Conflict disrupts ongoing demining effort

When a massive mine-clearing programme was launched in Sri Lanka in 2002, officials faced a problem: their wooden warning signs, with the distinctive skull and cross-bones, kept disappearing. “They were being stolen by the community for firewood,” Monty Ranathunga, project director at the Ministry of Nation Building and Estate Infrastructure Development, overseeing the National Mine Action Programme, told IRIN.

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When the programme began in 2002, with the signing of the ceasefire agreement between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), mine awareness was low, despite more than two decades of conflict and 1.5 million mines and other unexploded ordnance (UXOs) littering 10 districts in the northeast.

A total area of 202 sqkm had been mined by both sides in the conflict by 2002, Ranathunga said the national mine action programme found.

Local technical expertise and demining equipment were initially in short supply. Local deminers were reportedly removing mines with their bare hands and using steel pitch forks, especially in areas under LTTE control. In mid-2002 international agencies with technical skills and appropriate demining equipment began operations throughout the north and east of the country.

Real progress in reducing mine casualties

Civilian casualty rates are now significantly lower, with eight mine-related civilian casualties reported in the first seven months of 2007, despite an upswing in violence, according to the UN Development Programme (UNDP) Support to Mine Action in Sri Lanka Project office.

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Nine international and local agencies, including HALO Trust, the Danish Demining Group and two Indian NGOs - Sarvatra and Horizon - work full-time in the north and east in mine clearing. The two largest demining operations are those of the Sri Lankan army and the Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation, which works in areas under LTTE control. More than 2,000 deminers have been employed in the northeast, Ranathunga said.

Since 2002, 128 sqkm have been cleared of mines and other UXO, with the recovery of 161,415 explosive devices, according to the National Mine Action Programme second-quarter report for 2007.

Conflict and financing threaten demining

However, there is a fear that growing hostilities between government forces and the LTTE, and a possible shortfall in funding for demining activities, could set back these gains.

“In December 2005 the security situation started to deteriorate. By March 2006 humanitarian demining activities had been reduced in some areas by more than 50 percent,” the UNDP mine action office in Sri Lanka told IRIN. “There was a notable reduction in access to sites for clearance due to security considerations throughout 2006, particularly in the Jaffna peninsula, and humanitarian demining operations came to a complete standstill across the country on 11 August 2006 when fighting broke out.”

Photo: Landmine Ban Action Forum

When a Sri Lankan demining programme began in 2002, more than 1.5 million mines and other unexploded ordnance littered 10 districts in the northeast of the country

Demining activity in Jaffna had picked up again as the fighting shifted to the east later in 2006, according to the UNDP mine action office. But with fighting now shifting from the east to some hot spots farther north in the Vanni region, it is difficult for demining agencies to engage in longer-term planning, according to the UN Mine Action Support Group.

More than a million mines and UXOs are still unaccounted for and, according to the UNDP mine action office, at least 95 sqkm is still contaminated, though no formal and systematic survey has been carried out to assess the threat.

Ranathunga said demining efforts cannot be carried out effectively until security improves. “If the situation is stable, it is expected that [mines] could be cleared in the high and medium priority areas by the end of 2010,” he told IRIN.

Japan recently donated US$3.2 million to fund the work of five international demining groups through 2008. Overall, however, Sri Lanka's UNDP mine action office said donors had reduced funds for demining activities due to insecurity.

Any slowdown in demining could be fatal. “In Jaffna, it is very difficult to find mined areas that are far away from civilians,” Blerlim Toffa, the programme manager for HALO in Jaffna, told IRIN. “They are always close by.”

The UNDP mine action office cites the eastern region of Sri Lanka, including Batticaloa and Trincomalee Districts, with massive displacements and relocations of more than 150,000 people in the past six months, as a priority area for mine and UXO clearance.

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