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Fulfilling the Clearance Obligations of the Convention on Cluster Munitions in Lao PDR:

THE NPA Perspective

Maps © NPA

Contents

Introduction......................................................................................................................................4 WHAT IS THE EXTENT OF THE THREAT?..................................................................................................5 What capacities, approach and methods exist to address the threat?.............................................................. 6 HOW COULD OPERATIONS BE STRUCTURED AND IMPLEMENTED IN THE FUTURE?................................7 Baseline assessment of scope of problem......................................................................................................... 7 Non-Technical Survey.......................................................................................................................................... 8 Technical Survey.................................................................................................................................................. 8 Clearance............................................................................................................................................................. 9 Information Management.................................................................................................................................... 9 ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS........................................................................................................ 10

Fulfilling the Clearance Obligations of the Convention on Cluster Munitions in Lao PDR: The NPA Perspective

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Introduction

The Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) is heavily contaminated by explosive ordnance, but international funding for clearance is finite and may decrease significantly within the next decade. If one accepts these two affirmations as realities, it is important to address the following question: how can Lao PDR meet its obligations under the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM)? This paper is an attempt by Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA) to answer that question, based on our experience clearing cluster munition remnants (CMR) around the world, including in Lao PDR itself. The main messages in this paper are: a) the work can be done efficiently and it will not take hundreds of years; and b) there is a need for a renewed focus on gathering and assessing available data and information, structured and relevant survey methods must be developed and used, and clearance standards appropriate to the context must be elaborated.

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In this paper, we outline NPA’s global approach to cluster munition survey and clearance, exemplified with case studies from Lao PDR. The method used to develop this concept was based on NPA’s operational experiences from countries such as Georgia, Lebanon, and Vietnam, in addition to Lao PDR itself. An expert group was established, which met in Lebanon in August 2010 followed by a mission to South-East Asia in September. The following month, the NPA Lao program conducted a successful pilot of the process and methods that were developed. NPA believes that if we can prove that Lao PDR can be cleared of CMR efficiently and effectively we can also show how the global problem could and should be addressed.

This paper has two main chapters. The first deals with the known and perceived extent of the problem/ threat while the second discusses how we propose to understand the problem better and ultimately solve it.

Fulfilling the Clearance Obligations of the Convention on Cluster Munitions in Lao PDR: The NPA Perspective

What is the extent of the threat?

If we are seeking to identify the full extent of the threat from all explosive remnants of war (ERW) in Lao PDR, the short answer is: no-one knows.

It is widely reported that Lao PDR has been, per capita, the most heavily bombed country in history.1 Throughout the Second Indochina War (1964–1973), more than 580,000 bombing missions by the United States of America (US)—equivalent to one every eight minutes for nine years—dropped more than 2.5 million tons of ordnance across Lao PDR.2 Contamination also results from wide-ranging ground battles.3

run into the tens of millions. Set against this threat, UXO Lao, the largest operator in the country, reports that in 14 years of clearance operations it destroyed less than half a million unexploded submunitions.6 In 2009, all operators cleared fewer than 25,000 unexploded submunitions.7

For many years Lao PDR and its international partners have approached the threat mostly in a reactive manner, responding to reports of unexploded ordnance (UXO) sightings, while seeking to relate clearance of cluster munition remnants (CMR) to development initiatives.

The one near-certainty is that Lao PDR has the largest problem of cluster munition remnants in the world (see the front of this paper and also Figure 1).

The US made massive recourse to the use of cluster munitions, with more than 266 million submunitions said to have been dropped during around one million cluster munition strikes, based on records released by the US Government.4 Clearance teams have found at least 186 types of munition, including 19 types of submunition. 5 The failure rate of submunitions is not known and widely cited estimates of 30% or more are speculative. Nonetheless, even if the failure rate were an average of only 10%, this would still mean that the number of unexploded submunitions would

1 2

Figure 1. NPA work in Lao PDR and bombing data

UN, ‘Portfolio of Mine Action Projects 2010’, New York, November 2009, p. 262.

‘US bombing records in Laos, 1964–73, Congressional Record’, 14 May 1975; and Scot Marciel, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Testimony Before the House Foreign Affairs Committee Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific and the Global Environment, Washington, DC, 22 April 2010 3

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See, e.g., UN, ‘Portfolio of Mine Action Projects 2010’, op. cit., p. 262.

‘US bombing records in Laos, 1964–73, Congressional Record’, 14 May 1975, cited in ‘Lao National Unexploded Ordnance Programme 2008 Annual Report’, UXO Lao, Vientiane, 2009, p. 18, www.uxolao.org/Download%20files/2008%20Annual%20Report.pdf (accessed 31 May 2010).

5 6 7

See, e.g., NRA, ‘UXO Sector 2007’, undated but 2008, p. 13, www.nra.gov.la.

UXO Lao, ‘Cluster Munitions Problem’, www.uxolao.gov.la/uxo%20problem.html (accessed 23 August 2010).

See Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor, ‘Lao PDR country profile’, www.the-monitor.org.

Fulfilling the Clearance Obligations of the Convention on Cluster Munitions in Lao PDR: The NPA Perspective

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What capacities, approach and methods exist to address the threat?

Given the extent of the threat, the number of active clearance personnel is very low. UXO Lao has a total of 1,000 staff, while Mines Advisory Group (MAG) has 12 clearance teams (raised from nine in May 2010), NPA has 135 staff, which will rise to 191 by end 2010, and Handicap International, 32. Operations are broken into area clearance and roving clearance teams. Not every affected province currently has clearance capacity in it.

Funding for the UXO/mine action programme, which was expected to rise following Lao PDR’s admirable decision to adhere to the Convention on Cluster Munitions, has actually decreased. In 2009, total area clearance was only 37km2. The current capacity in Lao PDR responds to requests for clearance of relatively small areas (primarily made by local communities to release land for cultivation, grazing or construction). Currently operators do not target cluster munition strikes, but regard all threats equally.

The District Focused Approach (DFA) proposed by the NRA seems a potentially valuable way forward: the plan for this pilot project is for survey teams from certain of the clearance operators to visit each village in a small number of affected districts and seek to ascertain which areas are contaminated and with which ordnance, and how that affects the community. If successful, this could be scaled up to a national level, giving, it is hoped, a nationwide picture of contamination and impact. NPA will propose a slightly different model, but based on the general principle laid out in this model.

NPA believes that the present approach to understanding the problem of, and clearing, CMR in Lao PDR, will have to change and improve.

On the next page we set out one possible way to constructively and structurally engage with the problem, as a basis for further discussion and with a view to improving how Lao PDR and its partners deal with the problem of CMR.

What remains of great concern is the lack of a fully populated national mine action database Today, it is not possible for the National Regulatory Authority (NRA) to identify all the areas that have been cleared of contamination in Lao PDR. Some cleared areas have not been entered on the database, and some clearance records appear to have simply been lost. A survey of impacted communities was conducted in 1997 by Handicap International, but this survey is out-of-date and of “next to nil use in planning operations,” in the words of one clearance operator.

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Fulfilling the Clearance Obligations of the Convention on Cluster Munitions in Lao PDR: The NPA Perspective

How could operations be structured and implemented in the future?

This is a central question for the UXO/mine action community in Lao PDR, but to which there is not yet an answer, the national strategic plan notwithstanding.8 As NPA sees it, the following issues need to be considered in seeking to elaborate an appropriate response: • Baseline assessment of scope of problem (focusing purely on CMR); • Information Management, relevant and calibrated to the problem; and • Introduce a land release approach, including survey—both non-technical (NTS) and technical (TS)—as well as clearance.

Today, the problem of CMR in Lao PDR is not well understood. The problem is mostly presented through the bombing data, which shows most of the country to be infected by a serious red rash (see Figure 1). Ongoing clearance, which is said to be primarily based on development priorities, does not really assist in removing any of the red dots (bombing strikes) as the clearance polygons rarely relate to the strikes but rather to a development project (a rice paddy field or a fruit garden, as examples).

NPA believes by dividing the problem into a cluster munition problem and a UXO problem the threat can be more appropriately identified and the response can, as a result, be more efficient and effective. Such an approach would enable the problem of CMR to be approached logically and systematically and the response prioritised accordingly. NPA believes that it is possible to reduce the problem of CMR in Lao PDR significantly through the process further described.

The remaining UXO problem cannot be similarly approached systematically and the present system of reactive response (tasking and roving teams) will need to continue.

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Figure 2

Figure 3 The two images above illustrate the difference in the understanding of the scope of the problem. Figure 2 includes all known bombs dropped over Sekong province, while Figure 3 shows how CM can be isolated thereby reducing the overall task significantly.

Baseline assessment of scope of problem To establish a baseline understanding of the problem of CMR a general cluster munition assessment (GCMA) must first be conducted. This should consist of: a) a gathering of all available information pertaining to the problem, b) an assessment of the available information, and c) a presentation of the problem in both narrative and graphic form. In many countries, including Lao PDR, there is a lot of information about the use of cluster munitions that led to the problem of CMR; bombing data, studies of conflict patterns, what type(s) of cluster munitions were used, and the general “footprint” of the specific cluster bomb, etc. Gathering and assessing these data-sets leads to a baseline understanding of the problem and a presentation of an initial suspect hazardous area (SHA) (see Figures 4 and 5).

See Safe Path Forward II, contained in Annex 1.

Fulfilling the Clearance Obligations of the Convention on Cluster Munitions in Lao PDR: The NPA Perspective

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NPA has done an initial pilot of a “Community Focused Approach” to the cluster problem. When removing strikes not known to be cluster bombs from the map, the community chosen in Sekong looks like this (see Figure 4, for the ‘before’ picture, and Figure 5 for the ‘after’ picture).

Non-Technical Survey Non-technical survey (NTS) should then aim to further engage with and understand the actual “strike footprint” defined in the GCMA by gathering information in the field: through interviews with local population, former combatants, and other relevant stakeholders. The NTS should preferably be conducted in the field by people who have both survey experience and technical capacity. The NTS process will lead to an understanding of the problem presented as a confirmed hazardous area (CHA). From the Sekong pilot text, NPA derived considerable new and valuable information from the NTS (see Figure 6 below).

Figure 4

Figure 6

Figure 5 The two images above illustrate the difference between projecting all bombing data (Figure 4) and a more focused presentation of the CMR problem only (Figure 5), using circles to indicate the potential extent of the contamination (suspected hazardous areas – SHAs) for a community in Sekong Province in southern Lao PDR. The inner circle of 250 metres in radius is an indication of the scope of the problem in square metres (estimated size of the area requiring full battle area clearance), while the circle with a 500 metre in radius illustrates the total area where further survey is required.

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Figure 6 illustrates the result of NTS. The NTS team have, through visual inspection (evidence of CMR) or through other reliable means of verification, confirmed the presence of CMR. As the figure illustrates, there are numerous request for clearance in the community and therefore further TS is required to identify the exact location (defined hazardous area – DHA) of the footprint (strike) to decide if clearance assets will be deployed.

Technical Survey Technical survey should then aim to properly establish the “strike footprint” and potentially reduce the CHA established in the NTS to a Defined Hazardous Area (DHA). TS involves using one or more technical means to verify the boundaries of a cluster strike. The process of TS in a cluster environment is potentially easier and less dangerous than with landmines as NPA believes that personnel could and should enter a strike area to

Fulfilling the Clearance Obligations of the Convention on Cluster Munitions in Lao PDR: The NPA Perspective

search for evidence in a structured way without taking undue risk. A properly established methodology for TS, relevant to the country or conflict specific threat picture, will help establish a good picture of the DHA. NPA’s Sekong pilot tested out different approaches to TS9 and the result was certainly positive in terms of being able to establish a solid DHA or footprint (see Figure 7 and 8).

Clearance Clearance should focus on clearing cluster munition remnants (as opposed to other UXO), with a view to fulfilling Lao PDR’s international legal obligations under the Convention on Cluster Munitions as soon as possible.

NPA’s message based on the process above is that clearance resources should be deployed only in relation to a cluster strike (SHA, CHA, and DHA).

The basic principle should be to clear the whole strike and not only clear what has been requested for development or other purposes.

Information Management Information management (IM) is a key part throughout the process described above. As even more useful information may be available to the problem of CMR, IM is obviously an important and integral part of the solution. IM is about gathering, storing, and presenting information during each part of the process. In addition, a national IM capacity should be established to disseminate, analyse, and present the information described above in a structured and logical manner.

Figure 7

Thus, in Lao PDR, as in other affected countries, the structured storage and free and ready access to all available data will prove vital to the effective and efficient implementation of the CCM.

Figure 8 The two figures above illustrate the results of the TS process. The area is systematically surveyed using a grid system, reducing the extent of the contamination into 100x100 metre boxes (Figure 7). All evidence are analysed and a footprint can be established (Figure 8). Based on an impact assessment a decision will be made if the cluster munition strikes will be cleared or not at this stage. Regardless, requests for clearance outside the established DHA will not be followed up unless ordnance are identified.

9 NPA has developed a technical note that underpins this report as well as a broader policy on the clearance of cluster munition remnants.

For more information on these documents, please contact NPA HQ in Oslo.

Fulfilling the Clearance Obligations of the Convention on Cluster Munitions in Lao PDR: The NPA Perspective

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Acronyms and Abbreviations

CCM.................... Convention on Cluster Munitions CHA..................... Confirmed hazardous area CMR.................... Cluster munition remnants DFA..................... District focus approach DHA..................... Defined hazardous area GCMA.................. General Cluster Munition Assessment IM........................ Information management Lao PDR.............. Lao People’s Democratic Republic MAG.................... Mines Advisory Group NPA..................... Norwegian People’s Aid NRA..................... National Regulatory Authority (Lao PDR) NTS..................... Non-technical survey SHA..................... Suspected hazardous area TS........................ Technical survey UXO..................... Unexploded ordnance

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Fulfilling the Clearance Obligations of the Convention on Cluster Munitions in Lao PDR: The NPA Perspective

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