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December 2010
SUSTAINABLE 101:VICTIM ASSISTANCE 10 YEARS ON
BRIDGING THE GAP
BETWEEN POLICY AND PRACTICE
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Copyright : December 2010 by Handicap International ASBL-VZWAll rights reservedFunded under a grant rom the Belgian Ministry o Foreign Aairs
Cover photograph: Khtoeup Veb rom Siem Reap Province in Camobia, cultivating his ricefeld John Vink Magnum, or Handicap International Cambodia 2008
Layout and Design: Enschede/ Van Muysewinkel nv/saResponsible editor: Bruno LeclercqPublisher: Handicap International ASBL-VZW
67 Rue de Spastraat B - 1000 Brussels
Phone: +32 2 280 16 01Fax: +32 2 230 60 30
http://www.handicap-international.be
For additional inormation or to receive a copy o the report, please contact: [email protected].
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SUSTAINABLE 101:
VICTIM ASSISTANCE 10 YEARS ON
BRDGNG THE GAP BETWEEN POLCY AND PRACTCE
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SUSTAINABLE 101: VICTIM ASSISTANCE 10 YEARS ON BRDGNG THE GAP BETWEEN POLCY AND PRACTCE
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 3
2. INTRODUCTION 4
3. DESCRIPTION OF THE STUDY AND ITS OBJECTIVES 5
4. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 6
5. METHODOLOGY 10
6. ANALYTICAL ASSESSMENT PART I: THE PROJECT MANAGEMENT CYCLE 12
7. ANALYTICAL ASSESSMENT
PART II: CROSS-CUTTING ISSUES 19
8. CASE STUDIES 23
9. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 30
10. REFERENCES 36
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1. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The research team at Handicap International would like to thank all those local civil society
organisations (and their representatives) which agreed to participate in this study and willingly
shared inormation about their work and their achievements and challenges with us. We hope that
we have been able to do justice to the very important work these local organisations are undertaking
or persons with disabilities including landmine/explosive remnants o war survivors, all over the
world.
The team would also like to acknowledge the invaluable support provided by those local intermediary
organisations and individuals which acted as inormation-providers and which enabled it to reach
otherwise inaccessible organisations and to surmount language and communication barriers.
Furthermore, the team would like to extend its thanks or the useul advice and eedback received
on both orm and content rom various individuals rom Handicap International and the International
Campaign to Ban Landmines.
Last but not least, the research team would like to thank the Ministry o Foreign Aairs, Belgium or
its nancial support or this study.
The Research Team
Joohi Haleem
Jennier Reeves
Stphane de Gree
November 2010
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2. NTRODUCTON
Recent studies such as Voices rom the Ground: Landmine and Explosive Remnants o War Survivors
speak out on Victim Assistanceundertaken by Handicap International in 2009 and annual reporting on
progress conducted by the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor show that even 10 years ater the
Mine Ban Treatys (MBT) entry into orce, victim assistance or the survivors o landmines/explosive
remnants o war (ERW) has remained one o the sectors which shows the least demonstrable progress.
During the Mine Ban Treatys rst decade, victim assistance (VA) has made the least progress o all the
major sectors o mine action, with both unding and the provision o assistance alling ar short o what
was needed.1 There is still ar too little knowledge and understanding o survivor needs in the very
dierent contexts where survivors live worldwide, and there is little to no assessment o the impact o the
VA initiatives which have been undertaken to date, to see what works, what does not, and why. This lack
o understanding o context-specic needs has meant that by and large, most survivors eel that their
needs are not being met2 and living as they oten do in remote and poorly serviced areas, they remain
marginalised on the ringes o mainstream society.
This particular study Sustainable 101: Victim Assistance 10 years on aims to begin the process o
mapping and assessing the current situation on service provision to persons with disabilities including
mine/ERW survivors in 29 aected countries around the world. It is intended to supplement gaps in our
knowledge and understanding o the challenges, constraints and opportunities which local civil society
organisations ace, and to build upon the available body o data and inormation on victim assistance
and disability-related service provision in the selected aected countries. The study and its various
outputs address multiple audiences: the primary target-group o national service-providers through the
accompanying online directory and tool-kit, and secondarily, the donors, policymakers and the
international humanitarian sector through the ndings presented in this report.
The project was ormulated to deliver three separate but mutually reinorcing products in order to
best present the inormation collected in the course o this study:
An online directory providing prole inormation on all the civil society organisations
identied (about 175 so ar) in 29 aected countries around the world, with an
accompanying tool-kit compiling available resources on victim assistance and
disability service provision,
An analytical assessment o organisational perormance in a select sample o casestudy countries, and
A BBC documentary titled Laos Bitter Harvest highlighting the scale o the problem
o unexploded ordnance (UXO) contamination or aected communities in the severely
aected country o the Lao Peoples Democratic Republic (PDR).
The 29 mine/ERW aected countries covered by this study are as ollows:
Aghanistan, Albania, Angola, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Burundi, Cambodia, Chad, Colombia,
Croatia, Democratic Republic o Congo, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guinea Bissau, Iraq, Jordan, Laos,
Lebanon, Mozambique, Nepal, Nicaragua, Peru, Senegal, Serbia, Sudan, Tajikistan, Thailand,
Uganda, Vietnam and Yemen.
1 See ICBL, Landmine Monitor Report 2009, Executive Summary, Special Ten-Year Review, Victim Assistance, p.53.
2 Handicap International, Voices rom the Ground: Landmine and Explosive Remnants o War Survivors speak out on Victim Assistance, September 2009.
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3. DESCRPTON OF THE STUDY AND TS OBJECTVES
The primary objectives o this study are:
Mappng o local cvl socety ntatves: To raise awareness o the initiatives and projects being undertaken by
local civil society actors such as non-governmental organisations (NGOs), community-based
organisations (CBOs), survivor associations, and disabled peoples organisations (DPOs) in order
to give their work greater visibility and exposure on the international stage, and to provide a clear
and concise picture o existing local knowledge, capacities, and constraints to donors, decision-
makers, policymakers and other humanitarian and development actors.
Knowledgesharng and normaton exchange: To provide organisations with a discussion platorm to exchange
ideas, experiences and perspectives rom dierent contexts and the opportunity to learn rom such
exchanges; to generate a dialogue on the major issues and concerns acing civil society practitioners
and to provide them with a voice on the international stage, through their inclusion into the online
directory and social networking site.
Capactybuldng: To acilitate the capacity-building and strengthening o member organisations and other
users o the online directory and social networking site: through a comprehensive compilation o
existing resources and links on victim assistance and programme management into a constantly
updated tool-kit; through the provision o e-discussion boards encouraging an exchange o ideas
and inormation (especially South-South cooperation) on best practices and lessons learnt; by
providing notications o upcoming trainings, conerences and workshops; and by enabling
member organisations to directly maintain their online proles and to regularly upload inormation
about their achievements and challenges.
The Sustainable 101 study documents and assesses the work being carried out by national and
local NGOs and other civil society actors in the 29 mine/ERW aected countries listed above. These
organisations provide services relevant to but not exclusively or survivors. This is reective o
common practice whereby most such organisations in the eld provide services to all persons with
disabilities, regardless o the cause o disability.
However, within the broad lens o disability service provision, there are ample reasons to justiy a
sharper ocus on victim assistance service provision. Firstly, the mine action sector oten has
specic knowledge about aected people and communities, including knowledge which may notbe generally available such as the number, location, and needs o survivors. This inormation may
have been gathered in aected communities by clearance teams, and through the undertaking o
community-based mine risk education (MRE) and awareness programmes. Secondly, survivors can
provide peer support to each other to help overcome the sometimes specic orms o trauma
associated with such injuries they are best placed to understand the situation and needs o ellow
survivors. Thirdly, advocacy by the mine action sector helps to ensure that survivors rights are
addressed and upheld where they otherwise might not be due to the general marginalisation o
persons with disabilities and their lack o access to the services and support they require. Finally,
providing services through victim assistance unding can also be seen as benecial to other persons
with disabilities, as without this VA unding, certain services might not otherwise exist or be
sustained.
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4. EXECUTVE SUMMARY
RATONALE FOR THE STUDY:
THE NEED FOR WELL-NFORMED DECSON-MAKNG AND MPLEMENTATON FOR VCTM ASSSTANCE
Over the years, while the normatve understanding o victim assistance has evolved
signiicantly with each successive 5-year Action Plan3 expanding beyond the notion o the
provision o care and support to survivors to include sustained eorts to build up their
capacities - the development o a comprehensive operatonal understanding has been more
challenging, encompassing as it does some o the most undamental human rights and needs,
and a broad range o services and activities4. This lack o clarity has been urther compounded
by the act that there is not one natural home or victim assistance, with responsibilities or
the coordination, planning, implementation and monitoring o VA activities oten being shared
on an ad hocbasis between the Mine Action Centre and the relevant national Line Ministry.
Most importantly however, the apparent lack o clarity stems rom a undamental contradiction
between the political and practical conception o victim assistance. So while on the one hand,
meeting the VA obligations set out by the Mine Ban Treaty and the Convention on Cluster
Munitions includes the establishment o national coordination mechanisms and ocal points,
the drating and implementation o national VA plans (with the inclusion o survivors), and the
earmarking o speciic VA unding (by donor and aected states), on the other hand, there are
calls or all eorts to be integrated into mainstream development processes i they are to have
a sustained and lasting impact on the lives o aected people and communities. The
International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) and the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC)
have long advocated or a twin-track approach to inclusive development and victim
assistance.5 This means ensuring that all persons with disabilities including mine/ERW
survivors are enabled to participate ully and meaningully in all phases o the development
cycle (policymaking, planning, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation), while at the
same time, having access to specialized programmes and services to build up their capacities
to engage actively in these processes.
Practitioners in the ield nevertheless recognise the need to ensure that VA service provision
does not result in the creation o a parallel set o services and acilities exclusive to mine/ERW
survivors, as it risks entrenching prevalent inequalities and discriminatory societal patterns.
This is borne out by the results o this study which show that more o than 80% o the
respondent organisations make no distinctions amongst their target-group(s) on the basis othe cause o disability.
The contradiction lies in the act that having separate or partially separate unding streams or
victim assistance entails separate processes o monitoring and evaluation i one is to truly
3 See www.mineaction.org/downloads/1/Nairobi_Action_Plan%5B1%5D.pdandhttp://www.mineaction.org/doc.asp?d=1300
4 Ambassador Susan Eckey o Norway, Victim assistance is a human rights issue that aims to address the rights and needs o people who are oten marginalised and
living in vulnerable situations in countries with limited resources and many competing priorities, Enhancing Cooperation and Assistance as concerns Victim Assi stance,
Discussion Paper, Intersessional Standing Committee Meetings, 24 June 2010, p.1.5 Inclusive Development and the Comprehensive and Integral International Convention on the Protection and Promotion o the Rights and Dignity o Persons with Disabilities,
prepared by the IDDC Task Group on the UN Convention, 2005, in Victim Assistance in In clusive Development: What does this mean or advocates?, ICBL Brieng Paper,
28 October 2010.
http://www.mineaction.org/downloads/1/Nairobi_Action_Plan%5B1%5D.pdfhttp://www.mineaction.org/downloads/1/Nairobi_Action_Plan%5B1%5D.pdfhttp://www.mineaction.org/downloads/1/Nairobi_Action_Plan%5B1%5D.pdf -
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assess the impact and build in greater accountability and transparency o all the initiatives
undertaken with those unds. This presents all implementing organisations, international and
national, with the dilemma o having to account or service provision targeted at mine/ERW
survivors while at the same time, trying to ensure that the activities they undertake are non-
discriminatory towards other vulnerable and at risk groups in a population.
Another challenge aced by organisations is how to deine their most approprate and eectve
role, a role which complements and supplements the role played by the other actors in the
process, most importantly among them the state and its agencies, without duplicating eorts
while ensuring maximum coverage and impact. As this research shows, most local civil society
service providers (at least 85%) are attempting to deliver a combination o services
(encompassing the six pillars o VA, namely emergency care, physical rehabilitation, psycho-
social care, economic inclusion, advocacy, and data collection), either in response to
perceived needs and gaps resulting largely rom state neglect or incapacity to deliver, or to tap
into available unding streams, regardless o whether they have the capacity to do so in a
sustainable manner.
However this leads one to question the ultimate eectiveness and sustainability o such
initiatives, as one single civil society organisation may not always have the optimal set o
skills, expertise and resources, both human and inancial, in order to deliver services as wide-
ranging as physical rehabilitation and livelihoods recovery, consistently in a manner which
best ulils the needs o the people on the ground. Additionally while most civil society
organisations work in ways which by their very nature, are more community-driven and
grassroots-based, better coordination o both state and civil society initiatives can lead to
greater economies o scale and wider impact. Moreover, a stronger state-civil society nexus
can strengthen government capacity to provide adequate and eicient services to its
population, and ensure that popular organisation and capacity o poor people to assert their
claims to public resources, and to hold government accountable6 is reinorced and
strengthened.
In order to determine the most approprate and eectve role in victim assistance or a local
civil society organisation, it is irst and oremost imperative to develop a better understanding
o real and actual needs on the ground as well as to improve our knowledge o the eorts that
have been undertaken to date to meet the needs o people and communities aected by
mines/ERW as well as other persons with disabilities. Only through a more comprehensive
understanding o the existing baselne can it be possible to develop uture strategies and
directions, to reinorce existing capacities and to address inherent gaps and shortcomings.
In order to better understand the scope o services available in aected States, a
comprehensive mapping o all actors involved in services relevant to assisting the victims is
needed. 7 This study aims to highlight the invaluable work being carried out by one such actor
in the process, namely local civil society organisations in 29 countries around the world,organisations which have been active in the ield oering a range o services and acilities
within their available resources. This study by no means represents a comprehensive mapping
o all civil society organisations active in the domain o service provision. It should be viewed
instead as the beginnings o the process o compiling and consolidating inormation on such
6 Collier, 2000 as quoted in Solava Ibrahim and David Hulme, Has civil society helped the poor?A review o the roles and contributions o civil society to poverty reduction,Brooks World Poverty Institute Working Paper 114, University o Manchester, March 2010, p.10.
7 Ambassador Susan Eckey o Norway, Enhancing Cooperation and Assistance as concerns Victim Assistance, Discussion Paper, Intersessional Standing Committee
Meetings, 24 June 2010.
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initiatives, and should be urther expanded eventually to include other key stakeholders such
as government agencies and international non-governmental organisations in order to be truly
comprehensive.
This study would also like to call attention to the key issue o the tmelne or the tmebound
way in which victim assistance activities are oten undertaken, in recognition o the act that
or those whose lives have been aected by the impact o mines/ERW, the eects are, more
oten than not, lielong and permanent. While land clearance and stockpile destruction are
activities which are inite in nature, vctm assstance conssts o servces and actvtes whch
need to be provded over a much longer tme span, and thereore t calls or a undamentally
derent approach and response to undng, polcymakng and mplementaton than the
other areas o the mne acton sector. This must be taken into consideration when providing
support or locally driven VA/disability initiatives and programmes, the vast majority o which
as this study goes on to show, continue to suer rom unsustained and irregular unding lows.
A PARADGM SHFT
The Sustainable 101 studys ocus on highlighting the work undertaken by local civil society
actors such as survivor associations, sel-help groups, DPOs and CBOs, on victim assistance
and disability is in keeping with recent trends in the discourse and practice o victim
assistance. These trends suggest a paradgm sht echoing the paradigm shit taking place
globally within the larger disability sector rom the old charity-based model o development to
the social or rights-based model advocated under the Convention on the Rights o Persons
with Disabilities (CRPD).
In this rights-based model o development, persons with disabilities are viewed not as
beneiciaries but as rights-holders playing a more proactive and engaged role in the
processes determining and inluencing their lives. The human rights-based approach
requires that rights-holders living in poverty are ully involved and take action in determining
their needs and the responses that will be provided to answer them. This is in stark contrast to
a top-down, service-led approach where such decisions are made externally and where poor
people do not participate in the processes that aect, simply because they are wrongly
considered to be mere beneiciaries or recipients. This approach undermines peoples dignity
and their conidence to think, plan, and negotiate. Though providing people with new schools,
wells and boats can serve them on one level, leaving them with less dignity and power to
negotiate with others is a ailure on another level.8
What are the implications o such a paradigm shit or the prevail ing policymakin g and practice
o victim assistance? It connotes a major shit in the balance and dynamics o power (o
decision-making and access) by placing people and communities aected by mines/ERW right
at the centre o the entire process raming and deining them not merely as the passivevictims o these weapons expecting their needs to be ulilled in compliance with the
obligations imposed by the two treaties on all States Parties, but as active, engaged members
o their communities and societies demanding and claiming their rights and entitlements.
Such an approach is key to overcoming the oten inherent and entrenched orms o multiple
and intersectional discrimination9 resulting rom prevalent physical, socio-cultural,
behavioural, political and economic barriers and prejudices - that exclude and prevent
8 Action Aid, Human Rights-based approaches to poverty eradication and development, June 2008, p.7, http://actionaid-staging.rubylithcms.com/rubylith/les/HRBA%20
paper.pd.
9 Convention on the Rights o Persons with Disabilities, Article 2, 2009.
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survivors and other persons with disabilities rom accessing and enjoying their undamental
rights and reedoms. The key question then becomes one o ensuring equtable access and
equalty o opportunty and choce or all.
Improving access, opportunty and choce should be seen not only in terms o improved
physical accessibility, but as encompassing:
Improved access to high-quality education, inormation, technologies and
training;
Better nutrition and health;
A more cohesive and supportive social environment;
More secure access to, and better management o natural resources;
Better access to basic and acilitating inrastructure;
More secure access to inancial resources; and
A policy and institutional environment that supports multiple livelihood strategies
and promotes equitable access to competitive markets or all.10
As local civil society organisations have more potential to be representative o poor and
marginalized groups in society (as compared to state structures or international humanitarian
actors), and can thereby be seen as working directly toward the establishment o processes
and mechanisms that acilitate and improve access, opportunity and choice or these groups,
it then becomes imperative to recognize their work and to strengthen their capacities or
greater eectiveness, impact and coverage. At the same time, it is important to point out here
that any such capacity-building should seek to enhance the acilitative role o civil society
actors rather than enabling them to supplant the state, which must ultimately be held
responsible as a duty holder or the provision o basic services to its population and or the
ulillment o its rights.
10 Department or International Development (DFID-UK), the DFID Approach to Sustainable Livelihoods, National Strategies or Sustainable Development, 2004,
http://www.nssd.net/reerences/SustLiveli/DFIDapproach.htm#Top.
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5. METHODOLOGY
In order to meet the twin objectives o mapping and assessment, the data collection or the study
was conducted in two separate processes using two dierent questionnaires. The rst questionnaire
the PROFILE questionnaire was developed to collect basic inormation about the respondent
organisation, its contact details, the services it provides, its beneciary target group(s), its
management and stafng structures, its unding mechanisms, etc. Each organisation was
additionally asked to provide case-studies o best practices or innovative projects that it had
undertaken or was currently undertaking. The Prole questionnaires were developed in English and
then translated into nine languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Nepalese, Khmer,
Vietnamese, Thai and Dari). The dissemination o the questionnaires was either done by the
research team by email, telephone or direct contact wherever possible (as in the case o Cambodia
where one o the team members was based), or through local intermediaries or inormation
providers. These local inormation providers were mainly drawn rom Handicap Internationals
existing network o contacts in the eld, and consisted o organisations or individuals involved in
delivering services to persons with disabilities, such as the ICBLs national Victim Assistance Focal
Points, disability organisations or survivor associations. In some select cases, such as in Angola,
where direct contact with organisations proved difcult to establish or where a suitable organisation
could not be identied to take over the task o data collection, a consultant was briey employed to
obtain inormation rom the relevant organisations.
The inormation collected through this process was used to develop individual online proles or
each o the respondent or member organisations. In the interests o transparency, each respondent
organisation was inormed at the outset o the intended use o the inormation being requested
rom them. By making the directory available on-line and providing each member organisation with
the option to maintain and update its own prole, the project hopes to ensure that inormation
provided in the directory remains relevant and up-to-date. The social networking aspect o the
website is designed to encourage dialogue and debate between the dierent member organisations
and to acilitate greater transer and exchange o knowledge and inormation, giving practitioners
the opportunity to learn rom each others experience. Over time other organisations are expected
to enlist in the directory once the value o the greater visibility and exposure aorded to their work
and the increased opportunities or knowledge-sharing becomes apparent.
The second, almost simultaneous phase o data collection was the analytcal phase or which an
ANALYTICAL questionnaire was developed using the project management cycle as a basis. Thisphase was conceived as an evaluative or assessment exercise to critically analyse the unctioning
o the organisations and to identiy any challenges they might ace in the eective and sustainable
implementation o their activities. It is hoped that an improved understanding o the ground
realities o VA and disability service-provision will help donors, pol icymakers and other international
actors to provide support which is both timely and relevant.
With this purpose in mind and based on the project management cycle, the analytical questionnaire
was divided into sections, each assessing the respondent organisations capacity to conduct
adequate needs assessments or its target population, and based upon these, to plan, execute and
monitor its activities. Respondents were also asked to reect on those past and current unding
trends which might impact on their activities, on the involvement o beneciaries in their activities,
on their coordination with other national and/or international stakeholders (including networks),on their capacity to train and retain sta, and on the challenges and opportunities posed by a host
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o actors, among them lack o political will, unsupportive legislative rameworks, lack o access to
inormation, discriminatory attitudes towards disability, and rampant corruption and nepotism.
There were two key dierences between the two phases o data-gathering: one, the inormation
collected during the second more analytical phase was kept condential and all respondents were
duly inormed o this, and two, the sample size or the second phase was deliberately limited to a
ew select countries chosen rom the 29 countries covered by the rst phase o the study. Ensuring
the condentiality o the respondents was deemed necessary to enable them to give as accurate a
picture as possible o their current realities despite the, at times, politically sensitive nature o the
questions and answers. The decision to limit the sample size was taken in order to develop a more
detailed understanding o the situation in the case study countries, and to use the context-specic
ndings (through case study analysis) to generate more generic, cross-cutting themes o interest.
While this report on the analytical assessment largely draws upon the ndings o the second data-
gathering phase, relevant inormation has also been used rom the prole questionnaires completed
by respondent organisations in the initial phase.
SELECTON CRTERA FOR RESEARCH SAMPLE FOR ANALYTCAL STUDY
Thepurposive sampling method, prioritizing logistics and access, was employed to select the case
study countries or the analytical phase o the study. The selection o countries was based on
practical considerations o logistics and access as well as the need to ensure that the sample was
adequately reective o the regional diversity within the group o 29 ocus countries. Even more
importantly, the need to preserve the condentiality o respondents and the integrity o the data
collection methods by reducing the risk o bias or prejudice was taken into consideration. Thereore
or the analytical phase, it was considered essential or the research team to have direct access to
the respondent pool rather than relying on the intermediary inormation providers used or the
initial mapping phase. Direct access or data gathering was necessarily subject to the constraints
imposed by linguistic, geographical, and communications barriers. Additionally there were
budgetary and security constraints on direct access to certain locations. It is important to point out
here that in drawing conclusions or a more generic analysis, the research team tried to ensure that
the specic conditions o each context, such as the prevailing level and quality o services available
to people with disabilities including survivors, the political, socio-cultural and economic
environment o each case study country, and the existing level o capacity o local civil society
actors and the specic nature o the challenges aced by them, were taken into account.
Members o the research team conducted eld missions to Lebanon, Croatia, Bosnia and
Herzegovina, and Cambodia, where data was gathered through semi-structured interviews and
ocus group discussions using the analytical questionnaire as a basis. Analytical questionnaires
were also completed by a small number o respondent organisations in Aghanistan, Angola and
Jordan, where interviews were conducted either by consultants hired by the project or throughdirect electronic communication between the research team and the respondents. Logistical and
budgetary constraints prevented the research team rom covering Latin America in the second
phase o the data-gathering process.
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6. ANALYTCAL ASSESSMENT
PART : THE PROJECT MANAGEMENT CYCLE
A total o about 45 organisations in the our main (Lebanon, Cambodia, Croatia and Bosnia
and Herzegovina) and three secondary case-study countries (Aghanistan, Angola and Jordan)
were assessed or their strengths and weaknesses in each o the dierent stages o the project
management cycle namely, needs assessment, planning, implementation, and monitoring and
evaluation. The indings o this assessment are discussed in Part I o the Analytical Assessment.
Additionally the respondent organisations were asked to relect upon a ew cross-cutting
thematic issues o relevance to them namely, survivor/beneiciary inclusion, meeting the
needs o persons with disabilities including mine/ERW survivors, and coordination
mechanisms and their role in these mechanisms. These responses are discussed in Part II o
the Analytical Assessment.
UNDERSTANDNG NEEDS AND CAPACTES
Cartagena Action Plan (CAP) #24: Enhance the collection o appropriate data to develop,
implement, monitor and evaluate the implementation o relevant national policies, plans and
legal rameworks, and link such data with national injury surveillance and other relevant data
collection systems.
As the Landmine Monitors research has made apparent year ater year, the planning and
implementation o victim assistance activities at the national level has not oten been guided
by any comprehensive understanding o existing needs and capacities. Reliable data on the
number o aected people and communities needing support, their location, and the kind o
support they need is simply not available in most countries. Although most countries maintain
national casualty databases, these databases do not go beyond providing incidence data or
each casualty or survivor with there being little to no ollow-up data available on the post-
incident conditions and needs o survivors. There is also insuicient linkage o casualty
databases to databases which may be maintained by other sectors (such as the health,
education, inance, and labour and employment ministries), or those maintained by
organisations themselves. Even when a casualty database is regularly maintained andupdated, there are oten issues with how the data is used, shared with and accessed by the
dierent stakeholders (government, local civil society, international humanitarian community
etc.). Due to a lack o coordination and inormation exchange between ministries and
government agencies, and between government and civil society organisations in most case-
study countries, and due to an insuicient disaggregation o data collection on the basis o
gender, age, ethnicity, livelihood proiles, geography, etc., whatever available data there is on
mine/ERW survivors rarely eeds into national statistics on poverty, gender, disability and the
distribution and quality o basic services or all population groups. The lack o adequate
coordination between the dierent stakeholders also means that there is very little knowledge
at national and even local levels, o existing capacities and resources and o the dierent
initiatives being undertaken. This oten leads to either duplication and overlapping or
persistent gaps in service deliver y, as a result o which, the needs o traditionally marginal isedand deprived groups may continue to be overlooked.
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The lack o coordinated and comprehensive needs assessments mechanisms is a recurring
problem in almost all the case-study countries, but was especially cited as being a major
challenge in accessing inormation by respondents in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Croatia
and Angola. In Angola or instance, a mine victim survey is planned or this year by the Inter-
sectoral Commission on Demining and Humanitarian Assistance (CNIDAH), but many o the
Angolan organisations interviewed or the S101 research were not aware o it, although it is
due to take place in their area o operation.
Another challenge to collecting reliable data on the real needs o persons with disabilities
including mine/ERW survivors is posed by prevalent socio-cultural belie systems and
discriminatory attitudes and behavioural patterns towards disability and in particular
disability and gender, due to which the marginalization and exclusion suered by most
persons with disabilities goes unacknowledged and unchecked. This was ound to be the case
in countries like BiH, Croatia, Cambodia and Aghanistan where most respond ent organisations
mentioned the diiculty inherent in having disability issues suiciently prioritized on the
national agenda, and in Angola, where it was more diicult to involve emale beneiciaries in
the consultation process. In Jordan cultural issues were also listed as a challenge to collecting
inormation, and it was considered important to be sensitive to traditional cultures and
belies.
Funding issues at the project inception stage also, oten posed a challenge to conducting
comprehensive needs assessments with one respondent organisation pointing out that
understanding the needs takes too much time and we have to do it without resources as most
donors do not support this phase.
The majority o the organisations surveyed claimed to know the needs o their target group(s)
and intended beneiciaries because they are rom the area, have irst-hand knowledge o the
local community and context, and work at the grassroots level.This inormation is oten more
exhaustive and detailed than what most existing databases are able to provide, and working
directly and sometimes through peer support, with aected survivors and communities on the
ground also, enables local civil society organisations to gather detailed inormation on their
needs. In Angola, the respondents said that it was best to use participatory methods to collect
inormation or needs assessments with one organisation describing its use o a Rapid
Participatory Diagnosis approach to understanding the scale and scope o the problem. In
contexts such as Angola, Jordan and Aghanistan, it was also deemed important to consult
local traditional leaders in the community consultation process. In Angola and Lebanon, most
respondents were o the opinion that inormation was best collected by local people using
local languages. One aith-based organisation in Angola worked through the church network,
while another mentioned that it would be useul to have access to reports o previous projects
undertaken by other NGOs, government agencies and local civil society actors in order to learn
rom their experiences in providing services to persons with disabilities including mine/ERW
survivors.
While the value o the grassroots knowledge which most local disability/VA service providers
draw upon cannot be denied, at the same time, it is important to recognise that there may be
a risk o entrenching prevalent inequities and power imbalances and urther marginalising the
most vulnerable as the people working or these local organisations may either belong to the
local power elites themselves or they may be reluctant to challenge the existing power
dynamics in the region. It is thus imperative to balance out existing local knowledge with
exhaustive needs assessments using vulnerability and poverty mapping tools.
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PLANNNG
CAP Action #22: Develop, i they have not yet done so, a comprehensive national plan o action
that addresses all aspects o victim assistance with objectives that are speciic, measurable,
achievable, realistic, and time bound, ensuring that such a plan takes into account broader
national policies, plans and legal rameworks that promote and guarantee the rights o
landmine victims in accordance with the highest international standards, and thereater
implement, monitor and evaluate the implementation o such a plan.
Organsatonal plannng
Up to 85% o the organisations surveyed during the irst phase o the data-gathering process
claimed to have ormal strategic and work plans in place, ranging rom 1-5 years in duration
and outlining the key objectives and activities o the organisation. These plans were developed
in consultation with sta members, and sometimes beneiciaries and even donors. Most o
the respondents also claimed that these plans were linked to national mine action/victim
assistance strategies or disability plans where they existed, though given the inadequate
level o coordination in most o the case-study countries, it was not clear to the research team
how these links were maniested and what was the inluence o national plans on the setting
o organisational priorities. In case study countries such as BiH, a victim assistance sub-
strategy was drated with the participation o a ew key civil society organisations, but those
organisations which had not been involved in the drating process, did not eel the need to
engage with the strategy and its objectives in any capacity in the course o their own activities.
None o the other disability organisations and associations representing those aected by war
was included in the plan either.
A number o respondents pointed out that they were not always able to meet all the objectives
o their plans due to a lack o unding and sta capacity implying that some o the planned
activities may have constituted a wish list rather than being based on a realistic assessment
and understanding o what was possible within available resources. These respondents
admitted that this necessarily led to a decrease in their ability to deliver services eectively
with a corresponding narrowing o the beneiciary pool. Those respondents which said
however, that they developed realistic plans taking into consideration access to and
availability o resources - both human and inancial - appeared to be more eective in meeting
their core objectives. An important point to consider here, and linked to earlier observations
on the lack o comprehensive needs assessments, is that while plans may be ormulated and
implemented, i they are not truly responsive to the speciic needs on the ground and do not
actively involve beneiciaries in the decision-making and implementation process, their
impact on improving the living conditions o their target group(s) can only be limited at best,
and detrimental at worst. However it was beyond the scope o this study to assess the
potential impact o some o these plans.
MPLEMENTATON
nternal organsatonal capactes
By and large, most respondents (at least 75% o respondent organisations were dependent on
project-based grants or their survival) linked their limited organisational capacity to a lack o
sustained and regular unding or meeting their core costs as opposed to unding or project
activities. With a limited unding cycle determined by the duration o the project cycle, most
o the surveyed organisations ound it diicult in practice to retain skilled and trained sta
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and to invest resources to build their capacity or undraising, proposal writing and donor
liaison, better communications, data management and research among other things. A number
o respondents also voiced the need or improving their technical skills and inancial
management capacities. Erratic and variable unding lows were inevitably ound to lead to
high sta turnover with a corresponding loss o knowledge and capacity, and an inability to
improve the quality o their service delivery, and caused some organisations to be reluctant
about widening their beneiciary pool despite a high demand or their services.
Some respondents said that they had had to rely on volunteers due to a lack o unding or
salaried sta. However, they did cite certain advantages o working with volunteers, part icularly
when those volunteers were beneiciaries themselves, in terms o making activities more
inclusive and participatory.
Most o the respondent organisations seemed to have a good understanding o their particular
strengths and weaknesses and had made eorts (including partnering with international
organisations, employing external consultants and technical specialists, and enabling sta to
attend training courses and workshops) to build up capacity within the resources available to
them.
External actors aectng mplementaton
CAP Action #26: Ensure that capacity building and training plans are developed and
implemented to promote high quality standards and availability o age-appropriate and
gender-sensitive services in all components o victim assistance, and enhance the capacity o
both women and men and national institutions charged with implementing national policies,
plans and legal rameworks, including through the provision o adequate resources.
CAP Action #27: Increase accessibility o both emale and male landmine victims to quality
services and to overcome physical, social, cultural, economic and political barriers, with a
particular ocus on rural and remote areas.
Some o the most commonly cited external challenges to eective and sustainable
implementation included lack o eective national legal/policy rameworks (or the health and
education sectors, or the mine action sector, or the non-proit sector as a whole, disability
legislation etc.) or their inadequate enorcement, lack o political will at the national level,
lack o unding, lack o physical security in the operational environment, bureaucratic
constraints, lack o access to relevant inormation, logistics, geographical isolation, lack o
eective national coordination mechanisms, discriminatory attitudes towards beneiciaries
and corruption/nepotism. The extent to which these challenges exist or impact on
organisational capacity or implementation, varies rom country to country and according to
each individual organisations capacities.
Ironically, some o the challenges that local service providers ace were also constraints on
the S101 research. Thus in countries that ace problems o physical insecurity due to conlict,
such as Iraq and Aghanistan, or where modes o transportation and communication were
diicult and unreliable, such as in Angola, it was more diicult to gather reliable and
comprehensive inormation or this study.
Geographical isolation and inaccessibility, oten accompanied by physical insecurity, was
mentioned as being a major constraint to implementation in countries like Aghanistan and
Angola and largely accounted or the disparity in the quality and coverage o services between
rural and urban areas. In Angola, the problem o geographical isolation is compounded by the
lack o adequate inrastructure. The country is vast, road networks are poor and badly
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maintained and the local service-providers do not have suicient resources or transport.
Another signiicant challenge highlighted by respondents in Angola was the lack o internet
access, which they elt hampered their links with the international community and limited the
undraising opportunities available to them.
As mentioned previously, a prevailing culture o discriminatory attitudes and taboos against
disability oten posed a serious challenge to respondent organisations in BiH, Croatia,
Cambodia and Aghanistan, and made it diicult or them to access government resources or
to highlight the needs o people with disabilities in comparison to other disadvantaged groups
in the population.
A general lack o government capacity combined with limited understanding o needs on the
ground, lack o political will and inadequate resource mobilisation to plan, implement and
coordinate service delivery to persons with disabilities including mine/ERW survivors,
imposes huge constraints on the unctioning o local civil society actors by obliging them to
ill in the gaps in service provision without having access to the resources and inrastructure
o the state. Besides the undamental rights-based issue o government responsibility and
duty in the domain o service provision, service delivery by civil society actors can never be
sustained in the long term owing to the latters high dependence on external unding, the
diiculty o going to scale and their inability to recover costs through user charges.11
Some civil society organisations have tried to resolve these external challenges through
advocacy to eect policy change at the national level, but with varying degrees o success.
Fundng and nancal sustanablty
The majority o respondent organisations rom all the case-study countries considered the
lack o regular sustained unding as a key concern, and in act or many, it was the main
problem they reportedly aced (with at least 75% o surveyed organisations reliant on project-
based grants). A s discussed earlier, a lack o unding was also seen to be one o the contributin g
actors or the inability o some orga nisations to realise all their plans. Some o the responden t
organisations expressed a need to increase their capacity or undraising and proposal writing
as they oten ound themselves restricted rom accessing international donor unding owing to
overly complex international donor procedures or simply due to a lack o inormation about
available sources o unding. It is nevertheless important to highlight here the lack o
sustainability and excessive donor dependency caused by an over-reliance on grant-based
unding.
Several o the respondent organisations used a combination o unding mechanisms in order
to diversiy their unding sources and to make up or any shortalls in donor unding.
International non-governmental organisations (INGOs) and national governments were the 2biggest donors or at least 30% and 20% o the respondent organisations respectively, with
oreign governments and private individual donations being the biggest source o unding or
about 10% o them. 12 About 5% o the organisations surveyed charged beneiciaries/users or
services provided, while another 5% o them undertook various income-generating activities
such as rental o oice space etc.
11 Solava Ibrahim and David Hulme, Has civil society helped the poor?A review o the roles and contributions o civil society to poverty reduction, Brooks World Poverty
Institute Working Paper 114, University o Manchester, March 2010, p.10.
12 The gures cited here are based upon responses received rom about 170 organisations during the rst Prole phase o the data-gathering process.
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There have been repeated calls or aected states to contribute long-term national unds to
victim assistance, and or donor states in a position to assist to increase multi-year unding
or victim assistance13. The International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) in one o its
statements at the Intersessional Standing Committee Meetings o the Mine Ban Treaty in June
2010, incited countries to not end your international cooperation eorts once a country has
inished its clearance obligations. Instead, continue to channel mine action unds to victim
assistance as victims needs will continue over the long term 14. It highlighted the need to
acknowledge that attitudes, practices and national resources will not be changed in a matter
o one or two years. Thereore ensure sustanablty and eectveness o VA projects by
commttng to long term nancal support .15
While it is possible to solicit and undraise speciically or VA donor unding - some
organisations ound it relatively easier to raise unds under the VA banner by invoking donor
obligations under the Mine Ban Treaty - the services oered by these organisations were not
limited to any one single group o r community. In Colombia several donor-unded projects work
to strengthen capacity to meet the needs o mine/ERW survivors, but simultaneously also
beneit other persons with disabilities. Against this though, is the argument that unding
should not discriminate against people based on the cause o disability, but should be based
on need and has been a reason commonly cited by several big donors such as the European
Union, Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and Department or International
Development (DFID), UK among others or their seeming reluctance to earmark unds
speciically or victim assistance activities.
mplementaton carred out n partnershp wth nternatonal organsatons
Over the last 10 years, INGOs have played a signiicant role in helping to develop the capacities
o national NGOs and other civil society actors in several countries. This support has taken
several orms ranging rom an INGO establishing operations and then handing over to national
management and ownership, to a close partnership with a national organisation, to the
provision o support more remotely as a donor.
Most respondent organisations in Lebanon, BiH, Croatia, Aghanistan and Cambodia were
generally positive about their experience o working with international organisations. The
beneits they mentioned included gaining o international experience and heightened
visibility, improved access to donor unding, and the enhanced ability to inluence international
conventions and advocacy campaigns on a global level. Nevertheless, a ew also mentioned
challenges such as those posed by the random, non-context speciic application o
international concepts and standards at the local level, or by the dierent and sometimes
conlicting agendas o the INGO and its local implementing partner.
In Angola in particular, some o the survey participants expressed dissatisaction with theirrelationship with international organisations when asked to comment on the perceived
beneits and challenges o working in collaboration with them. Some o them elt imposed
upon by their international partners which in their view, were more willing to support projects
based on their own priorities rather than on the needs deined and identiied by the national
partners and their beneiciary populations. This was also echoed in the responses received
13 Survivors Call to Action, Cartagena Summit on a Mine-ree World, Colombia, 29 November-4 December 2009.14 ICBL Statement on International Cooperation and Assistance - Victim Assistance, Intersessional Standing Committee Meetings, 25 June 2010, Geneva,
http://www.apminebanconvention.org/leadmin/pd/mbc/IWP/SC_june10/Speeches-Special/SpecialSession-VA-25June2010-ICBL.pd.
15 Ibid.
http://www.icbl.org/index.php/icbl/Library/News-Articles/intersessionals10/intlcoop-vahttp://www.icbl.org/index.php/icbl/Library/News-Articles/intersessionals10/intlcoop-va -
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rom some organisations in Aghanistan. The respondents did not eel that such a manner o
working led to a real partnership approach. They were reluctant about participating in research
projects which did not yield any material or tangible beneits or their own work. However
some o the INGOs which were interviewed in the course o this study also experienced
diiculties, or instance, by being excluded rom national coordination activities (e.g. in
Angola, an INGO was excluded rom a VA evaluation workshop).
MONTORNG AND EVALUATON
CAP Action #28: Monitor and evaluate progress regarding victim assistance within broader
national policies, plans and legal rameworks on an ongoing basis, encourage relevant States
Parties to report on the progress made, including resources allocated to implementation and
challenges in achieving their objectives, and encourage States Parties in a position to do so to
also report on how they are responding to eorts to address the rights and needs o mine
victims.
The internal monitoring and evaluation systems o the respondent organisations vary
considerably. The vast majority o them said that they know i their services are eectively
meeting the needs o beneiciaries rom the eedback received rom the beneiciaries
themselves. Some also used questionnaires or held eedback meetings. A ew had more ormal
monitoring systems in place with dierent indicators to monitor progress and impact.
On a more macro level, there appeared to be no nation-wide evaluations o VA activities in any
o the case-study countries, which was surprising, particularly given that the other pillars o
mine action have been subject to evaluation on a regular basis. This issue is also linked with
the lack o inormation on needs and capacities. Without an adequate understanding o needs
and capacities, it is not possible to adequately assess the impact o programme activities.
Similarly without planning processes and speciic objectives and goals in place, it would be
diicult to monitor and evaluate outcomes and impact.
With responsibility or the planning and implementation o VA and disability-related activities
shared on a sectoral basis between the relevant line ministries in each country, the survey
ound that there was oten a lack o clarity about the most appropriate agency to monitor and
evaluate progress and impact.
There were some notable exceptions though: the Lebanese Mine Action Centre plans to issue
Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) or VA activities later in the year; in Jordan there are
eorts to ensure that services provided or people with disabilities meet required standards
with the Higher Council or the Aairs o Persons with Disabilities (HCAPD) planning to accredit
all disability organisations and to regularly monitor their activities; in Croatia most o the
respondent organisations received their unding rom the national government, which iscurrently in the process o putting more stringent monitoring mechanisms in place.
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7. ANALYTCAL ASSESSMENT
PART : CROSSCUTTNG SSUES
RESPONDNG TO SURVVOR NEEDS
Much has been said already about the need to develop context-specic responses to actual needs
on the ground in ways which ensure equitable access and equality o opportunity and choice or all
persons with disabilities including mine/ERW survivors. In order to do so, it is imperative to build
upon existing local knowledge o the context and to improve our understanding o existing needs,
capacities, resources and constraints to avoid overlapping and duplication o eort and to increase
coverage and quality. It is worth noting here though that NGOs operating in service delivery
should be careul not to adopt an exclusively needs based approach that neglects the poors rights
and ails to challenge the structures and institutions that brought about their deprivations in the
rst place. The danger here is that NGOs in service provision might sometimes seek to maintain
these exploitative structures which provide them with unds to nance their projects.16
Based upon their rst-hand grassroots knowledge o their communities and areas, most o the
respondent organisations highlighted the challenges inherent in undertaking economic inclusion/
livelihoods recovery and rehabilitation programmes, given the extended investment o time and
resources required to build up the skills, knowledge and employability o this traditionally
marginalised target group to enable them to overcome widespread discrimination and social
exclusion, which restricts their access to jobs, markets, entrepreneurship development and micro-
nance acilities17. Despite the inherent challenges, the study ound that as many as 80% o the
organisations surveyed during the rst phase o the project (more than 170 in number) were oering
socio-economic services in some orm or the other vocational training, small business support,
peer and/or psychosocial support to persons with disabilities including mine/ERW survivors. This
seems to be in direct response to two principal actors one, that improved economic and
employment opportunities have consistently been agged by survivors and other persons with
disabilities as being key to their successul inclusion into mainstream society18, and two, that due
to a lack o capacity, resources and an insufcient understanding o real needs, there has been ar
too little government support or such activities. 19 As a consequence, local civil society actors have
stepped in to ll in the gaps. Whether such activities undertaken by civil society actors can besustained over the long term remains doubtul, or reasons discussed earlier in this report, as well
as because addressing the root causes o livelihood vulnerability and insecurity requires the
establishment o linkages at multiple levels with multiple stakeholders, and o structural
mechanisms which eventually lead to equality o access, opportunity and choice or all vulnerable
groups, including persons with disabilities.
16 Solava Ibrahim and David Hulme, Has civil society helped the poor?A review o the roles and contributions o civil society to poverty reduction, Brooks World Poverty
Institute Working Paper 114, University o Manchester, March 2010, p.12.
17 an estimated 80 per cent o all people with disabilities in the world live in developing countries. O these, some 426 million live below the poverty line and oten
represent the 15-to-20 per cent most vulnerable and marginalized poor in such countries, The right to decent work o persons with disabi lities, Arthur OReilly,
International Labour Ofce, Geneva, 2007. (ISBN 9778-92-2-120144-1)
18 ... that the States Parties reconsider the importance o measures to ensure economc ncluson since this vital component o Victim Assistance has oten been ignored in
the past, Survivors Call to Action, Cartagena Summit on a Mine-ree World, Colombia, 29 November-4 December 2009.19 Most eforts remained ocused on medical care and physical rehabilitation, oten supported by international organisations and unding, rather than on promoting
economic sel-reliance or survivors, their amilies, and communities,Landmine Monitor Report 2009, Executive Summary, Special Ten-Year Review, Victim Assistance,
p.53.
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SURVVOR NCLUSON
The Survivors Call to Action calls on all states to guarantee meaningul participation o landmine
survivors in all areas o victim assistance at all levels20. Participation may take place at the civil
society level, or the government level, and through coordination mechanisms. In many countries,
survivors have in act taken the initiative themselves and set up their own associations, such as in
Croatia, the Karlovac Association or Mine Victims; in BiH, Eko Sportska and UDAS, and the
Landmine Survivors Initiative (LSI); in Uganda, the Ugandan Landmine Survivors Association (ULSA)
with its many member associations representing the dierent districts o Uganda; and in Cambodia,
the local NGO, Yodiee, established by a person with disability who was unable to nd a job, and
wanted to provide socio-economic support to people in the same situation as his, to list a ew.
Most o the respondent organisations which participated in the initial data-gathering phase claimed
to have active beneciary involvement in the planning and implementation o their day-to-day
activities, with at least 45% o them employing beneciaries as volunteers and about 15-20% o
them employing beneciaries as paid sta members.
In terms o their inclusion in national VA and disability coordination mechanisms, some o the
associations run by survivors, particularly those in BiH, were critical o the role played by the
national coordinating body and questioned its right to represent survivors.
MPROVNG COORDNATON
CAP Action #23: Establish, i they have not yet done so, an inter-agency coordination mechanism
or the development, implementation, and monitoring o appropriate national polices, plans and
legal rameworks, involving the ull and active participation o landmine survivors and other relevant
stakeholders, and thus ensuring that the entity is assigned primary responsibility or overseeing
this coordination and has the authority and resources to carry out its task.
Coordination is crucial to eective VA planning and implementation or several reasons: it enables
the participation o all the relevant stakeholders, links national civil society actors with government
actors, acilitates exchange o inormation and sharing o resources, helps to improve understanding
o main issues and concerns, and to avoid duplication o eort while addressing gaps, and enables
all participants to benet rom each others experiences. Additionally, it can be instrumental in
helping civil society actors to identiy and determine their most appropriate and eective role in the
domains o service delivery, advocacy and policy change. Advocacy work and policy change, in
order to have an impact, cannot be done in isolation and must be conducted in collaboration with
other actors. However, eective coordination o VA activities remains elusive to many countries,
despite eorts made in recent years. Given the crucial role o coordination in developing a cohesive
and structured response to needs on the ground, simply saying it should take place is not enough,
and it is important to identiy the reasons why coordination is not happening as it should and setinto place the concrete mechanisms to support it.
As identied during the course o this research, two main gaps in coordination were ound to exist:
between government and civil society actors in general, and between survivor associations and VA
organisations, and more mainstream disability-related organisations. A number o disability and
veteran organisations (and some government bodies) surveyed in Croatia and BiH claimed not to
pay any particular attention to the needs o mine/ERW survivors in order to avoid any discrimination
on the basis o the cause o disability. Consequently they did not see any value in being part o VA
coordination mechanisms.
Other causes o ineective coordination may be a lack o political will, and government incapacity
to hold meetings, disseminate inormation, and monitor activities due to an insufcient allocation
20 Survivors Call to Action, Cartagena Summit on a Mine-ree World, Colombia, 29 November-4 December 2009.
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o time and resources. Factors that impede coordination may also include divergent political or
stakeholder interests and agendas. While some political dierences may be obvious in a post-
conict country, others may be less so. There may be competition between various stakeholders or
the same pool o unding. In Angola or instance, the competition or scarce resources among the
national NGOs was cited by an international NGO, as being an obstacle to eective coordination
among them. One organisation may have more political inuence than others to lobby government,
or there may simply be personality dierences between the sta o the dierent organisations.
However, it should not be assumed that political dierences mean that civil society organisations
will not coordinate together there are plenty o examples o good coordination among groups that
may have been opposed to each other during conict and may still be political rivals. It is useul to
conduct a stakeholder analysis, and study the interests o the dierent organisations and the power
relations between them. External bodies, particularly international organisations, should be
mindul o the act that coordination problems may be due to actors that are not immediately
obvious to the outsider.
At times, the study ound that there was conusion within the mine action centre (MAC) itsel as to
its role in victim assistance. Among the survey respondents, a range o attitudes towards
coordination could be ound, ranging rom support towards coordination eorts to eeling some
resentment and viewing the MAC as controlling, with some survivors questioning the MACs right
to represent them. In Lebanon, the MAC is a military body, it chairs a victim assistance steering
committee, and although at rst glance a military body might not appear to be appropriate or this
role, certain advantages can be identied, such as that it is authoritative enough to coordinate the
activities o a diverse group o actors in a politically diverse context, and that it acilitates access to
sensitive areas through providing permits etc.
One way to strengthen coordination mechanisms and processes can be to demonstrate to
stakeholders the benets o coordination. I the coordinating body provides incentives or
example, capacity-building and training courses on subjects related to project cycle management,
inormation on survivors and their needs, ways to increase the visibility o the work done by local
service providers accompanied by a genuine culture o generating dialogue, knowledge-sharing
and inormation exchange, then local civil society organisations may be more inclined to play an
active role in ensuring the eectiveness o coordination mechanisms.
THE EVOLVNG ROLE OF CVL SOCETY ORGANSATONS N VA AND DSABLTY SERVCE
PROVSON
The role played by civil society actors in VA may lie in the domains o advocacy, policy change and/
or service delivery, and can vary rom country to country depending on several contextual actors
including: the specic needs o aected people and communities; the services delivered by other
providers, including government, UN agencies and INGOs; the existing strength and capacity or
engagement o national/local civil society as a whole; and available resources combined with thecapacity or mobilisation o these resources, amongst other actors.
23% o the respondents surveyed in the rst phase o the data-gathering process were only involved
in service provision, 10% were only involved in advocacy and awareness-raising, and 70% were
engaged in both service delivery and advocacy. The majority o organisations engaged in advocacy
work believed that their work had been instrumental in eecting policy change at the national level.
However, it may be benecial to pay greater attention to which role(s) may be the most appropriate
one(s) to play or local civil society organisations in a given context. Many actors may assume roles
based on present needs, but may not have taken into consideration longer term sustainability, or
how their activities may t into the wider sector, or how their activities may impact on other
organisations. For example, by providing services directly, local civil society organisations may riskabsolving governments o their primary responsibility to ensure the basic rights o their populations.
It should also be noted that civil society organisations do not work in isolation, and their individual
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roles may be best worked out through the coordinated eorts o all relevant stakeholders, including
both government and civil society actors.
In case study countries such as Croatia, BiH, Aghanistan and Colombia, besides lling gaps in
services, local organisations also help survivors and other persons with disabilities to access
services by providing them with inormation about available services as well as acilitating them to
access these services in accordance with their rights. For example in Croatia, one local NGO worked
with the Mine Action Centre to compile a guidebook o the legal rights o survivors with a directory
o service providers. In Colombia, government ofcials recognise the crucial role played by NGOs
and view this as an integral part o VA activities within the country. Advocating on behal o survivors
and helping them to navigate conusing government regulations to access services and benets is
seen as being the responsibility o the local NGOs.21
Some organisations do not provide services at all, but see their role entirely as acilitating survivors
access to services, and advocating on their behal. The respondents varied considerably in their
views about their roles in advocacy and policy change, with some viewing it as the primary ocus o
what they do, while others regarded it as very secondary, i important at all, to their primary role o
providing services. Some thought it would detract rom their service provision activities. Overall
though, as mentioned earlier, up to 70% o organisations surveyed in the rst phase o data-
collection claimed to be active in both service provision and advocacy and awareness-raising.
In a Victim Assistance Workshop organised by Handicap International in May 2010 in Amman,
Jordan, the advantages and disadvantages o a civil society-government partnership in advocacy
work were discussed at great length. Some NGO participants saw governments as partners with
whom they could work together to advocate or survivors rights, while others viewed governments
as the targets o their advocacy work. Working on policy change can only be eective i there is
recognition o the constraints that governments ace, and i civil society organisations see the
government as an ally to work with rather than as an adversary. For example, several NGOs in
Lebanon were sympathetic to the challenges their government aced as a result o political
instability. In BiH, most civil society respondents spoke o the challenges caused by complex
national governance structures. They were also understanding o the lack o unds available due to
the global economic recession. Another lesson learned was the need or patience. I legislation is
new, then changes may take time to ollow through. For instance, local civil society actors in Croatia
credited themselves or bringing about necessary changes in the law, but also recognised the act
that it would take time or the new policies to take eect.
As well as lobbying politicians and government bodies, a number o respondents also saw their role
as involving the changing o the mind-set among the public at large, or example through education
in schools about disability rights. A number o respondents also emphasised the need or a
paradigm shit away rom a purely medical approach to an approach based on human rights,
which empowers persons with disabilities to ght or their rights as individuals as well as
collectively.
On the whole it can be argued that collectively, it is best or civil society organisations to be involved
in all three activities provided they have the capacity to do so. Service delivery can create the
necessary knowledge base or advocacy work because NGOs providing services to the poor are in a
better position to collect the necessary data needed to lobby or policy change. On the other hand,
those organisations operating in advocacy need to make sure that they do not lose touch with the
grassroots.22
21 ICBL, Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor 2010, Colombia Country Prole, 2010, http://www.the-monitor.org/index.php/cp/display/region_proles/theme/509.22 Solava Ibrahim and David Hulme, Has civil society helped the poor?A review o the roles and contributions o civil society to poverty reduction, Brooks World Poverty
Institute Working Paper 114, University o Manchester, March 2010, p.11.
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Project : Provson o psychologcal assstance to and capactybuldng o survvors
Duration: 10 months (May 2009 - March 2010)
Goal: Strengthening and integration o mine victims into society through group
psychotherapy and education, to enable them to cope with the lasting eects o disability,
and to improve their employment prospects.
Actvtes:
a) Group psychotherapy
Main Objective:
1. To empower victims by assessing their skills and capacities and by supporting them
according to their individual needs, abilities and preerences.
The current group consists o 6 mine victims, our o whom are amputees, one has internal
injuries and one is the child o a survivor. The group is led by a proessional psychotherapist
and the observer is a social worker.
b) Conducting of seminar Promotion of rights of the mine survivors and coordination of
social services and activities - 27 participants
Main Objectives:
1. To promote exchange o inormation and knowledge on the scope and nature o the
problems aced by organisations/institutions involved in the protection and
implementation o rights or persons with disabilities;
2. To improve cooperation and networking between these organisations/institutions, and
relevant governmental and non-governmental actors.
The target audience o this seminar included both mine victims, and institutions and
organisations directly or indirectly involved in the protection and implementation o rightsor persons with disabilities.
8. CASE STUDES
The selected case-studies were collected in the rst Prole phase o the data-gathering process
and represent a ew interesting examples o the range o activities being undertaken by local civil
society actors in the eld o service delivery to persons with disabilities including mine/ERW
survivors. These examples do not necessarily include the respondents o the second Analytical
phase o data-gathering.
CASE STUDY : MNE AD, CROATA
Name o Organsaton:
MNE AD, CROATA
Target Group:
Landmne/
ERW survvors
Locaton o Actvtes:
Zagreb, BrodPosavna,
Karlovac, LkaSenj,
OsiekBaranja,
SsakMoslavna,
SbenkKnn,
VukovarSriem and
Zadar
Knd o Actvtes:
Psychologcal Support
(proessonal
psychologcal and peer
Support), Psychosocal
support (counsellng,educaton, rghts
awareness, eld vsts,
nancal ad,
scholarshps,
ncentves or
selemployment)
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Outputs o the seminar:
Exchange o key inormation on the jurisdiction o the organisations working on
protection and implementation o rights or persons with disabilities
Imparting o inormation on the basic rights o mine/ERW victims and survivors
Denition o key issues or upholding the rights and interests o mine/ERW victims
Establishment o contacts between seminar participants and delineation o rst
steps towards urther cooperation and collaboration
c) Organsaton o workshop Rehabltaton, employment and selemployment o
persons wth dsabltes 8 partcpants
Main Objective:
1. To educate mine/ERW victims on the available prospects and opportunities or
proessional rehabilitation, employment and sel-employment.
Outputs o the workshop:
Imparting o inormation on the services and acilities provided by the Croatian
Employment Institute and Fund or Proessional Rehabilitation and Employment
o Persons with Disabilities
Provision o relevant resource material and useul contact inormation to
workshop participants, who were encouraged to disseminate the inormation to
other persons with disabilities in their communities
d) Organsaton o the workshop ttled Expandng the network o psychosocal and
economc support, n Karlovac County and Ssak County (23 partcpants)
Main Objective:
1. To improve linkages between survivors and introduce them to the dierent available
orms and possibilities or psychosocial and economic support.
Outputs o the workshop:
Imparting o inormation about the existence and activities o the Association o
Mine Aid and the Croatian Mine Victims Association o Karlovac County
Participants made amiliar with the various orms o assistance and peer support
available
Identication o the needs o the participants in terms o proessional
psychological support and peer support
Imparting o inormation about planned project activities and economic
reintegration opportunities through the presentation o the upcoming project
Socio-economic reintegration o mine survivors in the community
Identication o interest or inclusion in the economic reintegration projectthrough concrete business development ideas.
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e) Feld vsts
Main Objectives:
1. To enable mine/ERW victims to gain better insight into their social environment
2. To provide adequate psychosocial support to individuals living in remote locations and
those who have mobility problems
3. To provide a common platorm to enhance communication and inormation exchange
between mine/ERW victims on their rights and opportunities
Field visits were made to Slavonski Brod, Bogdanovci, Vinkovci, Beli Manastir, Karlovac,
Plaskog, Zagreb, Gospic, Otocac, Sisak, Petrinja and Jabukovac, to a total number o 23
survivors, including approximately 60 members o their amilies, and the amilies o 2
mine casualties.
) Fnancal assstance
Main Objective:
1. To provide nancial assistance or basic medical needs and travel expenses incurred or
group therapy sessions
Outputs:
2 survivors and the amilies o 2 mine casualties were provided with nancial assistance.
Project : Support or the educaton o mne/ERW vctms
Duration: 12 months (June 2008 - May 2009)
Main Objectives:
1. To provide the nancial resources necessary to cover the basic costs o regular education
and the necessary educational programmes or the school year 2008-2009.
The target group or this project consisted o mine/ERW victims and covered about 27
individuals.
Outputs o the Project:
Identication o the educational needs o persons directly (through injury) and
indirectly aected by mines/ERW (members o their amilies)
Provision o nancial support or basic educational needs and additional
education or qualication purposes
Increase in the knowledge and skills o the beneciary group
Improved employment opportunities
Provision o support in terms o psychosocial and legal consultation
Building up o sel-esteem o mine/ERW survivors and their amilies
Completed by:
MARIA BREBER
Poston n organsaton:
Member o Presdental
Councl
Contact:
+385992771372;
mariabreber@
gmal.com
Organsaton:
MNE AD, CROATA
Number o years o
operatng n country:
Formally snce 2003
(7 years), but more
actvely snce March
2006 (4 years).
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CASE STUDY : ECO SPORTS GROUP, BOSNA AND HERZEGOVNA
The Eco Sports Group uses water and more specically, water sports as the
medium or the psychological rehabilitation, social integration and education o
persons with disabilities, although the organisation preers to use the term
psycho-physical well-being, reusing to label the participants as victims.
Eco Sports Group is the rst organisation in the world to use water sports such
as scuba diving and rating or the rehabilitation o large groups o persons with
disabilities. Through a new and innovative approach ocused on water sports,
which are even considered extreme to some degree, they have given persons
with disabilities rst o all, a eeling that they are worthy and that they can do
what others cannot, but they have also given them the means to apply this new
ound condence to their real lie situations, amilies and daily activities. Unlike
many others, they have taken persons with disabilities into the open