March 2000 R ELIEF AND REHABILITATION NETWORK RRN 32 paper NETWORK Humanitarian Mine Action: The First Decade of a New Sector in Humanitarian Aid by Chris Horwood Abstract There are two important messages concerning who may have had very little exposure to the mine action that emerge from this paper. The details of mine action and its dramatic growth first is that after only a few years of as a sector in the last 10 years. The paper is mobilisation, campaigning and project also designed to present certain definitions, initiation there are, in place, the forces and premises and issues that have emerged within legislation to effectively address the threat of the mine action sector in recent years. It may landmines in the coming years, rather than also serve as a resource document as it decades or centuries. The second is that mine disassembles and identifies the issues and action cannot be successful as an isolated, main players in global mine action. specialised sub-sector of the aid world but must be seen as a legitimate component of The start of a new century and a decade after emergency, rehabilitation and development the initiation of humanitarian mine action assistance. programmes seems a suitable point to review progress to date, and open the issues facing This paper is specifically written for the aid the mine action sector to the wider aid community outside the mine action sector community. ○○○○○○○○○○○○○ Please send comments on this paper to: As from 1 April 2000 the RRN will be Relief and Rehabilitation Network (RRN) changing its name to the Humanitarian Overseas Development Institute Practice Network – HPN. The HPN will Portland House continue the work of the RRN in Stag Place contributing to improved practice in the London, SW1E 5DP humanitarian field, but with several United Kingdom important changes. To read about these changes and the new HPN see page 42. ○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○ Tel: (+44) 20 7393 1631/1674 Fax: (+44) 20 7393 1699 Email: <[email protected]> As from 1 April 2000: <[email protected]> Website: <www.odi.org.uk> As from 1 April 2000: <www.odihpn.org.uk> Editors: Koenraad Van Brabant and Rachel Houghton Layout and production: Rebecca Lovelace Printing: ReDesign, Enfield, London A copy of your comments will be sent to the author. Comments received may be used in future Newsletters. Notes on the Author Christopher Horwood is an independent consultant. He has been trained and has experience in emergency relief and community development, and has been directly involved in humanitarian mine action since 1992. For some years he worked with the Mines Advisory Group as the Cambodia Country Director and Overseas Director, but more recently in consultancy positions for UN agencies and NGOs on a variety of mine action issues including studies, evaluations and socioeconomic analysis. He is contactable by email on <[email protected]> Acknowledgements The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the following reviewers in the preparation of this paper: Stephan Vigie and Mary Fowler of UNMAS, New York; Alastair McAslan of the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian De-mining; Jean Baptiste Richardier, Director of Handicap Int, Lyon; Norah Niland of UNDP/OPS Human Rights officer, Islamabad; Antonio Donini, Director of UNOCHA Islamabad; Rae McGrath, independent consultant. Also Rachel Houghton and Koenraad Van Brabant of the RRN at ODI for their consistent editorial support. ISBN: 0-85003-483 3 Price per copy: £5.00 (excluding postage and packing). © Overseas Development Institute, London, 2000. Photocopies of all or part of this publication may be made providing that the source is acknowledged. Requests for the commercial reproduction of RRN material should be directed to the ODI as copyright holders. The Network Coordinator would appreciate receiving details of the use of any of this material in training, research or programme design, implementation or evaluation. Humanitarian Mine Action ○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○ Contents Executive Summary 1 Section 1: The Scope and Nature of the Landmines Crisis 3 Countries Affected 3 Numbers of Mines: a persistent distraction 3 Human Impact: physical and psychological 4 Medical Impact 5 Economic Impact 6 Obstacles to Reconstruction and Sociopolitical Reconciliation 6 Implications for Refugees, Returnees and IDPs 7 Section 2: The International Response 9 Humanitarian Mine Action: the start of a new response 9 Military Mine Clearance 9 The Growth of Commercial Agencies in Mine Action 10 Overview of the Role of NGOs 10 The Involvement of UN Agencies 10 The International Committee of the Red Cross 13 The Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian De-mining 13 The Role of Research and Academic Institutions 13 Section 3: The Current Status of Mine Action in Terms of Operations 15 Country Assessment Missions 15 Survey Operations 15 Global Mine Clearance Operations 16 Mine Awareness Education 21 Victim Assistance Operations 22 The International Campaign to Ban Landmines 23 The Funding of Mine Action: donors 25 Section 4: Central Issues Facing Mine Action 27 Sectoral Self-criticism 27 Statistics and Baseline Data Collection 27 Prioritisation 28 Productivity and Cost-Efficiency 28 Low-tech Devices and the Use of Dogs 29 Technology and R&D 29 Multisectoral/Multidisciplinary Issues and the Culture of the Sector 30 ○○○○○ Commercialisation of the Mine Action Sector 31 Resource Biases 32 Gifts-in-kind: military assistance 32 Humanitarian Mine Action Underestimation of UXO 32 Indigenous Capacity 32 Conclusion: Rhetoric versus Reality 33 Endnotes 35 References 37 Annexes 38 A List of NGOs Active in Humanitarian Mine Action 38 B Addresses of Information Centres, UN Agencies, and Other Useful Contacts for Mine Action 38 C Revised Estimates of Landmine Contamination Relating to the 10 Most Severely Affected Countries 40 D Comparative Analysis Between Manual and Dog Teams in Afghanistan 41 ○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○ Action Mine Humanitarian ○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○ 1 Executive Summary ○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○ Realisation of a New Crisis andmines have caused deaths and injuries standards to adhere to, no lessons learnt or guidelines (among non-combatants) since they were first available, and no one other than military or ex- Lused at the start of the century. It was the Soviet military with the technical expertise to assess the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Vietnamese technical aspects of the problem. The last 15 years withdrawal from Cambodia, and the flight of Kurds of the cold war, with proxy wars and vast transfers of from Iraqi government forces that shocked the world lethal aid to developing countries, the low cost of awake to the devastating impact of these abandoned anti-personal mines and the proliferation of civil and weapons. Later too, with the cessation of conflicts in international warfare, had left, and continued to Mozambique and Angola, the scale of this ‘new’ leave, a legacy of landmines scattered in catastrophe became apparent in terms of the numbers unprecedented numbers across inhabited and of victims, socioeconomic devastation and potential agricultural land in developing countries. It has been for obstruction to peace and development. In fact said that at the start of the 1900s, 90 per cent of war the landmine threat could be seen as a ‘slow onset casualties were combatants; by the 1990s, 90 per emergency’; the ‘creeping genocide’ of the hidden cent of war casualties were non-combatants. In killers. This realisation developed between 1989 and numerous countries, thousands of communities of 1993, but was not immediately widely recognised. civilians were living (and continue to live) in areas Recognition of the scale of the crisis and the cost to of extreme danger due to the debris of war, and in societies is still developing. particular the landmine. There was nothing in place to address the problem It was in this context that the sector of humanitarian Humanitarian Mine Action as the scope of the problem itself was unknown and mine action emerged and established momentum as undocumented. There were no statistics of mine various geo-political changes seemed to act as a injuries and deaths, or identification of minefields or catalyst to rip the veil that prevented the aid mine types. There were no agencies dedicated to, or community from seeing clearly the problem that lay experienced in, peacetime mine clearance. The before it: suddenly it was apparent, not just as a United Nations (UN) had no department charged growing problem or potential risk, but as a with the responsibility to address landmines, the humanitarian emergency – fully developed and lethal, NGO community was highly sceptical of any on a massive scale, and demanding urgent attention. involvement in what was seen as a military issue, In this respect the realisation of the landmine crisis and international donors neither had the budget lines differs from other humanitarian sectors that may have or inclination to fund de-mining operations. There emerged over decades, and where tools and systems were no workable conventions or international to address the issues have been tried and tested. 1 ○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○ The Contribution Made by This Paper development. An explanation of the various players in mine action is presented in Section 2. Progress Apart from the frequently seen articles that catalogue achieved in the past decade