Mozambique
Demining process in Mozambique lacks coordination

afrol.com, 27 August - "The history of mine action in Mozambique is evidence of the potential harm that may have been caused by linking humanitarian mine action closely to the peace process," a new scientific report about demining concludes. The report by the International Peace
Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) is due to be released tomorrow.

According to official figures, two million mines were planted in
Mozambique over 13 years of civil war which ended in 1992. Now, the mine problem in Mozambique is varied, the victims always being innocent civilians; farmers cultivating their fields; children playing on the ground; people walking along tracks, etc. Mine victims are mutilated or killed all over the country at a large scale. 

The mine problem includes considerable mining of major infrastructure, but also a large amount of random mines placed all over to terrorize the civilian population. Cultivated fields, ground left fallow and outskirts of villages can be mined. In addition to the enormous personal damage this makes to innocent persons, it also hinders rural communities to return to normality, as the land resources they need for cultivation are not secured. Thus, both government, the UN and a large number of organisations are involved in demining the ground.

However, recent studies demonstrate that the demining process in Mozambique has been badly organized. The PRIO report to be published tomorrow focuses on the lessons to be learned from the Mozambique experience, as there are many societies in Africa in the process of demining, or having to start upon that process in near future.

- The history of mine action in Mozambique is evidence of the potential harm that may have been caused by linking the Humanitarian Mine Action closely to the peace process, the report concludes. In the Mozambican case, this severely delayed the start of demining, as well as the process of establishing a national demining capacity. At an early stage, parties to the conflict were hesitant to allow demining. This, together with problems in establishing a constructive dialogue with donors, severely delayed UN attempts to start demining. 

- In the meantime, several non-governmental organisations (NGOs) established independent demining capacities. The repercussions of this early period continue today: the country is effectively divided into three zones with different agencies conducting demining in each - HALO Trust in the north and northeast, Norwegian People's Aid (NPA) in the northwest and centre, and the Accelerated Demining Program (ADP) in the south. The NGOs and the UN were not commanding the arena alone. It is a particularity of the Mozambican case that commercial operators have had a large share of the overall demining budget. Although their role has diminished over the past few years, it is interesting to note that some development agencies now subcontract commercial companies to perform demining within what they call an "integrated development framework". 

- Efforts to build a strong national capacity in demining have largely failed. The National Mine Clearance Commission (NMCC), established 1995, was supposed to take leadership over the program, including the development of a national strategy, as well as priority setting. NMCC never managed to fill that role, and in 1999 it was replaced by a new agency, the National Demining Commission (NDC). The mandate of NDC is similar to that of NMCC, but the former has more independence from the government and its establishment is linked to the existence of a new international demining fund. Whether NDC will be able to fill a role as the linchpin for Mozambican demining remains to be seen. At the time of writing it suffers from shortfalls, financially and in terms of competence.

- There has been a striking lack of coordination between demining and other assistance providers in Mozambique. While this is partly related to the failure to establish a national body, lack of coordination is also a problem at the local level. There is huge potential for increasing the impact of demining operations through a closer coordination with other initiatives. The lack of coordination between demining and other reconstruction agencies is, for the most part, paralleled with very little coordination between different components of demining. One illustration is when mine awareness and demining goes on in the same community at the same time, but with no cooperation in implementation and at times even a total absence of information sharing. 

- The mine problem in Mozambique has been varied. as it includes considerable mining of major infrastructure and random mines placed in order to terrorize the civilian population, a variegated response is needed, but in practice there have been few efforts to establish small-scale, flexible units that can take on random mine occurrences. Such capacities have been needed since demining started, and are likely to be needed well into the future. Overall assessments of the mine problem in the country has been repeatedly downgraded, to the extent where some analysts now suggest that the most pressing mine problems will be solved by sometime between 2005 and 2007.

The PRIO report is mainly intended to contribute to a reorientation of the planning, execution and evaluation of Humanitarian Mine Action (HMA) projects in general. "The principal instrument for reorientation must be a fundamental strengthening of the capacity to perform broad socio-economic impact assessments within HMA agencies. The analytical effort needs to be a component of project execution throughout the whole project cycle," the report concludes. Mozambique was used as a case study to illustrate these findings. 

All in all, the Mozambican case study has illustrated that demining agencies have lacked of both coordination and overview of what they are dealing with. PRIO calls for a more professional attitude among the demining agencies. The overall conclusion of the report therefore is that demining "agencies need to build a much stronger analytical competence. This must be complemented by the development of a thorough understanding, at all levels of the operation, of the socio-economic impact of HMA generally and of the importance of building strong agency-community relationships specifically." The lessons from Mozambique should be taken seriously.

The PRIO report, Reassessing the Impact of Humanitarian Mine Action; Illustrations from Mozambique by Ananda S. Millard and Kristian Berg Harpviken, will be released tomorrow, August 28, and can be found and ordered on PRIO's web site. PRIO itself was one of the first centres of peace research worldwide. It is an independent, international institute based in Norway and its research is internationally recognized. 

Source: Based on PRIO

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