Landmines and Sex

Mr. President,

It is over 16 years since I set up The Halo Trust in Afghanistan, and globally we now have more than 6,000 deminers – clearing more mines, more hectares and using more equipment than any other demining agency. Perhaps this is why I have been invited to speak on behalf of “The NGO Perspective” – a group of mine clearance NGOs. This month the international community and many mine affected countries are reviewing the 10 year mine clearance programmes launched through the Ottawa Treaty to eradicate landmines – to create the first mine free states by 2009. But I should not be here at Nairobi; in fact none of us should be here at all. HALO believes that by now we should all have finished mine clearance, or at least cleared the vast majority of mines that people and livestock may tread on.

But have we finished – No. And will you fulfil your 10-year obligations? In most mine affected countries – probably not. It is thoroughly depressing that HALO will probably reach its 21st birthday in 5 years time and still be clearing large numbers of mines along with our NGO Perspective partners and other actors. It will not be a birthday to celebrate, more a recognition that some thing, some plan, some how has gone terribly wrong and has resulted in the deaths and maiming of tens of thousands of mine victims out in the communities, who had been waiting for many years for the clearance teams to arrive and clear their fields and homesteads.

Were these communities living in false hope? Yes – they were. And in 1945 did Europeans in Narvik, Naples, Normandy and Nijmegen live in false hope that the landmines in their fields would be cleared? We have been researching history and talking to engineers, and we can tell you that the answer is NO – because they were cleared – millions and millions of landmines were cleared and they were cleared by 1950. One example, the Director of Handicap International France was recently in Kosovo and accompanied Raymond Aubrac, a well known resistance figure during World War II. In 1945, Aubrac was tasked by General de Gaulle with the clearance of French soil under a civilian ministry, to allow the quick resumption of desperately needed civilian activities. Despite a lack of understanding of the problem and despite the scarce technical resources available, the bulk of this immense task was actually completed within just a few years. In Kosovo Raymond Aubrac met Endrit, a young boy of 8 who lost his right leg in March 2004 less than 50 metres from his home. Commenting on this appalling accident, Aubrac made an astonishing reflection: “ Perhaps the clearance of France was in fact so quickly implemented that the population didn’t have to endure the permanence of a threat like this one. If it had been more lasting and painful, my fellow citizens would better remember their ordeal and subsequently their support for mine clearance projects would be more forthcoming today.”

Although direct comparisons can be difficult to make, these many millions of mines were cleared in France and elsewhere in Europe in 5 years, while it has taken 10 years and more to clear far fewer numbers in post-conflict countries such as Croatia, Bosnia, Angola, Mozambique, Cambodia, Vietnam and so on. Some areas have had mine clearance interrupted by short outbreaks of fighting such as in Afghanistan, northern Iraq or longer as in Chechnya. But the vast majority of mine action programmes have kept going. So why is the work not finished?

The answer is simple. It often boils down to a lack of determination to get the job done – and that means a lack of determination by some of the people who run “Mine Action”. Instead managers, whether they be UN, government and even non-government, seem content to encourage millions of dollars being spent NOT on mineclearance, but yet more endless working groups, workshops, information management systems, symposia, strategies, studies, standards, plans, policies, portfolios, principled programming, processes, procedures, quality management, mainstreaming, methodologies, measurables, monitoring, quality control, consultations, consultants, courses, conferences, capacity building – and the full range of outreaches, outputs, inputs, indicators, impacts, intervention logic, linkages, gendering, thematics, logical frameworks, normative frameworks, blockages, goals and supergoals. Oh, of course, we accept that some of these are important, but Europe was cleared with simple planning by experienced practitioners, followed by action. It was “the product, not the process” that was important. Mineclearance is not difficult – it has been described as a mix of gardening and archaeology – in fact not really much more difficult than digging up potatoes or cassava – just more dangerous and requiring strict but simple procedures.

So how has it got confused? Probably because the senior managers think landmines must be treated like other humanitarian disasters and need a full blown “multi-layered” response, like the responses for drought, flooding, hurricanes, locust or HIV AIDS. But these are all recurring – mines are not. The lucky thing is that MINES DON’T HAVE SEX. Once cleared, mines are gone, finito, terminado, khallas.

So please everybody let's get the problem solved now. Let's stand by the affected countries and concentrate on a tangible product and not a theoretical process. Let's replace false hope with real hope, and not leave this conference without a commitment to intensify and accelerate our mine clearance efforts.

30 November 2004

Guy Willoughby

Director, The HALO Trust

www.halotrust.org

mail@halotrust.org