OAS/GS/SMS
Department of Public Security
Office of Humanitarian Mine Action
Program for Comprehensive Action against Antipersonnel Mines (AICMA)
THE AICMA PROGRAM VISION
Since 1991, the program known as Comprehensive Action against Antipersonnel Mines (AICMA for its initials in Spanish) evolved within an eminently humanitarian vision of reestablishing safe, secure, and productive living conditions for mine-affected communities, while considering developmental, human rights, and gender issues among its social aspects. Through AICMA, the Organization of American States (OAS) predated most organizations in providing a comprehensive response to the problem of landmines in the Americas.
The AICMA Program implements OAS General Assembly resolutions, legitimized by a humanitarian consensus among the 34 Member States, to assist requesting Member States with their national humanitarian demining programs. The consensus reached has been behind AICMA’s ability to assist in the removal of hundreds of thousands of antipersonnel mines and the reestablishment of living conditions for thousands of victims in different regions of Central and South America affected by conflict. This assistance task requires a vision beyond the lack of resources, from funding to humanitarian demining organizations, equipment, and capability, to the scant ability of medical and social programs to assist survivors and their families; the task requires a vision of life and hope.
The program is the focal point within the OAS General Secretariat for mine action issues integrating the following fields of action: a) assistance for evaluating, mapping, locating, and clearing mine fields in accordance with humanitarian demining standards; b) mine risk education for mine-affected communities; c) victim assistance including physical and physiological rehabilitation, as well as socioeconomic reintegration; d) landmine stockpile destruction; e) development of a mine action data base; f) support for a total prohibition of the use, production, stockpiling, sale, transportation, or exportation of antipersonnel mines under the 1997 Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction (also known as the Ottawa Convention); and most recently g) destruction of stockpiled explosive remnants of war, munitions, and small arms.
The principal responsibilities of the OAS General Secretariat, exercised through the AICMA Program of the Office of Humanitarian Mine Action (OHMA), Department of Public Security, are fundraising, resource administration and management, and diplomatic and political coordination of the program. The Inter-American Defense Board (IADB) organizes teams of international supervisors and monitors from Contributing Countries to train demining troops, and certify that operations comply with national protocols and international standards.
The AICMA Program offers equal opportunities to surviving men and women throughout their integral mine risk education and victim assistance rehabilitation process. The needs and priorities of men, women, boys and girls are taken into account when conducting demining activities in their communities. These are just samples of the ways AICMA implements concepts advanced in different international instruments that provide a basic reference framework to address gender issues.
The program coordinates all its demining plans with the National Authorities, and supports them in complying with all national legislation related to environmental protection. Although the fundamental objective of mine removal remains the safety of the population, the environment also benefits from removal operations.
FULFILLING THE VISION
Humanitarian Demining: From January 2007 through June of 2008, with the support of AICMA, 11,771 mines were destroyed and more than 500,000 square meters of land were cleared in Nicaragua, Ecuador, Peru, and Colombia. Other achievements in these beneficiary countries include:
The Nicaraguan National Demining Plan reached 96 per cent completion reducing the risk to the departments of Jinotega and Nueva Segovia. The number of communities within 5 kilometers of a mined field, originally placing some 550,000 people at risk, had been reduced to 50 communities with 11,153 inhabitants, and since educated on mine risk. According to a Nicaraguan survey by the national census bureau, cleared areas have facilitated improvements in freedom of movement, access to transportation, reestablishment and expansion of medical care, and better access to education.
On the Peru-Ecuador border, by the Condor Mountain Range, joint humanitarian demining operations continue in 7 different zones of Tiwintza and Teniente Ortiz in Morona-Santiago province in Ecuador, and of the vicinity of Chiqueiza in Amazonas department, Peru. Progress on the border areas will make possible construction of the Bi-National Plan’s Fifth Corridor to integrate the two countries and develop agriculture, livestock production, and tourism. AICMA is coordinating plans, detailed in this Portfolio, to develop an innovative new mechanical solution for the clearance of antipersonnel mines in a border zone of the Chira River.
In Colombia, a positive social impact can already be noticed as the areas cleared in El Refugio and El Guayabero, in Guaviare department, are made productive by their indigenous communities. Similarly, a successful return is underway by populations displaced from San Francisco, Antioquia, and Bajo Grande in Bolivar, back to their abandoned homes and plots adjacent to cleared areas. Colombia is finalizing plans to increase its humanitarian demining capacity from four to five units. Two of these 40-member units are dedicated to the clearance of minefields under government jurisdiction. The other three upkeep their training to respond to humanitarian emergencies caused by mining by illegal groups.
Mine-Risk Education: Men, women, boys and girls benefit from AICMA mine-risk education campaigns. The campaigns seek to reduce the number of accidents by promoting safe behavior among inhabitants of mine-affected communities. These campaigns are designed to closely supplement humanitarian demining operations and to enable affected communities to get involved in mine awareness initiatives, facilitating the exchange of information about the location of mined areas and explosive devices in their vicinity. Just in the first half of 2008, 90 education campaigns covering 97 mine-affected communities were carried out in Ecuador, Nicaragua and Peru. And since August 2008, AICMA launched for the first time in Colombia, a series of mine-risk education campaigns to supplement the response to humanitarian emergencies caused by landmines.
Victim Assistance: The Program has assisted over one thousand landmine survivors with medical, psychological, and rehabilitative interventions in various beneficiary countries since its establishment in 1997. By June of 2008, 97% of all victims in Nicaragua had received medical assistance and psychological rehabilitation. In collaboration with the National Technological Institute of Nicaragua (INATEC), AICMA has supported vocational training for 421 landmine survivors. By the middle of 2008, 11 victims had been assisted in Ecuador and Peru. Simultaneously, AICMA launched a program to identify and locate landmine accident survivors in order to assist them with the necessary rehabilitation services. In Colombia, AICMA, supports a rehabilitation project for landmine survivors in coordination with the Colombian Integral Rehabilitation Center (CIREC) facilitated through the generous donation of air transport services by Avianca Airlines to survivors. In March 2007 AICMA initiated a project to enable the social reinsertion of survivors by means of vocational training provide by the National Learning Service (SENA). AICMA invites private enterprise to support its different victim assistance projects.
Stockpile Destruction: Having completed all stockpile destruction projects by 2004, consisting of the destruction of more than one million stockpiled antipersonnel mines in Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Peru, with financial contributions from Canada and Australia, the Program extended its support to the destruction of the excess ammunition stocks of Member States.
Munitions Destruction and Explosive Remnants of War: During 2007, in coordination with the OAS Mission for Assistance to the Peace Process (MAPP-OAS) in Colombia and the financial support of the Governments of Canada and Italy, AICMA assisted in a project to destroy 18,000 small and light weapons surrendered to the Colombian Government by paramilitary groups as part of that country’s peace process. With Canadian and U.S. contributions, a new initiative was launched in Nicaragua from April to September 2007 to destroy excess and obsolete weapons; and thanks to Canadian support the initiative renewed from February to March 2008 allowing for the destruction of about half of the excess munitions thereby removing the threat of accidents or worse consequences.
OAS Mine Action Project Portfolio 2008-2009
Support for Antipersonnel Mine Ban: AICMA promotes the interest expressed in OAS General Assembly Resolutions to make the Americas a landmine-free zone. To this end, AICMA represented the OAS at the UN Office of Disarmament Affairs “Regional Seminar in Advocacy of the Universality of the Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May Be Deemed to Be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects and its Protocols in Latin America and the Caribbean” held in Santo Domingo during March of 2008. AICMA advocacy for support of humanitarian demining programs in the Americas was manifested by promoting the achievements of the different programs in the continent. Likewise, in June 2008, AICMA actively participated in the Intersessional Meetings of the Permanent Committees of the Ottawa Convention.
EXPANDING THE VISION
As a natural extension from mine action activities AICMA initiated support to Member States in their efforts to destroy excess or obsolete munitions stockpiles as well as small arms and light weapons. The presence of stockpiles of obsolete munitions, explosives, and other remnants of war present a hazard to surrounding communities. Major explosions have occurred due to factors such as fire, human error, electrical storms, instability of propellants or explosives, or sabotage. Many designated official storage facilities are inadequately managed or secured increasing the risk of these stockpiles falling into criminal hands. This effort is also critical for the success of demobilization efforts to ensure that weapons turned over by illegally armed groups are never again used to the detriment of society.
Launching the AICMA program to assist Colombia’s humanitarian demining effort, is also the manifestation of a larger vision no longer content with reestablishing safe, secure, and productive living conditions for mine-affected communities post conflict, but of a dynamic vision concerned with responding to emergencies and reducing or eliminating the ill effects of antipersonnel mines, when and where possible in countries with ongoing conflicts.
Vocational training and social reintegration are crowning components of the overall AICMA vision. It is absolutely necessary to provide this type of assistance as the sequential complement to rehabilitation projects to fully prepare affected men, women, boys and girls to return to productive living conditions. The smaller populations involved in Peru and Ecuador, make current efforts viable in those countries. However, contributions from the donor community are essential to sustain the larger program begun in Nicaragua and for successful expansion of a similar program in Colombia.
Resource requirements for the medium term will continue to grow in order to meet the urgent needs to address the suffering of populations internally displaced by the presence of mines and improvised explosive devices. Likewise, a growing number of landmine victims will need medical assistance and psychological as well as social rehabilitation. Clearance operations in communities mined or contaminated by explosive remnants of war, require parallel mine-risk education campaigns to create safe conditions for the return of displaced populations. Mine-risk education campaigns have proven effective in reducing the danger to affected communities; these campaigns are also effective in reducing assistance costs. But it will be timely and effective Humanitarian Mine Action that will eventually reduce long-term costs.
The AICMA Program expanded vision requires active commitment from Member States affected by mines and other remnants of war, persistence by the international community, and constant support from international organizations. At the OAS, we renew our commitment so that jointly with the donor community and the Member States, we fulfill the vision of reestablishing safe, secure, and productive living conditions for mine-affected communities, thus reinvigorating these communities with life and hope.