The Impact of Landmines on Socio-Economic Development in
Southern Lebanon
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| Twenty-two
years of conflict have left a significant number of unfenced and
unmarked mine fields in southern Lebanon, requiring strong
coordination between various organizations in order to meet
emergency demands. |
by Mohamed Abdulkadir Ahmed, M.Sc., MACC
Background on the Mine/UXO Problem
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and
their de-facto forces (DFF) laid a significant number of landmines
throughout the 22-year occupation of southern Lebanon. The majority of
these mined areas remains unfenced and unmarked. It is estimated that
approximately 150,000 landmines are currently emplaced in Lebanon,
excluding the liberated areas. The Lebanese Army has indicated that
there are other mine fields and dangerous areas present in Lebanon. In
addition to the number of mines indicated, the known quantity of mines
in the liberated area is almost 70,0001 AP and AT mines in 191 mine
fields. This does not include information on suspected mined or
dangerous areas, booby-trapped border mine fields and other DFF-laid
mine fields.
Booby-traps and improvised explosive
devices currently present a high threat to the population of several
localities in southern Lebanon. Two hundred eighty-eight of these
devices requiring immediate clearance have been identified and recorded
in the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon Area of Operations (UNIFIL
AO). With the vast quantities of UXO littering the area and a residual
landmine threat from earlier conflicts, the scope of the problem is
significant. Mine fields lie along the entire length of the
international border, booby-traps exist along the former Israeli
Controlled Area (ICA), and inland mine fields run along major road
networks of the towns Bent Jbeil, Baraachit and Al Qantarah and through
Lithani River beyond UNIFIL AO. This information does not include
suspected or dangerous areas.
Following the withdrawal of IDF from
southern Lebanon in May 2000, a number of deaths and serious accidents
occurred in the former ICA. So far, the total number of deaths in
southern Lebanon is 16, with 94 seriously injured. Recognizing the
serious humanitarian nature of the problem and determined to further
strengthen their mine action capacity, the Lebanese authorities asked
the United Nations for support2. In
November 1998, after consulting with other UN agencies and the
government of Lebanon (GoL), the United Nations Mine Action Service
(UNMAS) offered a multidisciplinary inter-agency mission to assess UN
assistance needs. This mission took place from 1 February to 5 February
1999. A further mission assessment was conducted by UNMAS from 26 May to
1 June 20003, and at the request of UNIFIL, the Mine Action Coordination
Cell (MACC) was established within UNIFIL in July 2000. The project is
managed by the United Nations Office of Project Services (UNOPS) through
a Military Operations Area (MOA) with UNMAS.
The impact of the landmine problem in southern Lebanon
also includes issues of internally displaced people, basic services and
socio-economic development.4 After the conflict, all humanitarian and
development assistance efforts were hampered by the threat of mines,
resulting in a lack of rehabilitation and resettlement areas, a lack of
land for agriculture, an increase in costs of development, a deterrent
to tourism and, of course, a devastating impact on people. Experience
has shown that an integrated approach to a landmine/UXO and social
rehabilitation problem in an affected country is necessary to achieve
maximum efficiency, to reduce risk, and to achieve increased security.
Additionally, an integrated response could address the problems of
mine/UXO surveying, marking and clearance; terrain verification; and
mine awareness in a coherent and coordinated manner.5
Organization of Mines/UXO Clearance in Lebanon: The
National Demining Office (NDO)
Since Lebanon has a
limited national mine action capacity, mine clearance is a slow process.
The resources of the country are scarce and the social pressure is very
high. The National Demining Office (NDO) of Lebanon was created in 1998
as the only body within the Lebanese Armed Forces legally responsible
for coordinating mine action and physically undertaking demining
operations in Lebanon.6 The
NDO, staffed by military officers as shown in
Figure 1 above, was established with the assistance of the U.S.
government.7
Mine awareness activities in Lebanon
are primarily implemented through NDO with Landmine Resources Center (LMRC),
World Rehabilitation Fund (WRF), United Nations International Children’s
Emergency Fund (UNICEF), United Nations Education, Scientific and
Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Save the Children (Sweden) and the
Lebanese Red Cross, with the support of International Committee of Red
Cross (ICRC). The MACC conducts mine awareness training to the United
Nations Truce Supervisory Organization/Lebanese Observer Group (UNTSO/OGL)
Team deployed in UNIFIL AO along the border and to the civilian staff of
UNIFIL.
Since 1990, the Engineering Brigade of
the Lebanese Army has conducted mine clearance addressing humanitarian
and rehabilitation needs, especially in the northern areas of the
Lithani River.8 The army has cleared some 315 mined areas of the 834 they
have identified. They have destroyed approximately 4,000 anti-tank mines
and 20,000 anti-personnel mines. They have also destroyed some 40,000 UXO
and Improvised Explosive Devices (IED).9
The Role of the UNIFIL
in Mines/UXO Clearance
UN Resolutions 425,
426 and 511 do not give sufficient guidance to authorize UNIFIL to
undertake Humanitarian Demining in the AO. So far, UNIFIL’s concern in
demining activities has been purely operational in areas where its
troops had to be located. At the end of September 2001, 4,365
mines/UXO of all natures had been neutralized.
Emergency demining undertaken by
UNIFIL is usually requested from the local population and involves the
clearance of mine fields and clusters to extricate victims or mines/UXO
that are clearly identifiable and pose an immediate threat. However, due
to the legal implications of accidents in cleared areas, mine clearance
in populated areas should be classified as humanitarian demining and
therefore conducted by accredited humanitarian mine-clearing NGOs and
agencies capable of meeting the International Standards for Humanitarian
Mine Clearance Operations.
The UN Security Council Resolution 1337, paragraph 10
allows UNIFIL to expand and undertake emergency demining activities in
southern Lebanon. UNIFIL, with an increased capacity (particularly
including mechanical mine clearance equipment) could better contribute
to clearance efforts within its Area of Operations by carrying out
emergency tasks, including mine field marking and fencing, in addition
to clearance tasks. This would be implemented through a partnership
between the UNIFIL-Ukrainian Engineer Battalion and specialized NGOs.
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Table 1: Mine fields and incidents occurred
in each UNIFIL AO. c/o UN MACC IMSMA Database, Tyre, Lebanon: September
2001. |
The MACC in Naqoura,
UNIFIL HQ and Tyre have created an appreciable database for known and
suspected mine fields, booby-trapped areas, areas cleared of mines, and
recent incidents as shown in Table 1 above. Map 1 below represents the
UNIFIL areas of operation subdivided into six battalions: Fijibatt AO,
Nepbatt AO, Irishbatt AO, Ghanbatt AO, Finbatt AO and Indbatt AO, with a
total strength of 4,500 troops to be reduced to 3,600. The reduction of
troops will reflect on the whole activities of UNIFIL, reducing the
areas of operation to three: Fijibatt AO, Ghanbatt AO and Indbatt AO.
The proposed UNIFIL reduction and deployment will be effective at the
end of October 2001 when Irish and Finnish will complete their
departure.
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(R-L) Map 1: UNIFIL
Areas of Operation; Map 2: Mine fields and Incidents in
UNIFIL AO c/o UNMACC |
The United Arab
Emirates Support for Demining Southern Lebanon
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) confirmed their
intention to contribute $50 million (U.S.) in mine action support to
southern Lebanon.
The UN strategy highlighted in the
"International High Level Workshop for Demining Lebanon –
Beginning with the Southern, 21–22 May 2001" is designed to
assist the government, and in particular the NDO, to build on the
capacity that has so far been established, utilizing means already
available to the UN system within Lebanon. This will entail the
coordination of support provided by various UN agencies (UNDP, UNIFIL,
UNMAS, UNOPS, MACC, UNICEF, UNESCO, WHO and UNOCHA) under the guidance
of the Personal Representative of the United Nations Secretary General (PRSG),
the UN Resident Coordinator and the FC of UNIFIL. Under this strategy
and with the financial support of UAE and other donor communities, the
demining goals could be realistically achieved in the short term to
accelerate mine action on the ground and to enhance the national
capacity for a sustainable response in the short and long terms.
The MACC, which has been established as part of the
UNIFIL since June 2000, is playing a key role in coordinating
activities, gathering and disseminating information and prioritizing
within the UNIFIL AO. It is important to sustain this mine action
coordination capacity in the South in order to assist the NDO in
additional demining activities. In particular, the MACC will facilitate
cooperation and implementation of joint operations with UNIFIL, the
Lebanese Army and other partners.
The ongoing exchange of information and collaboration
between MACC and NDO will closely examine areas of operation between UAE
and the Lebanese government. From this perspective, Map 1 on the
previous page shows the proposed zones of operation where NGOs and
commercial companies could work and where, for security reasons, the NDO
will focus.
The Role of UNMACC and IMSMA
A critical first step for any mine action response is
establishing an effective mechanism for coordinating various activities
of the host government, aid agencies, various international and local
NGOs and bilateral aid missions. UNMACC’s role is to coordinate UNIFIL’s
operational demining activities, to liaise with all actors involved in
mine action in southern Lebanon and to gather, collate and input
information from the UNIFIL AO into the IMSMA database, working closely
with the NDO. Also, MACC has recently opened an office in Tyre that is
accessible to all mine action programs. It will maintain a central mine/UXO database and will function as the focal point for all
mine/UXO-related activities in southern Lebanon.
Planning and Implementation
The absence of sufficient information on the landmine situation in
Lebanon is putting logical constraints on the overall planning and
management activities required in the humanitarian demining process.
Planning a humanitarian demining action requires the development of a
common understanding of the concept. Prioritization and strategic
decisions for mine action and operations should be based on reliable
information. This requires coordination, harmonization and integration
of information systems. In Lebanon, the lack of coordination in
humanitarian demining operations is explained by the lack of
institutional capacity and resources necessary in decision-making.
Under the umbrella of the United Nations
International Standards for Humanitarian Mine Clearance Operations, an agreement could be reached on the required referenced data and reference
information that satisfy the needs of humanitarian demining programs.
Interoperability between the stakeholders in Lebanon could be achieved
if they define and adopt the same approach and standard. The use of
IMSMA-GIS development would ensure the availability of consistent and
reliable information for strategic decision-making, achievement of
interoperability among information systems for humanitarian demining
operations and the best use of quality control and standards.
Standardized surveys will help identify priorities
through ranking criteria and weighting systems. They will also identify
the type of impact: humanitarian (risk, incident/accident data,
behavioral change before and after), political (peace consolidation in
the area and integration of isolated areas), social (settlement,
shelter, water, health and education) and economic (agriculture, rural
livelihoods, infrastructure, trade, industry and mining). These findings
could provide useful input to the Five Years Development Plan of the
Lebanese Government for Southern Lebanon, speeding up its implementation
in the affected areas.
Level One Impact Survey, Technical Survey and Impact Factor/Score Variables in UNIFIL AO’s Mine-Affected Communities
The Level One Impact Survey of Lebanon is part of the
international community’s effort with EU funding to obtain
standardized core baseline data on mine contamination, thus setting
priorities for intervention. It is likely to be undertaken throughout
Lebanon by Mines Advisory Group (MAG) in close cooperation with NDO and
other national agencies. The Survey Action Center (SAC) will technically
assist the Level One Impact Survey by collecting all relevant data
required to support a follow-up on mine action activities in the areas
of technical survey, clearance, mine awareness education and victim
assistance. It will provide data for the development of clear
priorities, improved planning and resource allocation. The survey will
be certified by the United Nations and used for development of the IMSMA.
Assessment of the completed report will give national authorities, as
well as donors, a tool to support well-designed projects that serve the
greatest socio-economic needs of the population.
So far, the Level One Impact Survey (for all of
Lebanon) and the Technical Survey planned for UNIFIL AO in order to
undertake emergency demining activities are still in policy-preparatory
phase. In the absence of the Level One Impact Survey, MACC has started
to using various documents to prioritize its own impact factor
variables. This will provide an approximation of the degree of impact on
communities, based primarily on victims’ data, presence of mines and
data from field reconnaissance.
Scoring and classifying mine-affected communities
according to the severity of impacts are a central element of the Level
One Impact Survey. The score is indifferent to the number and size of
mined areas and community needs. The pattern of mine fields, dangerous
areas and booby-trapped zones follows the former ICA security zones,
making it easily identifiable. The methodology reflects the elements of
factors-scoring mechanism and variables normally used to set responses
to the country conditions within the guidelines that the SWG and SAC
have set in the interest of international consistency. The variables
indicate a primary presence of mines/UXO (10 total) and mine victims in
the last 24 months.
For this study, acquiring data is an ongoing effort.
From the sources listed and the MACC IMSMA-GIS database, analyses were
derived by buffering the "livelihood space," correlating
socio-economic activity and geographic space of contaminated areas by
town using GIS, correlating incidents to mine fields/dangerous areas and
agricultural and grazing land, as well as identifying types of water
sources from UNIFIL AO digital maps and ArcLEB Data. The
"livelihood space" is advised and explored by SAC. The
peculiarity of southern Lebanon make this space a a 500m x a 1000m
radius circle around town centers, 200m on both sides of main roads
excluding other roads. Types of factors/blockages to be considered in
UNIFIL AO are: farmland and pasture, water (wadi and small rivers),
housing, roads and other infrastructures (religious sites and outdoor
areas around small rivers).
The MACC approach to envisaged clearance activities
without the Level One Impact Survey or Technical Survey is to prepare
task folders containing all available records with maps detailing all
necessary GIS themes for each high-impact mine-affected community. In
the immediate future, tasking the Ukraine Battalion for survey and
marking operations is possible. Such an event involves MACC’s
coordination through meetings and fieldwork in order to achieve coherent
and consistent data to set priorities.
Linking Landmines to Social Rehabilitation in
Southern Lebanon
The liberation of southern Lebanon has provided an
historic opportunity to further strengthen the national reconciliation
and to build a broad national consensus on a political, developmental
and livelihood rehabilitation agenda. The integrated development program
for the liberated areas in southern Lebanon coordinates with the Council
of Ministers’ decision No. 2/79, dated 23 May 2000. The plan sets the
framework for identifying the needs of liberated areas and defining
necessary steps for sustainable livelihoods. However, in its key summary
budget, Mine Action Assistance is the last category ("C") in
terms of priority with only one percent of the planned budget, while it
is one of the major backbones for the category "A: Basic Services
and Socio-economic Development," which accounts for 88 percent of
the total budget.10
The economic and development policies that have taken
place in Lebanon since its independence in 1943 have focused on Beirut
as a major economic center.11
This led to unequal growth and aggravated
social tensions along sectarian lines. In addition, the situation became
more traumatic for the South during the IDF occupation. The 22 years of
Israeli occupation produced internally displaced people and a massive
rural-urban migration to the North, aggravating and increasing previous
inequalities. The dramatic change in demographic characteristics of the
current population poses challenges for developmental planning. The
level of the population is estimated at approximately one-third of
pre-occupation levels.12
When one considers that the displaced population
is likely to return to the area in the near future, the scope and
potential impact of the landmine problem worsens.
The endurance of the country through unbalanced economic development
and political instability has led to a new configuration in the post-war
period. The requirements for balanced development are essential elements
for national reconciliation.13
Overall, distributional equity cannot be
given a lower priority than economic growth in the process of peace
consolidation in Lebanon. The failure of mainstream planning is fully
highlighted by past experiences, and no state is capable of satisfying
its own people’s legitimate needs. Therefore, the challenge for
Lebanese policy-makers, intellectuals and planners is to capture the
historical event of southern Lebanon’s liberation and to recover the
political community as a central guiding vision for social
reconstruction in the South.14
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The mine-affected community of
Bayt-Yahun. c/o UNMACC |
Conclusions and
Recommendations
The significant presence of landmines and UXO from
years of conflict and occupation continues to cause slow economic
development and infrastructure rehabilitation in Lebanon. The
proliferation of landmines in southern Lebanon is the outcome of the IDF
and de-facto forces. This presence of mines/UXO ties up valuable
resources, thus blocking development in most post-conflict societies.
The social and economic destruction, as well as the human cost of
landmines in terms of lives and disabilities, dictates the need for
prompt and effective actions against mines. Generating mine action
programs in post-war countries poses particular challenges, especially
in the Middle East, where the political situation remains fluid and
dynamic. The growing need for mine action programs and the difficulty of
coordinating effective institutional and technical capacities illustrate
the importance of considering appropriate policies in planning and
managing demining activities.
The use of IMSMA-GIS in the planning process will
help introduce a common language, coordinate demining activities, reduce
duplication of effort and information, identify lacking data to improve
and support decision-making, and promote the involvement of NDO, UNIFIL,
UN MACC, LMRC, MAG and other supporters. This process will also unify
methodologies and approaches to demining with comparable output results
and equitable distribution of humanitarian services and rehabilitation
of infrastructure. In the meantime, MACC has prioritized communities to
assist in developing immediate work plans for clearing mines, subject to
the expected outcome of Impact/Technical Survey/Field Recon-naissance.
Mine action in southern Lebanon should be part of a
wider mine action plan for Lebanon supported by international
assistance. The scope of the landmine problem in southern Lebanon calls
for strong coordination mechanisms. While the NDO has a clear mandate to
organize all mine action activities throughout Lebanon, it may not be
prepared to meet the emergency requirements of the South. Political
considerations may impact the deployment of the Lebanese Army in the
South and therefore, the work of the NDO in the area. The role of MACC
in this case will be vital for coordinating between NDO, UNIFIL, UN
agencies, NGOs and international donor communities.
References
1. Council of Ministers, Establishment of the
National Demining Office in Lebanon, Beirut, Lebanon; 15 April
1998.
2. Friedmann, John (1987) "Planning in the
Public Domain: From Knowledge to Action." Princeton University
Press. Princeton, New Jersey.
3. Labaki, Boutros "Development Policy in
Lebanon. Between Past and Future," Beirut Review, No. 6,
Beirut; Fall 1993, p. 97–111.
4. Lana, Captan, "Army Steps up mine clearing
but needs to raise awareness," Daily Star; 12 July 2000.
5. Mona, Harb El-Kak (2000) "Towards a
Regionally Balanced Development" in: UNDP Conference on
Linking Economic Growth and Social Development in Lebanon 11–13
January 2000. Beirut, Lebanon.
6. National Demining Office (NDO). Brief
Presented to NGO Conference, Beirut: Lebanon; 29 September 2000.
7. The Lebanese Republic. Council for Development
and Reconstruction. Integrated 5-Year Development Plan for The
Liberated Areas in South Lebanon and Neighboring Regions, Beirut:
Lebanon; 2000.
8. UNDP. A Study of Socio-economic Approaches to
Mine Action, conducted by the Geneva International Centre for
Humanitarian Demining (GICHD); Draft of 1 February 2001.
9. UNDP-CDR. Socio-economic Rehabilitation
Programme for Southern Lebanon: Initial Programme Brief. Beirut:
Lebanon.
10. UNDP-Ministry of Social Affairs. The South:
A Story of Hardship: The Socio-economic characteristics of the
liberated regions. The National Programme for Improving the Living
Conditions of the Poor. Beirut: Lebanon; October 2000, p.2.
11. UN Mines Action Service (UNMAS). Mine Action
Coordination in South Lebanon Initial Project Description, Naqoura:
Lebanon; 29 June 2000.
12. UN Mines Action Service (UNMAS). Joint
Assessment Mission Report, Lebanon; 1999, Annex A.
13. UN Mines Action Service (UNMAS). UN
International Standard for Humanitarian Mine Clearance Operations;
1997, 1ST Version.
14. Friedmann John (1987) "Planning in the
Public Domain: From Knowledge to Action". Princeton University
Press
Contact Information
Mohamed Abdulkadir Ahmed
Mine Action Coordination Cell (MACC)
Naqoura and Tyre, Lebanon
Tel: 961-7-349276/961-1-827124
Fax: 961-1-827569
E-mail: mohmaeda@unopsmail.org
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