme. No-one, whatever they may claim, is too busy ‘getting the mines out of the ground’ to bother seeing whether demined land is actually being used productively. ✗ Mine action still does too little to help victims. In the words of Jerry White, ‘Recent analyses show that on a global scale victim assistance services are still woefully inadequate.’ He acknowledges, however, that ‘There was, and still is, debate about where victim assistance fits, who should be doing it, and how it should be funded.’ Donors and implementers face a difficult challenge in making life better for mine victims (and other disabled people) without accepting the burden of rebuilding the entire health infrastructure of post-conflict societies. LOOKING TO THE FUTURE But it is easy to criticise. So let us build on the lessons learned and look to the challenges that remain for the future. ➚ As Lloyd Axworthy, who launched the negotiations that led to the Ottawa Treaty said recently,

The world has come a long way in a short five years, but many challenges lie ahead in this massive, unfinished task. So much of the credibility of the treaty is based on progress and accomplishment. That means maintaining a drive towards universality, continuing to aid victims, destroying stockpiles, extracting the mines from the ground, and naming and shaming those who continue to flaunt the provisions and use landmines as a weapon of war. Still, the goal of a mine-free planet first expressed in Ottawa is closer to fruition. ➚ The courage that Canada showed in launching the negotiation of the Ottawa Treaty will have to be replicated in the future. Peter Herby, of the International Committee of the Red Cross, has remarked on many occasions that the one thing not original about the Ottawa Process was the process itself. In humanitarian law in times past, one

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state (Russia, Switzerland or others) took it upon itself to convene a diplomatic conference to deal with yet another example of the ‘evil that men do’ – such as exploding or expanding (Dum-Dum) bullets or gas warfare, or the inhuman treatment of civilians, or the warinjured or prisoners of war. ➚ In field operations, progress will have to continue to be made. As Vera Bohle tells us,

Surely, we need to work further on improving efficiency in clearance techniques … Other new technologies like ground-penetrating radar detection or the use of explosive detecting rats are being developed, but none of them is yet successfully used in the field on a large scale. ➚ Effective technologies and good technical skills are not enough to make mine action effective – especially in the absence of effective leadership and good management. A major impediment to mine action programmes remains poor management. ➚ Costs must be brought further under control. As Vera Bohle points out, ‘Anything that can be done to achieve a maximum of mines and area cleared for the money provided by donors must be done.’ An obvious example of how this could be achieved is through costbenefit analysis, which has already begun to permeate mine action thinking. ➚ Despite positive initiatives to try to mainstream mine action into development, little has been done beyond sub-national levels, so a remaining hurdle is to strengthen the links between mine action and development planning at the national level. This is essential if the resources available to the overall programme are to be properly allocated among the different parts of the country and across the various sectors. ➚ As UNMAS points out,

Although mine action is a recognised development problem, it has not traditionally been addressed within a formal development framework. Mine action has typically been treated as a humanitarian problem that attracts significant funding in the immediate aftermath of hostilities, but considerably less over the long term.1

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➚ In many countries mine action officials must be far more proactive in securing financial commitments from their government to allay donor concerns that mine action is not seen as a national priority. ➚ Differences between the pilot efforts in Cambodia and Croatia also illustrate a strategic dilemma facing all mine action programmes. Should a mine action programme build in-house capacity for socioeconomic analysis so it can determine its own priorities or should it remain a technical service that will receive guidance from development planning authorities who already have such capacity? • Cambodia illustrates the problems associated with an in-house solution. Although a positive step forward, the LUPUs remain isolated from the Land Ministry in Phnom Penh and from the national ministries responsible for key sectoral programmes such as roads. There is duplication, and the task of forging useful links between the LUPUs and these national ministries may be complicated by bureaucratic turf battles. • In Croatia the mine action centre did not start by building in-house capacity for the socio-economic analysis. Instead it advised the county and municipal officials that their governments retained the responsibility for the final selection of clearance priorities, but that the MAC would provide clear recommendations based on thorough technical and socioeconomic analysis. The MAC then engaged a professor as a short-term consultant to conduct the multi-criteria analysis. ➚ Each country must choose whether to develop in-house capacity or seek guidance from others. In countries with reasonably capable and committed governments, the appropriate response is likely to be more along the lines adopted in Croatia. Conversely, in countries that lack a capable and committed national government, more in-house socio-economic capacity will be required. Alternatively, where the government is not committed to development and poverty reduction, the mainstream can lead to a swamp. Some socio-economic capacity is needed to validate the priorities put forward by national ministries and sub-national governments to guard against corruption. ➚ For the UN, all mine action issues demand a serious policy rethink. The 1997 study of Bob Eaton and his team was a positive landmark in UN efforts in mine action, but seven years have gone by and the world has moved on. The present UN strategy (2001–05) is not an acceptable response to today’s new challenges and calls into question

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whether the central conclusions of Eaton’s study – that the UN had manifest strategic planning inadequacies – have truly been addressed. For UNMAS and the other operational UN agencies, quality not quantity should be the watchword. ➚ One main issue is whether the UN should implement programmes (aside from situations where the UN is the de facto government, as occurred in Kosovo). As has been suggested more generally with respect to international aid, there are strong arguments in favour of the statement that, ‘Instead of competing with NGOs and bilateral agencies at the project level, UN agencies should concentrate on their traditional domains, that is, their normative roles in their fields of specialisation.’2 In practice, this means elaborating a clearer vision for the future of mine action – and pursuing the development of IMAS and more effective IMAS outreach to make it a reality. ➚ For the victims of landmine survivors, the future will continue to be difficult. As Jerry White of Landmine Survivors Network points out,

Landmine survivors, wherever they may live, form a part of the community of people with disabilities facing the same barriers to physical access, the same stigmas from a society that perceives them as less than normal, and the same lack of opportunities for gainful employment. People with disabilities are among the most marginalised and vulnerable populations in the world. ➚ As we have seen, mine action continues to be ‘ring fenced’ and viewed as a specialised, post-conflict activity by both recipient governments and donor agencies. Now, as mine action slowly but surely loses its appeal among donors and recipients, its efforts must be intensified and become more sophisticated. This demands a movement into the development mainstream, making the type of investments that prepare a programme to be transformed into a broader development-centred activity rather than one narrowly focused on landmines. This also, arguably, means an end to earmarked funds for mine action, which may lead to a dramatic decrease in their availability for mine action activities. ➚ Emergency funding is appropriate when the situation on the ground is evolving rapidly, but it also constrains long-term planning and inhibits investments for which the payoffs occur in the long term. It inhibits programmes from considering actions that would

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foster the long-term development of communities that are not at immediate risk of famine, war or disease. ➚ For the UN, its credibility will continue to be on the line, under ever-increasing scrutiny. Protocol V on explosive remnants of war is a considerable success, but if the UN is to be capable of serving as an effective forum for dealing with conventional weapons the agreement must also be implemented. And remember, states negotiating under UN auspices were not even yet being asked to renounce the use of any weapon, just to control its nefarious after-effects. How, then, will they deal with cluster munitions, present in stockpiles by the billion, and used by developed and developing nations alike? ➚ Some of these issues will have to be confronted at the first Review Conference of the Ottawa Treaty. One of the concerns that led to this project was a fear that an opportunity would be lost amid the expected mutual congratulations and rounds of applause. As Ambassador Kongstad remarks,

The first Review Conference will be a milestone in the life of the Treaty. It must take stock of what has been achieved during its first five years. It will be equally important to hammer out a vision and a plan of action for the next five years in order to realise our political and legal obligations and humanitarian objectives… We are not dealing with an academic exercise or ‘business as usual’, but endeavouring to effectively address a humanitarian crisis. We are dealing with real people: children, women and men. We must translate the expectations and hopes we raised with the Convention into reality. If we succeed, the landmines campaign would truly inspire and support the humanitarian cause in other respects. That would be a real accomplishment. THE RECKONING So … did mine action use its first billion pounds (and more) wisely? Possibly. Could it have been used more wisely? Surely, the answer is yes. Three obvious reasons for this are: • more recipient ownership could have been generated through a better handover of skills from international ‘expert’ to national counterpart; • communities could have been more involved with all stages of mine action; and

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• there could have been a greater readiness to embrace developmental approaches to the discipline instead of preferring to stand and fund alone. Indeed, given the level of resources committed, it is hard to contest Bob Eaton’s view that overall mine action’s work has been ‘sloppy’ and that ‘the world deserves better’. Will we get it? Probably, because mine action has undoubtedly improved greatly during the 1990s, and continues, as we have seen, to learn actively from its successes and failures. There is, however, broad agreement that we should have eliminated the most pressing mine action needs by the end of this decade, or we will have to look to ourselves. One last point, from Ted Paterson: mine action programmes must always ‘make their case’. They must do a better job of demonstrating the many and varied contributions mine action is making to development. Programmes must demonstrate results on the ground and not simply possibilities – and they must confirm that the intended beneficiaries are making good use of the opportunities created by mine action. Mine action programmes that fail to make their case will do themselves out of a job before their job is done. The result will be that the terrible legacy of mines already in the earth will continue to plague the worlds’s poor nations. In closing this book, let us highlight the words of one of the many people who live ‘at the sharp end’ of mine action. Vera Bohle risks her life every time she disposes of an unexploded cluster bomb or mortar shell, grenade or mine. In her contribution to this book she writes:

Despite all efforts and successes in mine action … in the last five years not just innumerable civilians but also my colleagues have died or suffered injuries from mines and unexploded ordnance. There were times when I’ve asked myself daily who would be the next victim. But as a ‘voice from the field’ I would like to encourage those persons working on political progress in support of mine action to go on with their efforts. Please, no slacking! There is still a long way to go. As Diana and Shakespeare have told us, ‘the evil that men do lives after them’.

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Notes INTRODUCTION 1. Hazardous Area Life-Support Organization. 2. ‘Di braves minefield’, British Medical Journal, 25 January 1997, p. 312. 3. The ICBL is a loose consortium of hundreds of non-governmental organisations in dozens of countries that collectively has been calling for a total ban on anti-personnel mines and increased resources for mine clearance and victim assistance. It was set up in 1992. 4. The ICRC had reversed a long-standing conservatism on weapons issues in 1994 when its then President, Cornelio Sommaruga, called publicly for a ban on anti-personnel mines as well as on blinding laser weapons that were about to be produced. 5. Working with the Quakers, Bob had found that sometimes the approaches to the problem were straightforward and non-technical. The shaped tool used in working the soil – the mattock – would all too often strike an unexploded bomblet left over from the US bombing in the 1960s and early 1970s, detonate it and send the blast and fragmentation into the stomach of the unfortunate farmer. Simply replacing the mattock with a shovel considerably lessened the risk of exploding the bomblet. 6. ‘Princess Diana’s legacy’, information taken from the Landmine Survivors Network website, <www.landminesurvivors.org/heritage/diana.php>. 7. The formal title of the treaty is the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction. It is often referred to, more simply, as the Ottawa Treaty, the Mine Ban Treaty, and, by the UN and others, as the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention. 8. Presentation by Norway to the intersessional Standing Committees to the Ottawa Treaty, Geneva, 12 May 2003 (revised document). States parties to the treaty have committed some $800 million, with a further $100 million by the European Commission. The US has been by far the most generous donor outside the treaty, reporting more than $380 million between 1997 and 2002.

CHAPTER 1 THE GLOBAL THREAT 1. ‘Wartime Bomb Explodes in Austria, Killing Two’, Reuters, 17 July 2003. 2. Remarks by Richard Kidd, US Department of State, to the author. 3. J. Wilson, ‘Nuclear mines “to stop Soviets”’, Guardian, 17 July 2003. 4. Though Richard Kidd puts this into context, asserting that, ‘The food rations were dropped at the beginning of the war in the southern regions of Afghanistan as populations were moving towards Pakistan. At that time the cluster munitions were being used primarily in the north. By the time the war had shifted to the centre and south the coalition was 176

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no longer dropping the rations. Cluster munitions and HDR were NEVER dropped in the same place and were NEVER dropped in the same province at the same time (weeks).’ 5. Although, again according to Richard Kidd, ‘The U.S. military values accuracy and spent tens of millions of dollars to equip its cluster canisters with wind corrected munitions dispensers (WCMD)s. These units are GPS-guided (Global Positioning by Satellite) to the appropriate grid and altitude, they slow the canister down to optimal speed, reducing fratricide among the bomblets and reducing dud rates. Seventy per cent of the airdropped munitions in Operation Iraqi Freedom were precision guided and all cluster munitions were delivered using WCMD.’ See also Jane’s Defense Weekly, 18 June 2003. 6. Remarks by Richard Kidd, US Department of State, to the author. 7. Paul Brown, ‘Scientists urge DU clean-up to protect civilians’, Guardian, 17 April 2003.

CHAPTER 3 THE EVOLUTION OF MINE ACTION: FROM AFGHANISTAN TO INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS 1. UN Department for Humanitarian Affairs, Angola, The Development of Indigenous Mine Action Capacities, UN, New York, available at <www. mineaction.org>. 2. UN Department for Humanitarian Affairs, Mozambique, The Development of Indigenous Mine Action Capacities, UN, New York, available at <www. mineaction.org>.

CHAPTER 4 ‘DOING THE JOB RIGHT’: THE BASICS OF MINE ACTION 1. IMAS, Second Edition, 1 January 2003. 2. Some authorities, for instance, Per Nergaard, the head of NPA’s mine action team, refer to R&D as the fourth component in the kit (see the section on the role of donors in Chapter 7). 3. ‘An Interview with Colin King’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 7, No. 1, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, US, 2003. 4. A Guide to Mine Action, GICHD, Geneva, July 2003. 5. See ibid. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 8. ‘Mechanical Application and Ground Processing’, in A Study of Mechanical Application in Mine Clearance, GICHD, Geneva, forthcoming 2004. 9. A Study of Socio-Economic Approaches to Mine Action, GICHD/UNDP, Geneva, 2001. 10. See Improving Communication in Mine Awareness Programmes, An Operational Handbook, GICHD, Geneva, 2002, p. 14. This and other GICHD publications are available on its website: <www.gichd.ch>. 11. Although, in the case of UNICEF, this ratio probably results, in part, from the fact that the organisation has been designated lead agency for MRE in the UN system, and its mandate is children and women.

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12. Improving Communication in Mine Awareness Programmes, GICHD, Geneva, 2002. 13. Although some organisations tend to deny it, the terms ‘mine awareness’ and ‘mine risk education’ are not synonyms. The principal difference is that, according to the IMAS definition, in addition to public education, MRE also includes community liaison (though, somewhat strangely, community liaison also falls within the IMAS definition of humanitarian demining). 14. A. Wheatley, ‘Mine Awareness and Mine Risk Education in Mine Action: an overview of activity to date’, in Mine Action: An Historical Analysis, GICHD, Geneva, forthcoming 2004. 15. Ibid. 16. For those interested in such things, the generic term for a legally binding agreement between states is a treaty. A convention is a type of treaty, as is a protocol. 17. To become a party to the treaty, a state must either sign and ratify it, or if it is not a signatory, accede (a one-stop process). The treaty becomes formally binding – that is, the state becomes a party to it – six months after a state deposits an instrument of ratification or accession with the UN Secretary-General. 18. In accordance with international treaty law, a signatory to the Ottawa Treaty is only bound by a general obligation not to commit acts that would frustrate its object and purpose. This means, presumably, that a signatory may not use anti-personnel mines or engage in new production. 19. International Campaign to Ban Landmines, Landmine Monitor Report 2003: Toward a Mine-Free World, Human Rights Watch, Washington DC, August 2003, available at: <www.icbl.org>. 20. In some ways, the term ‘anti-personnel’ itself is a misnomer, as it suggests that the weapon is carefully directed against military personnel. In fact, as we know, after the conflict is over, the indiscriminate qualities of antipersonnel mines make them a predominantly anti-civilian weapon. The term originated in the Vietnam War, and is a euphemism on a par with the niceties of ‘collateral damage’. 21. As one government military lawyer has explained, most weapons are tested to see if they do what they are supposed to, not to see if they also do other, unintended, things. 22. Cluster Bombs and Landmines in Kosovo, ICRC, Geneva, Revised Edition, June 2001, p. 9. 23. See A Guide to Mine Action, GICHD, Geneva, p. 103. 24. Ibid, pp. 104–5. 25. The 1972 Convention for the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping from Ships and Aircraft.

CHAPTER 5 THE ART OF MANAGING CHAOS: MINE ACTION PROGRAMMING 1. UN Department for Humanitarian Affairs, Angola, The Development of Indigenous Mine Action Capacities, UN, New York, available at <www. mineaction.org>.

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2. Information on Mozambique is taken largely from the excellent report by Bob Eaton and his study team: UN Department for Humanitarian Affairs, Mozambique, The Development of Indigenous Mine Action Capacities, UN, New York, available at <www.mineaction.org>. 3. Information on Angola is taken largely from the corresponding report: UN Department for Humanitarian Affairs, Angola, The Development of Indigenous Mine Action Capacities, UN, New York, available at <www. mineaction.org>. 4. Ibid, p. 1. 5. N. Grobelaar (ed.), Mine Action in Southern Africa: Instrument of Development?, South African Institute of International Affairs, Johannesburg, 2003, p. 33. 6. Ibid, p. 21. 7. Socio-Economic Approaches to Mine Action, An Operational Handbook, GICHD/UNDP, Geneva, 2002, pp. 15–16.

CHAPTER 6

MINE ACTION AND DEVELOPMENT: DOING THE RIGHT JOB

1. The distinction between humanitarian and developmental aid is critical. The former is provided in emergencies to address the ‘humanitarian imperative’ (saving lives). It is viewed as short term and not intended to have sustained impacts in terms of changes to society and the economy. Conversely, developmental aid seeks to bring about sustained socioeconomic impacts. 2. And now, Iraq. 3. This section draws heavily on Amartya Sen’s 1999 work, Development as Freedom. 4. This counts only the international donations to Croatia’s mine action programme (perhaps $3 million/annum). In addition the Croatian government provides perhaps $17 million. 5. Benini, Moulton, and Conley, ‘Landmines and Local Community Adaptation’, Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2002, pp. 82–94. 6. The estimates for Afghanistan are from World Bank & UNDP, 2001, plus updated estimate for the total area contaminated. Estimates for Bosnia are from Annex 3 of Demining Strategy for Bosnia and Herzegovina. Estimates for Cambodia calculated from figures in the Landmine Monitor report for 2002. 7. For example, this author went to the World Bank website, typed Willingness to Pay in the site’s search engine and obtained 1,000 hits.

CHAPTER 7 A ‘WHO’S WHO’ OF MINE ACTION 1. J. Grayson, ‘Mine action and development: Merging strategies’, Disarmament Forum, Issue 3, Geneva, 2003, p. 19. 2. Keynote address to the seminar ‘Responding to Landmines: A Modern Tragedy and its Solutions’, London, 12 June 1997.

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3. In March 2003 Geospatial submitted a proposal to the Mine Action Unit at the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) to conduct a situation analysis of village demining in Cambodia and to work with ‘an informed group of opinion leaders assembled from the international mine action community’ to formulate recommendations on the issue. 4. ‘Spontaneous Demining Initiatives’, by Ruth Bottomley for Handicap International, January 2001. The six-month study covered 45 villages in the heavily mine-contaminated provinces of Battambang, Banteay Meanchey and Krong Pailin. 5. The US believe that these training facilities are the best in the world and they are certainly impressive (although in the author’s view, the Swedish Explosive Ordnance Disposal and Demining Center (SWEDEC) in Eksjo could also lay claim to this accolade). 6. Remarks to the author by Richard Kidd in August 2003. 7. One study of the role of the military in mine action, for example, concluded that, ‘Problems have typically been encountered when military forces have control of mine action in a country and have established a quasi-independent military structure to direct operations.’ 8. Database staff said some data required for operations has been translated into Thai but it was not immediately apparent how much and whether there are plans to put the whole database back into Thai. 9. Handicap International (Thailand) proposed to set up a demining unit, partly as a vehicle to promote humanitarian action concepts, but it failed to find donor support. 10. Standard 01.10, IMAS, 1 January 2003. 11. See above, Chapter 4, for a brief discussion of the legally binding international agreement on explosive remnants of war adopted in 2003. 12. Interestingly, this is different from the legal obligations of Additional Protocol II to the Convention on Conventional Weapons, the agreement that preceded the Ottawa Treaty and which binds a number of states not party to the Ottawa Treaty. 13. Standard 01.10, IMAS, 1 January 2003. 14. For instance, The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund has funded HALO Trust to do mine awareness in Abkhazia, a breakaway republic of Georgia. 15. N. Blanford, ‘Work begins on last tract of mined land in South – UAE has agreed to continue funding’, Daily Star, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, 12 July 2003. 16. This probably includes some of the US funding, for even though it is not a party to the Ottawa Treaty, politically it felt constrained to increase funding for mine clearance as it decided not to join up. 17. Angola, for instance, while a signatory to the treaty wanted the money that comes from mine action but was not so keen on demining. It continued to use anti-personnel mines despite having signed the treaty, the only signatory state to openly acknowledge doing so.

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18. Maybe this is a hangover from the original military approach – e.g. in the British army, combat engineers deal with mines and do not perform EOD, which is covered by a separate department. 19. A number of governments blame the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) for allowing UNMAS, in the words of one, to ‘grow into a monster’ that is running ‘out of control’. DFID is currently reviewing its policy of giving almost all its annual £10 million budget for mine action through the UN, although it is likely to continue to support the UN’s coordinating role. 20. Information taken from the OAS website at: <www.upd.oas.org/lab/ demining/default.htm>.

CHAPTER 8 THE RESULTS OF THE AUDIT 1. UNMAS presentation to the Standing Committees to the Ottawa Treaty, Geneva, May 2003. 2. E. Reusse, The Ills of Aid, An Analysis of Third World Development Policies, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2002, p. 110.

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Select Bibliography BOOKS AND MONOGRAPHS Bottagliero, I., 120 Million Landmines Deployed Worldwide: Fact or Fiction?, Fondation Pro Victimis Geneva, United Kingdom, 2000 Boulden, L.H. and M. Edmonds, Politics of demining: Mine clearance in Southern Africa, South African Institute of International Affairs, Johannesburg, 1999 Cahill, Kevin M. (ed.), Clearing the Fields: Solutions to the Global Landmines Crisis, Basic Books/Council on Foreign Relations, New York, 1995 Cameron, M.A. et al. (eds), To Walk without Fear, The Global Movement to Ban Landmines, Oxford University Press, Toronto, 1998 Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Measured Steps: Assessing Global Progress on Mine Action, Non-Proliferation, Arms Control and Disarmament Division, DFAIT, Ottawa, 1 May 1999, available at: <www.mines.gc.ca> CIET International, Mine Awareness Evaluation – Afghanistan, CIET, available at: <www.ciet.org/www/image/theme/landmines-frames.html> Croll, Mike, The History of Landmines, Leo Cooper, Pen & Sword Books Ltd, Barnsley, United Kingdom, 1998 Coupland, Robin M., Assistance for Victims of Anti-Personnel Mines: Needs, Constraints and Strategy, Geneva: August 1997, available at: <www.icrc. org> Eaton, Robert, Chris Horwood and Norah Niland, Afghanistan: The Development of Indigenous Mine Action Capacities, United Nations Department of Humanitarian Affairs, New York, 1997, available at: <www.un.org/Depts/ dpko/mine/Reports/afghanis/afghanis.htm> —— Angola: The Development of Indigenous Mine Action Capacities, United Nations Department of Humanitarian Affairs, New York, 1997, available at: <www.un.org/Depts/dpko/mine/Reports/angola/angola.htm> —— Cambodia: The Development of Indigenous Mine Action Capacities, United Nations Department of Humanitarian Affairs, New York, 1997, available at: <www.un.org/Depts/dpko/mine/Reports/cambodia/cambodia.htm> —— Mozambique: The Development of Indigenous Mine Action Capacities, United Nations Department of Humanitarian Affairs, New York, 1997, available at: <www.un.org/Depts/dpko/mine/Reports/mozambiq/mozambiq.htm> Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining, A Guide to Mine Action, Geneva, July 2003 —— Communication in Mine Awareness Programmes, GICHD, Geneva, July 2002 —— Improving Communication in Mine Awareness Programmes, An Operational Handbook, Geneva, July 2002 —— Mine Action Equipment: Study of Global Operational Needs, GICHD, Geneva, July 2002 —— The Role of Mine Action in Victim Assistance, GICHD, Geneva, July 2002 182

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183

—— Mine Detection Dogs: Training, Operations, Odour Detection and Socialisation, GICHD, Geneva, September 2002 —— Designer Dogs: Improving the Quality of Mine Detection Dogs, GICHD, Geneva, 2001, available at: www.gichd.ch GICHD/UNDP A Study of Socio-Economic Approaches to Mine Action, GICHD/ UNDP, Geneva, April 2001, available at: www.gichd.ch —— Socio-Economic Approaches to Mine Action, An Operational Handbook, GICHD/UNDP, Geneva, July 2002, available at: www.gichd.ch Gray, Robin, War Wounds: Basic Surgical Management, ICRC, Geneva, 1994 <www.icrc.org> Grobelaar, N. (ed.), Mine Action in Southern Africa: Instrument of Development?, South African Institute of International Affairs, Johannesburg, 2003 Handicap International Belgium, Mines antipersonnel: la guerre en temps de paix (Antipersonnel landmines: the war in peace time), Political, strategic, social, economic, legal and humanitarian aspects: GRIP, Brussels, 1996, available at: www.grip.org/pub/nouv1.html Harpviken, Kristian Berg, Mine Action Indicators as a Topic for Research, Presentation at the Roundtable ‘Towards New Indicators of Success in Humanitarian Mine Action’, Landmine Memo No. 2, Assistance to MineAffected Communities (AMAC), Oslo, March 1999 —— Towards Community-Based Demining? AREA’s project in Nangrahar province, Afghanistan, Landmine Memo No. 3, Assistance to Mine-Affected Communities (AMAC), International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO), Peshawar, May 1999, available at: <www.prio.no/amac> Harpviken, Kristian Berg and Ananda S. Millard, Studying Mine-Affected Communities: A Preliminary Framework, First Edition, Landmines Memo No. 5, Assistance to Mine-Affected Communities (AMAC), International Peace Research Institute, Oslo, December 1999 Hubert, Don, The Landmine Ban: A Case Study In Humanitarian Advocacy, Occasional Paper 2, Thomas J. Watson Jr Institute For International Studies, Brown University, 2000 Human Rights Watch, Land Mines in El Salvador and Nicaragua: The Civilian Victims, HRW Americas Watch Committee, New York, 1986 Human Rights Watch, The Arms Project and Human Rights Watch Africa, Landmines in Mozambique, Human Rights Watch, New York, 1994 Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights, Landmines: A Deadly Legacy, HRW, New York, 1993 Human Rights Watch (Asia Watch) and Physicians for Human Rights, Landmines in Cambodia: The Coward’s War, HRW/PHR, 1991 International Campaign to Ban Landmines, Landmine Monitor Report 2003: Toward a Mine-Free World, Human Rights Watch, Washington DC, August 2003 —— Landmine Monitor Report 2002: Toward a Mine-Free World, Human Rights Watch, Washington DC, September 2002 —— Landmine Monitor Report 2001: Toward a Mine-Free World, Human Rights Watch, Washington DC, August 2001 —— Landmine Monitor Report 2000: Toward a Mine-Free World, Human Rights Watch, Washington DC, August 2000

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—— Landmine Monitor Report 1999: Toward a Mine-Free World, Human Rights Watch, Washington DC, April 1999 International Committee of the Red Cross, Mine Action 2001, Mines/Arms Unit, available at: <www.icrc.org> —— Landmines Must Be Stopped: Overview 1999, ICRC, Geneva, 1999 —— Implementing the Ottawa Treaty: National Legislation, ICRC, Geneva, April 1999 —— Banning Anti-Personnel Mines, The Ottawa Treaty Explained, ICRC, Geneva, 1998 —— The Worldwide Epidemic of Landmine Injuries, ICRC, Geneva, 1995 —— Report of the Symposium on Anti-Personnel Mines, Montreux, 21–23 April 1993, ICRC, Geneva, 1993 Kirkey, Christopher, The Global Effort to Ban Landmines: A History and Evaluation of the Ottawa Convention, Indiana University Press, forthcoming, 2003 McGrath, Rae, Landmines: Legacy of conflict, A Manual for development workers, Oxfam/Pluto Press, Oxford, United Kingdom, 1994 Maresca, L. and S. Maslen (eds), The Banning of Anti-Personnel Landmines, The Legal Contribution of the International Committee of the Red Cross 1955–1999, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000 Maslen, S., Anti-Personnel Mines under Humanitarian Law, A View from the Vanishing Point, Intersentia, Antwerp, Belgium, 2001 Matthew, Richard, Bryan McDonald and Ken Rutherford (eds), Landmines and Human Security: International Politics and War’s Hidden Legacy, State University of New York Press, 1 April 2004 Millard, Ananda S., A Community Living with Mines and Demining: The Case of Bandua, Mozambique, Assistance to Mine-Affected Communities (AMAC), Landmines Memo No. 6, International Peace Research Institute, Oslo, 2000 Millard, Ananda S. and Kristian Berg Harpviken, Community Studies in Practice: Implementing a New Approach to Landmine Impact Assessment with Illustrations from Mozambique, available at: <www.prio.no> Monan, Jim, Landmines and Underdevelopment: A Case Study of Quang Tri Province, Central Vietnam, Oxfam, Hong Kong, 1995, available at: <www. landmine.oxfamhk.org.vn> —— The Impact of Landmines on Children in Quang Tri Province, Central Vietnam, Oxfam, Hong Kong, available at: <www.landmine.oxfamhk.org.vn> Omaar, Rakiya et al., Violent Deeds Live On: Landmines in Somalia and Somaliland, African Rights/Mines Advisory Group, London, December 1993 Physicians for Human Rights, Hidden enemies: Land mines in northern Somalia, PHR, Boston, November 1992 Rebelo, Pamela Logie, Level One Surveys and the Socio-Economic Component with Specific Reference to Mozambique, International Development Research Centre, Maputo, 1998 Roberts, Shawn and Jody Williams, After the Guns Fall Silent, The Enduring Legacy of Landmines, Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, Washington DC, 1995 Rutherford, Ken, ‘The Hague and Ottawa Conventions: A Model for Future Weapon Ban Regimes?’, The Nonproliferation Review, Spring–Summer 1999, pp. 36–50

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Sen, Amartya, Development as Freedom, Anchor Books, 1999 Sethi, Dinesh and Etienne Krug, WHO Guidance on surveillance of injuries due to landmines and unexploded ordnance, Injuries and Violence Prevention Department, World Health Organization, 2000, available at: <www. mineaction.org> United Nations Children’s Fund, Training Module for Mine Awareness Programme Managers: Trainers’ Guide, UNICEF, New York, 2000, available at: <www. mineaction.org> —— A Child Rights Guide to the 1996 Mine Protocol, UNICEF, New York, 1997, available at: <www.mineaction.org> United States Department of the Army, Humanitarian Demining Operations Handbook, Training Circular 31–34, Department of the Army Headquarters, Washington DC, 1998 —— Unexploded Ordnance (UXO) Procedures, Field Manual 21–16, Department of the Army Headquarters, Washington DC, 1994 —— Unexploded Ordnance: A Coordinated Approach to Detection and Clearance is Needed, GAO/NSIAD-95–197, The Office, Washington DC, 1983 United States Department of State, Hidden Killers: The Global Landmines Crisis, US Dept of State, Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, Washington, DC, 1998 —— Hidden Killers: The Global Problem with Uncleared Landmines, Department of State Publications, Publication 10255, Washington DC, December 1993, available at: <www.state.gov/www/global/arms/rpt_9809_demine_toc. html> United States Federal Advisory Committee for the Development of Innovative Technologies, Unexploded Ordnance: An Overview, Naval Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technology Division, UXO Countermeasures Department, Maryland, USA, 1996 Uršicˇ, Cveto, Professional Rehabilitation and invalid persons employment today and tomorrow, Manual for professionals in mine victims assistance, Institute for Rehabilitation of Republic of Slovenia, available at: <www.itf-fund. si/main.html>

UNITED NATIONS DOCUMENTS AND STANDARDS United Nations Department for Humanitarian Affairs, The Development of Indigenous Mine Action Capacities, DHA, New York, 1997, available at: <www. reliefweb.int> United Nations Mine Action Service, Mine Action And Effective Coordination: The United Nations Policy, Policy Document, available at: <www.mineaction. org> United Nations, United Nations Mine Action and the Use of the Militaries, UN, New York, 25 January 1999, available at: <www.mineaction.org> —— International Guidelines for Landmine and Unexploded Ordnance Awareness Education, United Nations, New York, 1999, available at: <www.mineaction. org> —— International Standards for Humanitarian Mine Clearance Operations, United Nations, New York, 1998, available at: <www.mineaction.org>

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—— Mine Action and Effective Coordination, The United Nations Policy, United Nations, New York, 1998, available at: <www.mineaction.org> ‘Assistance in Mine Action. Report of The Secretary-General’, UN Doc A/56/448, 8 October 2001 available at: <www.mineaction.org> (Plus Addendums 1 and 2 of 16 September 2001) ‘Assistance in Mine Action. Report of the Secretary-General’, UN Doc A/55/542, 3 November 2000 available at: <www.mineaction.org> ‘Assistance in Mine Action. Report of the Secretary-General to the General Assembly’, A/54/445, 6 October 1999 ‘Assistance in mine clearance. Report of the Secretary-General to the General Assembly’, UN Doc. A/53/496, 14 October 1998, available at: <www. mineaction.org> ‘Assistance in mine clearance. Report of the Secretary-General to the General Assembly’, UN Doc. A/52/697, 11 December 1997, available at: <www. mineaction.org> ‘Assistance in mine clearance. Report of the Secretary-General to the General Assembly’, UN Doc. A/51/540, 23 October 1996, available at: <www. mineaction.org> ‘Assistance in mine clearance. Report of the Secretary-General to the General Assembly’, UN Doc. A/50/408, 6 September 1995, available at: <www. mineaction.org> ‘Assistance in mine clearance. Report of the Secretary-General to the General Assembly’, UN Doc. A/49/357 and Add. 1 and Add. 2, 6 September 1994, available at: <www.mineaction.org>

ARTICLES, BRIEFING AND STRATEGY PAPERS, AND PRESS RELEASES Africa Policy Information Center, ‘Landmines: Africa’s stake, global initiatives’, Background Paper, Africa Policy Information Center (APIC), Washington DC, USA, April 1997, available at: <www.africaaction.org/bp/lmineall. htm> Ahearn, David M., ‘United Nations Assumes the Lead in Demining’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1997, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <maic.jmu. edu/journal/1.1/profiles/unshrt.htm> Ahmed, Mohamed Abdulkadir, ‘The Impact of Landmines on Socio-Economic Development in Southern Lebanon’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 5, No. 3, Fall 2001, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <maic.jmu.edu/journal/5.3/focus/ Mohammed_Ahmed/Mohammed_Ahmed.htm> Anderson, Kenneth, ‘The Ottawa Convention banning landmines, the role of international non-governmental organizations and the idea of international civil society’, European Journal of International Law, Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 91–112 —— ‘An Overview of the Global Land Mines Crisis’, in Kevin M. Cahill (ed.), Clearing the Fields: Solutions to the Global Land Mines Crisis, Basic Books/ Council on Foreign Relations, New York, 1995, pp. 17–23

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Anderson, Kenneth and Monica Schurtman, ‘The United Nations Response to the Crisis of Landmines in the Developing World’, Harvard International Law Journal, Vol. 36, No. 2 (Spring 1995), pp. 359–371 Andersson, Neil, Cesar Palha da Sousa and Sergio Paredes, ‘Social Cost of Landmines in Four Countries: Afghanistan, Bosnia, Cambodia and Mozambique’, British Medical Journal, No. 311, 1995, pp. 718–721 Ascherio, A. et al., ‘Deaths and injuries caused by landmines in Mozambique’, Lancet, Vol. 346, 16 September 1995, pp. 721–724 Bach, Håvard, ‘Mine action technology now and in the future: is it realistic to expect great leaps forward in technology?’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 6, No. 1, Spring 2002, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <maic.jmu.edu/ journal/6.1/features/bach/bach.htm> Barlow, Dennis, ‘The Devastating Effects of Landmines: The Landmine Problem in the Sudan’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring 1999, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <maic.jmu.edu/journal/3.1/africa/sudan/sudan_ barlow.htm> —— ‘‘‘Gardens of the Devil”, A Report from Western Egypt’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring 1999, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <maic.jmu. edu/journal/3.1/africa/egypt/egypt_barlow.htm> Boddington, Michael A., ‘Sustainability of Prosthetic and Orthotic Programmes in the Low-income World: The Case of Mozambique’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 3, No. 3, Fall 1999, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <maic.jmu. edu/journal/3.3/focus/power.htm> Boutros-Ghali, B., ‘Landmine crisis: A humanitarian disaster’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 73, No. 5, September/October 1994, pp. 8–13 Brabant, Stanislas, ‘Lessons learnt from mine awareness in southern Afghanistan’, Handicap International Belgium, Brussels, draft of 29 January 2002 Brown, Steve, ‘Mine action – The Management of Risk’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring 1999, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <maic.jmu. edu/journal/3.1/features/risk_brown/risk_brown.htm> Bruschini, Claudio et al., ‘Ground penetrating radar and imaging metal detector for antipersonnel mine detection’, Journal of Applied Geophysics, Vol. 40, Nos 1–3, October 1998, pp. 59–71 Burkhalter, Holly, ‘The Mine Ban Treaty’, In Focus, Foreign Policy Journal, Vol. 5, No. 21, July 2000, pp. 1–4: <www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/pdf/ vol5/21ifmines.pdf> Busé, Margaret S., ‘The European Commission: The Future of Mine Action From a Donor’s Perspective’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 6, No. 1, Spring 2002, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <maic.jmu.edu/journal/6.1/ features/buse/buse.htm> —— ‘The Role of the United Nations in Mine Action’ (interview with Ian Mansfield), Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 6, No. 1, Spring 2002, Mine Action

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Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <maic.jmu.edu/journal/6.1/focus/buse/buse.htm> Campbell, Sarah, ‘Ensuring Effective Coordination: UNMAS and Mine Action Coordination Centres in Africa’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 6, No. 2, Summer 2002, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <www.hdic.jmu.edu/journal/6.2/ focus/sarahcampbell/sarahcampbell.htm> Canadian International Development Agency, ‘Anti-Personnel Landmines and Development: CIDA’s Approach’, Briefing Paper, November 1997, available at: <www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/cida_ind.nsf> Carstairs, Tim, ‘MAG Community Liaison in Mine Action: Partnerships for Growth’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 6, No. 2, Summer 2002, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <www.hdic.jmu.edu/journal/6.2/focus/timcarstairs/ timcarstairs.htm> —— ‘Humanitarian Mine Action in Northern Iraq’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 5, No. 3, Fall 2001, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <maic.jmu.edu/ journal/5.3/focus/Tim_Crastairs/tim_Crastairs.htm> Childress, Dr Alan and Lieutenant-Colonel Pete Owen, ‘Strategic Management For Mine Action Operations: A Case For Government–Industry Partnering’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 4, No. 1, Spring 2000, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <maic.jmu.edu/journal/4.1/feature_childress.htm> Childress, Dr Alan, and Major Matt Zajac, ‘Tailoring Partnerships for Success: Experiences from the Djiboutian Humanitarian Demining Program’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 6, No. 2, Summer 2002, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <www.hdic.jmu.edu/journal/6.2/focus/ChildressZajac/ChildressZajac. htm> Cobey, James C. and Jonathan Fine, ‘The Public Health Effects of Landmines: Long Term Consequences for Civilians’, in Barry S. Levy and Victor W. Sidel (eds), War and Public Health, Oxford University Press, New York, 1997 Colburn, Marta, ‘Connecting Global Education with Activism: Building A Local and Global Community’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 6, No. 1, Spring 2002, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <maic.jmu.edu/journal/6.1/ features/colburn/colburn.htm> Combrinck, M., ‘Transient electromagnetic exploration techniques: can they be applied to the landmine discrimination problem?’, Journal of African Earth Sciences, Vol. 33, Nos 3–4, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, 2001, pp. 693–698 Coupland, R.M., ‘Effect of weapons: Defining superfluous injury & unnecessary suffering’, Medicine & Global Survival, Vol. 3, 1996, p. A1 Coupland, Robin M. and Adriaan Korber, ‘Injuries from Anti-personnel Mines: The Experience of the International Committee of the Red Cross’, British Medical Journal, Vol. 303, No. 6816, 14 December 1991, pp. 1509–1512 de Smet, John, J. Edmond Charlton and Jacques Meynadier, ‘Pain and Rehabilitation from Landmine Injury’, International Association for the Study

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of Pain (IASP), Vol. VI, Issue 2, Seattle, WA, USA, 1998, available at: <www. nda.ox.ac.uk/wfsa/html/u11/u1120_01.htm> Desvignes, Laurence, ‘The International Committee of the Red Cross Mine/ UXO Awareness Programs’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 4, No. 3, Fall 2000, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <maic.jmu.edu/journal/4.3/index.htm> Eitel, Sue, ‘Defining the Pillar of Victim Assistance’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 3, No. 3, Fall 1999, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <maic.jmu.edu/ journal/3.3/focus/va_eitel.htm> Fleisher, Michael L., ‘Locating Landmines and UXO: A Methodological Lesson from the Ethiopian Landmine Impact Survey’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 6, No. 2, Summer 2002, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <www.hdic.jmu.edu/ journal/6.2/focus/michaellfleisher/michaellfleisher.htm> Fortuny-Guasch, J. (ed.) et al., Project INESIGN, Measurement Campaign in Support to Humanitarian Demining, Final Report to the European Commission, DG Joint Research Centre, available at: Gasser, Russell, ‘Humanitarian Demining Research: The Future Role of the European Union’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 6, No. 2, Summer 2002, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <www.hdic.jmu.edu/journal/6.2/features/ russellgasser/russellgasser.html> Goldblat, Jozef, ‘Anti-Personnel Mines: From Mere Restrictions to a Total Ban’, Security Dialogue, Vol. 30, No. 1, 1999, pp. 9–23 Goose, Stephen, ‘The 1997 Mine Ban Treaty: Making a Difference’, Disarmament Diplomacy, No. 47, available at: <www.acronym.org.uk/47mine.htm> Harris, Geoff, ‘The economics of landmine clearance in Afghanistan’, Disasters, Vol. 26, No. 1, March 2002, pp. 49–54 —— ‘The economics of landmine clearance: case study of Cambodia’, Journal of International Development, Vol. 12, No. 2, March 2000, pp. 219–225 Harte, Carson, ‘Prosthetics and Orthotics Services in Landmine-affected Countries in the Developing World: A personal view from Cambodia’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 3, No. 3, Fall 1999, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <maic.jmu.edu/journal/3.3/focus/newharte.htm> Hartmann, R., ‘First Breakthrough in the Landmine Problem – The Banning of Antipersonnel Mines’, Internationale Politik, Vol. 53, No. 3, March 1998, pp. 57–62 Himmler, Thomas, ‘The Landmine Menace: The Great Humanitarian Challenge’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 6, No. 2, Summer 2002, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <www.hdic.jmu.edu/journal/6.2/features/thomashimmler/ thomashimmler.htm> Hoffmann, Bernd, ‘An Integrated Global Demining and Development Strategy’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring 1999, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <maic.jmu.edu/journal/3.1/africa/mozambique/gtz_hoffman.htm>

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Horwood, Chris, ‘Humanitarian Mine Action: The First Decade of a New Sector in Humanitarian Aid’, Relief and Rehabilitation Network, Paper No. 32, Overseas Development Institute, London, 2000 International Campaign to Ban Landmines, ‘Guidelines for the care and rehabilitation of survivors’, Pamphlet, ICBL Working Group on Victim Assistance, Washington DC, 1997, available at: <www.icbl.org> International Committee of the Red Cross, ‘Implementing an Integrated Approach in Afghanistan’, ICRC Presentation for the Standing Committee on mine clearance, mine awareness and mine action technologies, Geneva, 29–30 January 2002, available at: <www.gichd.ch> International Committee of the Red Cross/World Health Organization, ‘Joint Strategy for the Prevention, Care and Rehabilitation of Victims of Landmines’, Strategy Paper, ICRC/WHO, Geneva, 1997, available at: <www. mineaction.org> Jeffrey, S.J., ‘Antipersonnel mines: Who are the victims?’, Journal of Accident & Emergency Medicine, Vol. 13, No. 5, September 1996, pp. 343–346 Joynt, Vernon, ‘National Mine Action: Problems and Predictions’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 6, No. 1, Spring 2002, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <maic. jmu.edu/journal/6.1/focus/joynt/joynt.htm> Kakar, F. et al. ‘The consequences of landmines on public health’, Pre-hospital and Disaster Medicine, Vol. 11, No. 1, January–March 1996, pp. 2–10 Krstelj, V. and J. Stepanic, ‘Humanitarian demining detection equipment and working group for antipersonnel landmines detection’, Insight, Vol. 42, No. 3, March 2000, pp. 187–190 Krstelj, Vjera, Josip Stepanic Jr, and Irena Leljak, ‘Quality Assurance Evaluation and Certification of Humanitarian Demining Detection Equipment’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 4, No. 1, Spring 2000, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <maic. jmu.edu/journal/4.1/quality.htm> Kudyba, Bob, ‘Ethiopia and Eritrea Mine Action Coordination Center: UNMEE–MACC’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 6, No. 1, Spring 2002, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <maic.jmu.edu/journal/6.1/focus/kudyba/ kudyba.htm> Labon, Michael, ‘Mine Awareness: A New Approach’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 6, No. 1, Spring 2002, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <maic.jmu.edu/ journal/6.1/features/labon/labon.htm> Litzelman, Major Michael, ‘Benefit/Cost Analysis of U.S. Demining in Ethiopia and Eritrea’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 6, No. 2, Summer 2002, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <www.hdic.jmu.edu/journal/6.2/focus/michaellitzelman/ michaellistzelman.htm> Long, David, ‘The European Union and the Ottawa Process to ban landmines’, Journal of European Public Policy, Vol. 9, No. 3, 1 June 2002, pp. 429–446 McAslan, Alastair, ‘A Framework of International Mine Action Standards and Guidelines, A Strawman Paper’, United Nations Mine Action Service, available at: <www.mineactionstandards.org>

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McAslan, Colonel Alastair and Keith Feigenbaum, ‘International Standards for personal protective equipment’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 4, No. 2, Summer 2000, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <maic.jmu.edu/journal/4.2/Focus/ wgppe/wgppe.htm> Maddocks, Ian, ‘Antipersonnel Landmines: A Long Term Burden on Global Health’, Medicine & Global Survival, Vol. 5, No. 1, IPPNW, USA, 1998, pp. 22–25 Malanczuk, Peter, ‘The International Criminal Court and landmines: what are the consequences of leaving the US behind?’, European Journal of International Law, Vol. 11, No. 1, 2000, pp. 77–90 Mansfield, Ian, ‘Building National Mine Action Capacity: It is No Myth’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 6, No. 1, Spring 2002, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <maic.jmu.edu/journal/6.1/focus/mansfield/mansfield.htm> Mather, C., ‘Maps, Measurements, and Landmines: The Global Landmines Crisis and the Politics of Development’, Environment and Planning, Vol. 34, No. 2, February 2002, pp. 239–250 Matthew, Richard A., Human Security and the Mine Ban Treaty: A Case Study in Transnational Politics SUNY, New York 2003 (forthcoming) Merten, Peter, ‘The Operational Implementation of Community Mine Awareness for Development: Practical Experiences in Mozambique’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring 1999, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <maic. jmu.edu/journal/3.1/africa/mozambique/gtz_merten.htm> Millard, Ananda S., Kristian Berg Harpviken and K.E. Kjellman, ‘Risk Removed? Steps towards Building Trust in Humanitarian Mine Action’, Disasters, Vol. 26, No. 2, June 2002, pp. 161–174 Nalya, Aisha Saeed, ‘Mine Awareness Education in the Republic of Yemen’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 5, No. 3, Fall 2001, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <maic.jmu.edu/journal/5.3/focus/aisha_nalya/aisha_nalya.htm> Nebbia, G. et al., ‘Explodet Project: Advanced nuclear techniques for humanitarian demining’, Physica Hungarica New Series – Heavy Ion Physics, ACTA, Vol. 11, Nos 3–4, 2000, pp. 497–505 Nicoud, J.D., ‘Vehicles and robots for humanitarian demining’, Industrial Robot, Vol. 24, No. 2, 1997, pp. 164–168 Paterson, Ted, ‘Commentary on “The economics of landmine clearance: case study of Cambodia”’, Journal of International Development, Vol. 13, No. 5, July 2001, pp. 629–634 Pettit, Colleen, ‘State Department, The Demining 2010 Initiative’, Journal of Humanitarian Demining, Vol. 2, No. 1, February 1998, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <maic.jmu.edu/journal/2.1/statedept.htm> Physicians for Human Rights, ‘Measuring Landmine Incidents and Injuries and the Capacity to Provide Care: A Guide to Assist Governments and Non-governmental Organizations in Collecting Data about Landmine Victims, Hospitals and Orthopaedic Centers’, Information Paper, PHR,

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Boston, March 2000, available at: <www.phrusa.org/publications/pdf/ landmines.pdf> RONCO Consulting Corporation, ‘Humanitarian Demining: Ten Years of Lessons’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 2, No. 2, Fall 1998, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <maic.jmu.edu/journal/2.2/field/ronco.htm> Rountree, Mark S. and LTC Robert M. Harris, ‘Countering the Global Landmine Epidemic through Basic Science Research’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 4, No. 2, Fall 2000, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <maic.jmu.edu/journal/4.2/ Focus/GLE/global.htm> Rutherford, Kenneth R., ‘Landmine Victim Assistance and Government Legal Obligation’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 6, No. 1, Spring 2002, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <maic.jmu.edu/journal/6.1/features/rutherford/rutherford. htm> Rutherford, Ken,‘The evolving arms control agenda – Implications of the role of NGOs in banning antipersonnel landmines’, World Politics, Vol. 53, No. 1, October 2000, pp. 74–114 —— ‘Internet activism: NGOs and the Mine Ban Treaty’, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 1.2, Summer/Fall 2000, available at: <www. emerald-library.com> Scheu, Hildegard, ‘Humanitarian Mine Action in Mozambique’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 6, No. 2, Summer 2002, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <www.hdic. jmu.edu/journal/6.2/focus/hildegardscheu/hildegardscheu.htm> —— ‘Community Mine Awareness for Development’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 4, No. 3, Fall 2000, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <maic.jmu.edu/ journal/4.3/index.htm> Scott, J.J., ‘The Kosovo MACC: “The Most Successful Mine Action Program Ever”’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 6, No. 1, Spring 2002, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <maic.jmu.edu/journal/6.1/focus/scott/scott.htm> Short, Nicola, ‘A Review of the Ottawa Process to Ban Landmines’, ISIS Briefing Paper No. 15, International Security Information Service, Europe, November 1997, available at: <www.isis-europe.org/isiseu/english/no15.html> Smith, Andy, ‘What Use is a Database of Demining Accidents?’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 6, No. 2, Summer 2002, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <www.hdic. jmu.edu/journal/6.2/notes/andysmith/andysmith.htm> Spooner, B., ‘A Fully Integrated Approach to the Survey, Planning and Removal of Landmines by Incorporating Development and Environmental Issues and Impact Assessment Techniques’ (unpublished paper), Global Impacts Ltd, Ashford, United Kingdom, 1994 Sprinkel, Susanna, ‘Current Mine Action Situation in Afghanistan’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 6, No. 1, Spring 2002, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <maic. jmu.edu/journal/6.1/notes/sprinkel/sprinkel.htm>

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Stevens, John, ‘Afghanistan’s Hidden Killers: Landmines’, State Magazine, US Department of State, Washington DC, April 2002, pp. 14–17, available at: <www.state.gov/documents/organization/9717.pdf> Stohl, Rachel, ‘Landmines Remain Issue in Korea’, The Defense Monitor, Vol. 29, No. 5, Center for Defense Information, Washington DC, 2000, available at: <www.cdi.org/dm/2000/issue5/Landmines.html> —— ‘Vietnam’s Deadly Legacy’, Weekly Defense Monitor, Vol. 4, No. 18, 4 May 2000, Center for Defense Information, Washington DC, available at: <www. cdi.org/weekly/2000/issue18.html#1> Trevelyan, James, ‘Reducing Accidents in Demining: Achievements in Afghanistan’, Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, University of Western Australia, Nedlands 6907, available at: <www.mech. uwa.edu.au/jpt/demining/reports/safety1.pdf> —— ‘The Mine Action Process’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 4, No. 3, Fall 2000, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <maic.jmu.edu/journal/4.3/process.htm> —— ‘Quality Standards for Demining’, Journal of Mine Action, Vol. 4, No. 2, Summer 2000, Mine Action Information Center, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, United States, available at: <maic.jmu.edu/journal/4.2/Focus/ Qs/qualitystandards.htm> US Department of Defense, ‘UXO Forum ’97: A Global Conference on Unexploded Ordnance, Nashville, Tennessee, May 28–30 1997’, Conference Proceedings Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, The Dupuy Institute’s Research Study: Military Consequences of Landmine Restrictions, A VVAF Monograph, Vol. 1, No. 2, Spring 2000

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Index

Accelerated Demining Programme (see also Mozambique) 41, 87 advocacy 7, 45, 63–73, 107, 132, 139, 147, 155, 159, 166 Afghan, Afghanistan (see also Mine Action Centre for Afghanistan) 7, 8, 10, 18, 20, 26, 27, 29, 32, 33, 37–40, 41, 42, 48, 50, 55, 95–6, 103, 110, 115, 116, 118, 119, 120, 121, 124, 136, 144, 147, 148, 153, 154, 159, 160, 167, 169, 176, 179 AIDS 75, 76 al-Qaida 95 ammunition (see munition) amputee (see also survivor; victim) 1, 13, 74, 75, 118, 119, 159, 162 Angola (see also Central Mine Action Office) 1, 5, 6, 10, 11, 26, 33, 37, 41, 42, 45, 71, 73, 86, 94, 102, 112, 117, 146, 159, 177, 180 anti-personnel mine: bounding fragmentation 13 clearance (see also mine clearance) 64, 69–70, 142 cost 10 definition 67-68 destruction 2, 7, 34, 45, 49, 67, 68–9, 70, 78–81, 107, 137, 139, 145, 158, 160, 161 development 14–18 dumb (see anti-personnel mine, persistent) elimination 133, 160 fragmentation 13 improvised 19 injuries 1, 2, 4, 13, 26, 57, 73, 74, 75, 97, 110, 119, 120 origin 14 persistent 66 production 2, 6, 10, 70, 165, 178

remotely delivered (see antipersonnel mine, scatterable) scatterable 16, 18 self-destructing, self-destruction 17 transfer 6, 67, 70, 165 use 2, 6, 7, 11, 14–19, 26, 31, 45, 65, 66, 67, 70, 71, 79, 139, 150, 165, 170, 178, 180 anti-tank mine (see also anti-vehicle mine) 11, 14, 15, 19, 52, 67, 83 anti-vehicle mine (see also anti-tank mine) 67, 68 Aqa, Sayed 8, 32, 154, 155 armed: conflict 10ff, 31, 82, 161 opposition groups 11 Armenia 11, 134 Asian Development Bank 138 assessment (see survey; threat assessment) assistance (see victim assistance) Australia(n) 38 Austria(n) 12, 176 Axworthy, Lloyd 2, 8, 64, 78, 79, 170 Azerbaijan 11, 33, 42, 134, 135, 159 Bad Honnef Guidelines 133 Balmer, Peter 8 Barber, Martin 8, 37, 40, 153 Barzani, Saraj 157 Belarus 81 Belgium 12, 17, 65, 147 Blagden, Brigadier (ret.) Patrick 8, 25, 29, 43, 50, 52, 152 Bohle, Vera 8, 30, 46, 50, 163, 171, 175 booby-traps 31, 149 Bosnia and Herzegovina 4, 6, 11, 26, 33, 42, 102, 110, 115, 119, 120, 121, 129, 130, 148, 149, 155, 160, 164, 179

194

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Index bounding fragmentation (see antipersonnel mine, bounding fragmentation) butterfly mine (see also antipersonnel mine, scatterable) 18 Cambodia (see also Cambodian Campaign to Ban Landmines; Cambodian Mine Action and Victim Assistance Authority; Cambodian Mine Action Centre; Land Use Planning Unit) 4, 8, 11, 16, 26, 27, 28, 30, 33, 35, 37, 38, 41, 42, 47, 48, 52, 54, 58, 59, 61, 77, 78, 87, 88, 90, 94, 102, 112, 119, 120, 121, 124, 128, 129, 130, 135, 137, 138, 143, 162, 164, 167, 168, 172, 179 Cambodian: Campaign to Ban Landmines 145 Mine Action and Victim Assistance Authority 49, 92 Mine Action Centre 48, 54, 77, 87, 88, 90, 135, 138 Cambrai, Battle of 15 Canada, Canadian 2, 6, 7, 63, 64, 150, 151, 170 DFAIT 151 casualty, casualties (see also victim) 48, 77, 136, 143, 162, 167 Catholic Relief Service 57 CCW (see Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons) Central Mine Action Office 86 Chad 11, 33, 42, 63 Chemical Weapons Convention (see also landmine, chemical) 18 China, Chinese 2, 3, 16, 65, 72, 73, 165 Claymore 16 Clear Path International 74 Clinton, William Jefferson 64 cluster bombs/munitions 13, 15, 18, 19–21, 72, 73, 149, 161, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178 CMAC (see Cambodian Mine Action Centre)

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195

CMAO (see Central Mine Action Office) Colombia 11, 31 commercial companies 41, 43, 80, 81, 133, 138, 148-149 communication 58, 59, 60, 61, 139, 168, 177 community 11, 33, 34, 42, 43, 48, 49, 57, 60, 61, 62, 63, 74, 75, 77, 95, 103, 104, 106, 107, 110, 117, 119, 123, 124, 125, 129, 133, 134, 135, 136, 147, 148, 160, 164, 165, 168, 169, 173 liaison 39, 60–2, 63, 133, 134, 136, 147, 148, 166, 169, 178, 188 conflict (see War) Congo, Democratic Republic of 11, 42, 154 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons Protocol V 72 Copenhagen (see also Denmark) 4 Costa Rica 142, 158 cost-benefit 115, 118–19, 163 Coupland, Dr Robin 8, 74, 165 Cranfield Mine Action 69, 160 Croatia 11, 34, 42, 103, 112, 129, 130, 144, 149, 164, 172, 179 Croatia n Mine Action Centre 129, 130, 164 Croll, Mike 14 CRS (see Catholic Relief Service) Cumming-Bruce, Nick xv, 8 customary international law 65 Dahinden, Ambassador Martin 8, 29, 59, 76, 140, 142, 167 decision-making 54, 88 demilitarised zone 16, 17 deminer (see also demining) 1, 4, 18, 29, 30, 34, 37, 42, 44, 45, 46, 49, 50, 51, 42, 53, 60, 63, 84, 88, 92, 95, 96, 100, 113, 132, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 141, 142, 143, 151, 156, 157, 162, 163, 168, 169

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196

Mine Action After Diana

demining (see also, mine clearance; village demining): definition 4, 39, 45, 46, 53, 178 programme 41, 140 toolbox 46–9, 168 toolkit (see demining, toolbox) demobilised soldiers 15, 85, 96, 122, 123 Denmark 11, 42, 147 destroy (see anti-personnel mine destruction) destruction (see anti-personnel mine destruction) development 3, 8, 26, 40, 45, 48, 49, 56, 57, 76, 85, 91, 98, Chapter 6, 132, 133, 134, 137, 145, 146, 147, 149, 150, 151, 154, 155, 157, 158, 162, 164, 169, 171, 172, 173, 175 Diana, Princess of Wales (see also The Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Fund) 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 24, 37, 45, 46, 55, 63, 66, 73, 75, 78, 82, 86, 97, 99, 132, 149, 161, 165, 175 Diplomatic Conference (see Oslo Diplomatic Conference) displaced, internally 32, 56, 119, 134 DMZ (see demilitarised zone; see also Korea) dogs (see mine detection) donor(s) 8, 26, 33, 35, 39, 40, 41, 48, 49, 50, 54, 62, 66, 67, 69, 70, 76, 83, 84, 85, 87, 90, 91, 92, 93, 97, 98, 100, 101, 102, 103, 108, 113, 114, 118, 121, 124, 126, 127, 128, 130, 133, 135, 138, 141, 143, 145, 146, 149–52, 153, 154, 166, 168, 170, 171, 172, 173, 176, 177, 180, 187 Eaton, Bob 3, 4, 8, 172, 173, 175, 179 Ecuador 11, 12 Egypt(ian) (see also El Alamein, Battle of) 11, 12, 24, 25, 187 El Alamein, Battle of 5, 15

Maslen 03 index 196

El Salvador 11, 55, 183 EOD (see explosive ordnance disposal) equipment, mechanical demining 43, 46, 52–3, 146, 152, 177 personal protective 1, 6, 50, 162, 191 Eritrea 11, 28, 33, 42, 154, 190 EU (see European Union) European Union 69, 158–9, 176, 187, 189 explosive, plastic 49 explosive ordnance disposal 12, 53, 54, 79, 80, 138, 140, 180 explosive remnants of war (see also unexploded ordnance) 3, 12, 19, 25, 27, 30, 55, 72–3, 157, 159, 161, 166, 167, 174, 180 Falkland Islands 11, Filippino, Eric 8, 33, 55, 57 Flanagan, John 8, 31, 61, 85, 93, 96, 163 fragmentation (see anti-personnel mine, fragmentation) France, French 2, 3, 12, 37, 71, 97, 134, 147 fuses, fusing (see also tripwire) 68 GATOR mine 19 Geneva: Conventions 159 International Centre for Humanitarian Demining 29, 32, 43, 71, 160, 177 Geographic Information System 32, 129, 164 Georgia 11, 180 Germany 12, 18, 25, 37, 133, 147 GIS (see Geographic Information System) Goose, Steve 189 GPR (see ground-penetrating radar) Grayson, Judy 132, 137, 179 ground-penetrating radar 171, 187 Guinea-Bissau 11, 42 Hajnoczi, Ambassador Thomas 8, 10

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Index HALO Trust, the 1, 25, 35, 42, 48, 52, 90, 92, 135, 146, 161, 163, 180 Handicap International 17, 80, 97, 124, 129, 134, 135, 136, 147, 148, 164, 180 hand grenade 3, 12, 25, 74, 161, 175 HDI (see Human Development Index) Herby, Peter 8, 159, 170 Howe, Earl 1 Human Rights Watch 20, 72, 166, 178, 183 Human Development Index 104 humanitarian: demining (see demining; mine clearance) law (see international humanitarian law) Hussein, Saddam 18, 19 ICBL (see International Campaign to Ban Landmines) ICRC (see International Committee of the Red Cross) IMAS (see International Mine Action Standards) IMSMA (see Information Management System for Mine Action) improvised explosive devices 19 India 11, 65, 66, 67, 165 indiscriminate: use 66 weapons 20, 64, 178 International Campaign to Ban Landmines (see also Landmine Monitor) 2, 66, 70, 146, 147, 149, 166, 178 International Committee of the Red Cross 2, 6, 70, 73, 134, 159–60, 170 international humanitarian law 159, 171, 184 Information Management System for Mine Action 32, 143 International Mine Action Standards 7, 43, 44, 45, 53, 55,

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197

62, 63, 79, 86, 93, 133, 134, 135, 136, 139, 142, 143, 154, 155, 166, 169, 173 International Organization for Standardisation 43 International Peace Research Institute – Oslo 124 Iran 11, 19, 155 Iraq(i) 8, 11, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 25, 41, 67, 80, 81, 139, 144, 148, 154, 155, 156, 157, 166, 177, 179, 188 National Mine Action Authority 80, 81 ISO (see International Organization for Standardisation) Israel 4, 11, 47, 149 Japan 12 Kendellen, Mike 8, 78 Khmer 89 Rouge 27, 48, 87, 88 Kidd, Richard 8, 33, 69, 81, 150, 164, 176, 177 Kongstad, Ambassador Steffen 8, 165, 174 Korea (see also War, Korean), Democratic People’s Republic of 17 Republic of 11, 17 Kosovo 11, 15, 20, 31, 42, 61, 72, 84, 85, 86, 92, 93, 94, 96, 97, 134, 149, 154, 163, 169, 173, 178 Protection Corps 85, 96 KPC (see Kosovo Protection Corps) Kuwait 41, 51, 144, 148 Land Use Planning Unit 49, 91, 128, 164 landmine (see also anti-personnel mine; anti-tank mine; antivehicle mine; mine) chemical 17 design 14ff origin 14 Landmine Action (UK) ii, xvi, 72, 135

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198

Mine Action After Diana

Landmine Monitor 62, 70, 71, 110, 166, 178 Landmine Survivors Network 4, 9 Laos 3, 8, 11, 16, 17, 35, 42, 53, 54, 65, 66, 67, 112, 117, 137, 139, 143, 147, 155, 160, 167 Lebanon 33, 42, 47, 149, 154, 186 Libya 11, 12 Lint, Jean 8, 65 Lloyd, Richard xvi, 9 LUPU (see Land Use Planning Unit) McCartney, Heather Mills 8, 13, 75 MAC (see mine action centre) Macaslan, Alistair 8, 43, 69, 160 MACA (see Mine Action Centre for Afghanistan) MACC (see Mine Action Coordination Centre) Macedonia, Former Yugoslav Republic of 154 machine (see equipment, mechanical demining) MAIC (see Mine Action Information Centre) Malvinas (see Falkland Islands) maps, mapping (see also minefield) 5, 31, 32, 35, 39, 45, 158 Maputo Declaration 150 mechanical (see equipment, mechanical demining) Mencken, H. L. 29 military: doctrine 20 powers, major 3, 65 utility 21, 26–7 mine (see also, landmine; victims) action: centre 31, 34, 35, 36, 46, 48, 54, 63, 77, 80, 86–7, 90, 92, 95, 98, 129, 130, 139, 140, 142, 153, 155, 164, 170, 172 definition 4, 45, 76, 139, 166 awareness 31, 38, 40, 55–63, 70, 77, 85, 86, 110, 134, 141, 155, 159, 168, 169, 177 clearance (see also UN Voluntary Trust Fund for Mine Clearance) 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 11,

Maslen 03 index 198

17, 18, 25, 29, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 45–53, 55, 60, 61, 62, 63, 67, 70, 77, 80, 81, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 91, 92, 93, 94, 96, 97, 98, 107, 110, 111, 112, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 121, 124, 129, 130, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 141, 143, 145, 146, 148, 149, 151, 156, 158, 160, 163, 166, 167, 168, 170, 171, 172, 176, 180 detection (see also mine clearance; equipment, mechanical demining) dogs 46, 51, 94, 152 rats 46, 51, 168, 171 risk education (see mine awareness) Mine Action Centre for Afghanistan 39, 95, 96 Mine Action Coordination Centre 31, 84, 93 Mine Action Information Center 160 Mine Clearance and Planning Agency 32 minefield 1, 6, 11, 15, 17, 19, 26, 31, 32, 34, 38, 39, 41, 46, 47, 51, 52, 56, 60, 69, 73, 84, 92, 110, 134, 139, 158 Mines Advisory Group 9, 17, 22, 48, 60, 80, 90, 92, 134, 147 moratorium: on use of cluster munitions 72 Mozambique 11, 32, 33, 34, 41, 42, 52, 82, 83, 85, 87, 90, 102, 103, 112, 117, 124, 137, 155 Mulliner, Noel 8 munition(s) stockpiled 10, 12, 18, 19, 25, 53, 72, 79, 80, 81, 174 Myanmar 11, 35, 66, 165 Nairobi 70 National Demining Institute (see also Mozambique) 87 NATO (see North Atlantic Treaty Organization)

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Index Nepal 66 Nergaard, Per 8, 177 New Zealand 93 NGO (see non-governmental organisation) Nicaragua 11, 31, 158, 183 Nigeria 12 Nobel Peace Prize 6 non-governmental organisation 2, 40, 43, 48, 52, 57, 70, 77, 80, 81, 87, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 107, 124, 129, 133, 134, 136, 138, 141, 143, 144, 145, 146–8, 149, 164, 166, 168, 169, 173, 176, 192 Non State Actors (see armed opposition groups) North Atlantic Treaty Organization 17, 69, 96 Norway, Norwegian 6, 7, 78, 150, 151, 176 Norwegian People’s Aid 4, 29, 34, 42, 52, 80, 134, 146, 163 Nystuen, Gro 8 OAS (see Organization of American States) Operation Desert Storm 18 Orech, Margaret Arach 8, 13 Organization of American States 158 Oslo Diplomatic Conference 6, 64 Ottawa Process 2, 3, 6, 73, 165 Ottawa Treaty 6, 10, 26, 27, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 54, 62, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 72, 78, 79, 81, 96, 139, 140, 142, 143, 145, 146, 150, 151, 159, 160, 165, 166, 170, 174, 176 Pakistan 11, 38, 40, 65, 66, 67, 165, 176 Paterson, Ted xv, 8, 9, 31, 44, 85, 98, 117, 132, 164, 169, 175, 191 peace agreement 26, 41, 82 peace-building 85, 100, 122, 125, 137, 147 peacekeeping 41, 85, 100, 153

Maslen 03 index 199

199

Pentagon, The (see US Department of Defense) Peru 11 Poland 12 POW (see prisoner of war) PPE (see equipment, personal protective) PRIO (see International Peace Research Institute – Oslo) prisoner of war 15 prodder 49 Purkis, Andrew xvi, 9 priority setting 32, 33, 90, 121, 125, 146 QA (see quality assurance) quality assurance 36, 43, 51, 53, 92-93, 170 management 84, 87 R&D (see research and development; see also landmine) rats (see mine detection) refugee(s) (see also displaced) 10, 23, 27, 28, 32, 38, 39, 56, 107, 108, 109, 110, 160 research and development 17, 50, 150, 151–2, 162, 177 risk-taking behaviour 58 Russia(n) 2, 3, 5, 11, 12, 18, 65, 66, 72, 165, 171 Rwanda 11 Samaritan’s Dilemma 101, 102, 113 sapper (see also deminer) 49 Sekkenes, Sara 9, 29, 34, 52, 151 Serbia and Montenegro 11, 42, 81, 96 Sherman, General William T. 14 SIDA (see Swedish International Development Agency) Smith, Chris 27 Smith, Shannon 8, 151 socio-economic 29, 30, 33, 53, 101, 128, 129, 130, 131, 164, 165, 172, 177 Sommaruga, Cornelio 176

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200

Mine Action After Diana

South Africa(n) 5, 26, 148 South Pacific 12 Soviet (see Russian) Soviet Union (see Russian Federation) Sri Lanka 11, 157 Stener, May-Elin 8, 78, 151 stockpile destruction (see antipersonnel mine destruction) strategic plan(ning) 39, 40, 54, 67, 69, 95, 101, 173 submunitions (see cluster bombs) Sudan 11, 42, 51, 135, 154, 187 survey (see also threat assessment) 17, 28, 32, 33, 34, 35, 38, 39, 45, 57, 80, 84, 85, 86, 87-91, 92, 93, 97, 101, 110, 112, 114, 122, 128, 129, 131, 134, 135, 136, 141, 143, 145, 146, 158, 159, 163, 164, 167, 168, 170 Survey Action Center 78 survivor (see also amputee, victim) 4, 13, 14, 74, 75, 76, 83, 88, 118, 119, 120, 147, 162, 173, 190 SWEDEC 151, 180 Sweden 150 Swedish International Development Agency 76 Swiss 2, 153, 160 Federal Institute for Technology 32 Switzerland 12, 17, 24, 147, 171 TA (see technical adviser) Tajikistan 11 Taliban 18, 95 task impact assessment 34, 134, 163 technical adviser 35, 49, 54, 87, 88, 89, 94, 95, 141, 154, 169 Thai(land) 8, 11, 30, 33, 34–5, 64, 103, 140–1, 143 Mine Action Centre 3, 5, 140, 141 The Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Fund xi, 72, 180 threat assessment 31, 84, 163

Maslen 03 index 200

TMAC (see Thailand Mine Action Centre) training 12, 38, 39, 43, 53, 62, 67, 68, 79, 85, 93, 94, 100, 123, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 158, 160, 162, 169, 180 tripwire 13, 14, 16, 68 Turkmenistan 68 UK 2, 3, 6, 7, 11, 18, 25, 37, 38, 39, 68, 73, 76, 146, 147, 148, 150, 151, 153, 181 Ukraine 12 UN (see also, UNDP; UNEP; UNICEF; UNOPS) 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 16, 18, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25, 31, 40, 41, 42, 43, 54, 61, 62, 63, 66, 70, 72, 78, 80, 81, 82, 83, 85, 86, 87, 90, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 100, 133, 134, 135, 139, 141, 142, 144, 147, 149, 152–8, 160, 162, 172, 173, 174 General Assembly 64, 65 Mine Action Service 35, 37, 42, 95, 153–4, 167, 171, 173 Secretary-General 6, 25, 79 Security Council 3 Voluntary Trust Fund for Mine Clearance 40, 153 unexploded ordnance clearance 53, 54, 72, 80, 81, 84, 85, 96, 116, 117, 135, 138, 139, 143, 148, 151 destruction 30, 53, 72, 80–1, 161 UNDP 42, 54, 59, 89, 95, 104, 117, 119, 120, 132, 141, 154–5 UNEP 21 UNICEF 61, 62, 155 United Kingdom (see UK) United Nations (see UN) United Nations Children’s Fund (see UNICEF) United Nations Development Programme (see UNDP) United Nations Environment Programme (see UNEP) United Nations Office for Project Services (see UNOPS) United States of America (see US)

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Index universalisation 64–7 UNMAS (see UN Mine Action Service) UNOPS 155–7 uranium, depleted 21–2 US 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 37, 38, 41, 52, 54, 64, 65, 66, 72, 73, 80, 81, 138-140, 142, 143, 144, 147, 150, 158, 160, 165, 166, 176 Agency for International Development 40, 96 Department of Defense 140 Department of State 24, 29, 33, 69, 143, 150 USAID (see US Agency for International Development) UXO (see unexploded ordnance) victim(s) (see also survivor) 2, 4, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 19, 22, 27–9, 30, 32, 33, 44, 48, 55, 56, 58, 59, 73ff, 114, 115, 119–20, 121, 143, 148, 162, 168, 173 assistance 7, 14, 45, 70, 73–8, 107, 118, 119–20, 146, 147, 155, 158, 159, 160, 170, 173, 176

Maslen 03 index 201

201

Vietnam (Viet Nam) (see also War) 8, 11, 16, 17, 28, 29, 33, 37, 54, 57–8, 67, 74, 87, 143, 144 Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation 143, 147–8 village demining 136, 180 War, First World 12, 14–15 Second World 11, 12, 14–15 American Civil 14 Gulf 20, 21, 65 Korean 16 Vietnam 16, 28, 54, 178 war crimes (see grave breaches) Wareham, Mary 8, 71, 73, 166 warning (see mine awareness) White, Jerry 4, 9, 76, 147, 170, 173 Williams, Jody 6, 184 Willson, Andrew 8, 151 World Bank 117, 119, 120, 138, 151, 179 Yemen 33, 42 Yugoslavia, Federal Republic of (see also Serbia and Montenegro) 96 Zimbabwe 11, 149

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