Sida's Contributions to Humanitarian Mine Action

Donors may feel that the costs of impact-assessment exercises are not justified. The argument that allthat counts is getting mines out of the ground has a certain persuasive power. Nonetheless, the costsinvolved are well justified. A national HMA operation is often a long-term commitment, and it is thusimportant to make sure the right tasks are solved first. Similarly, we need to make sure that the scarceresources allocated for HMA are utilized in the best possible manner. At the one extreme, there may bea community where access to a waterhole is denied by a handful of mines, a task that can be solved bya small team in a week. At the other extreme, there may be large minefields, but these may have littleeffect on a community and will take a 32-man platoon of deminers many years to clear. Most peoplewould agree that it makes sense to open up the waterhole first; but, in practice, poorly developedimpact sensitivity within HMA has meant that large tasks have often been given priority.What is impact?The reorientation to impact in mine action implies a shift away from placing mines and demining atcentre to seeing humans and their basic livelihoods as the focus. As in other sectors of reconstructionand development assistance, there has been a tendency within HMA to focus on the most immediateand easily measured results of activities. Consequently, the number of mines and UXOs lifted or thenumber of square metres cleared have frequently been employed as indicators of progress. In contrast,little attention has been devoted to an examination of the effects of landmines over time, in specificcontexts and on different populations. The difference between the former and the latter approach isoften referred to as the distinction between impact and output. 4 The emphasis on impact draws on amore comprehensive understanding of what it is that constitutes a sensible intervention often associatedwith development assistance but which in reality is just as essential for emergency-oriented projects,in order to safeguard that they are generally sound. In shifting attention from output to impact, thechallenge lies in finding sound approaches to defining the problem – approaches that will be helpful fordesigning the most constructive interventions. Measures such as the numbers of square metres clearedor the number of people having attended mine-awareness presentations are simplistic and say littleabout the actual impact of a project. In practice, such output measures can easily encourage operatorsto maximize volume of operations, not impact on people, and – in the example given above - prioritizethe large minefield at the cost of the few mines around the waterhole. Broader questions such aswhether demining has significantly altered people’s overall life quality or whether mine awareness hasled to changes in behaviour are much more difficult to respond to. The development of approachesthat address such complex issues remains the central challenge.Impact-assessment approaches can be partly judged by the degree to which they maintain the interestof the primary stakeholders – people affected by landmines. In its most limited sense, this is nothingbut the safeguarding of a sense of ownership, secured through transparent procedures and with localshaving a key role as providers of information. Truly securing the interests of mine-affected people,however, also implies the ability to represent their perspective, in priority-setting as well as operationaldesign. Since any society will have differences of interest, impact is not evenly distributed: at theextreme, a demining operation might benefit some while disadvantaging other members of the samecommunity. One community study from Angola found that a large-scale demining operation launchedto facilitate the return to the original village for one group of people would simultaneously lead toanother group being forced to move away from the houses and fields they had established during thewar. Ultimately, a key challenge in impact assessment is striking a balance between paying attention tolocal particularities while maintaining a practicable and legitimate system.4Chris Roche, 1999. Impact Assessment for Development Agencies: Learning to Value Change. Oxford: Oxford GB, p. 22.14 Sida’s CONTRIBUTION TO HUMANITARIAN MINE ACTION – Sida EVALUATION 01/06