Author(s):
Chayer Amelie <amelie@icbl.org> .
Sunday 05 July 2009
November 2008
Summary of the Extension Request
Duration of the proposed extension: 10 years
Reasons for the proposed extension: Extent of contamination, unreliability of available minefield records, and difficulty mobilizing resources for mine action
Humanitarian, social, economic, and environmental implications of the extension: Population remains exposed to a hazard that continues to claim casualties and restrict access to agricultural land and forests.
Other relevant information: Projected increases in spending on mine action rely on availability of funding from local governments under a proposed new mine action law that had not been enacted as of mid-2008.
A. Background and duration of the proposed extension
Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) requests the maximum permissible extension of ten years. Attached to the request is a draft mine action strategy for 2009-2019 that includes an overview of how BiH proposes to fulfill its obligations. However, the extent of the residual task is unclear and assumptions on which completion within that timeframe are based appear unrealistic when compared with past and present performance.
The request, first submitted in March 2008 and revised in June, identifies 1,755km2 of suspect land and says this will be reduced to 1,573km2 by the start of 2009, implying clearance and area reduction or cancellation of 182km2 in 2008. Progress noted since the beginning of the year indicates that this goal was a long way from being achieved. Moreover, it is clear that BiH has still to generate a realistic estimate, backed by evidence, for land that is actually contaminated
Survey and clearance in recent years have consistently missed targets due to lack of funding. The draft strategy sets the goal of making BiH free of mines by 2019 if it receives "adequate support," but it presents no data on what funding is available nor what is required.
B. Reasons for the proposed extension
Emergency demining in BiH started in 1996 under UN coordination. BiH signed the Mine Ban Treaty in December 1997 and set up local structures to assume management of mine action in 1998. The adoption of a demining law in 2002 marked BiH's transition from emergency demining to a fully fledged national mine action program managed by the Bosnia and Herzegovina Mine Action Centre (BHMAC). Over the past decade, the number of international technical advisers has fallen from 40 to one working part time.
BiH explains its need for an extension by citing the extent of contamination, the unreliability of available minefield records, and the substantial area of suspect land affected by unrecorded and unmarked minefields. The extension request also notes lack of resources for mine action and "a big discrepancy between realistic needs for mine action in BiH and possibilities of the country and its supporters."
Although BiH has significant demining capacity through the armed forces, NGOs and commercial operators, mine clearance has proceeded at a slow pace, averaging 3.2km2 in the last three years. Such delays are explained by a lack of funds and delays in tendering procedures. Since 2006 efforts have been made to develop the capacity for technical survey, which has achieved a significant increase in area reduction.
However, the extension request leaves many unanswered questions about the scope of the remaining problem and how BiH will fulfill its treaty obligations within the 10-year extension period. The request envisages mine clearance of an identical 9.27km2 every year (and land release through technical survey of an identical 21.63km2 every year) without indicating how this figure was reached or its relevance to the residual problem. Moreover, BHMAC estimates that costs for clearance of those 9.27km2 will be fixed at KM32.45 million ($26 million) for each year of the extension period. Normally both estimates of productivity and costs vary from year to year based on the characteristics of the areas to be treated.
C. Humanitarian, social, economic, and environmental implications of the extension
BiH reports that a total of 88.5km² of risk area was released through humanitarian demining between 1996 and 2007. It also notes that in this period there has been a significant drop in casualties-from 632 in 1996 to 100 in 2000 and an average of 20 casualties each year for the past three years. But casualty figures have also fluctuated sharply in recent years, and without elimination of mine contamination further reductions may be difficult to achieve given the persistence of high-risk behavior in affected communities.
BHMAC's mine clearance strategy has focused on high- and medium-priority tasks as defined by its risk model, which pays particular attention to reducing risk for communities with returning refugees or displaced persons. BHMAC does not conduct post-clearance land use survey or impact assessments, however, and the extent to which cleared land matches community priorities or is used for other purposes remains unclear. BiH's mine action strategy is part of its Poverty Reduction Strategy.
D. Other relevant information
The request envisages an increase of more than 50% in projected annual mine action expenditure to more than KM78 million a year from 2009 to 2019 and allows for a steady decline in donor support. Most of the increase in new funding is expected to come from local governments as a result of the adoption of a new mine action law. The law, under preparation since 2005, had still to be enacted as of mid-2008 and the system therefore remained untested, making it difficult to assess the reliability of these projections or the availability of sufficient funding from local government sources.
E. Conclusions and recommendations
The draft strategy's projections for mine clearance and technical and general survey seem arbitrary and presented without any explanation of how they are arrived at. BiH should, as a matter of urgency, clarify the real extent of the mine-affected area remaining to be cleared, using appropriate land release principles, including technical survey. Moreover, the figures provided for productivity and costs are clearly averages over the 10-year period instead of realistic calculations of planned activities in line with the remaining problem.
Funding has been a consistent constraint on BiH's mine action in recent years and shortages are cited as the reason why mine action has consistently fallen short of survey and clearance targets. Against this backdrop, and in the absence of any explanation of likely sources of funding, the financial projections which underpin this request appear entirely speculative.
BiH should be strongly encouraged to rethink the proposed timelines for mine survey and mine clearance on the basis of existing and/or predictable financial resources and to set clear benchmarks for achievement. They should then report back systematically to future Mine Ban Treaty meetings on progress made towards achieving those benchmarks.
