Understanding the needs
Story by Mark Naftalin
By understanding the needs of communities affected by landmines and other remnants of conflict, MAG is able to identify, prioritise and plan their clearance activities. To do this MAG uses Community Liaison (CL) teams who are skilled in mapping, data collection and delivering Mine Risk Education (MRE).
The four CL teams in Angola deploy to rural areas often far from the Operations Base in order to carry out a thorough campaign of education, awareness-raising and data collection and analysis. Often, given the distances involved, the teams camp for up to twenty-one days in the villages undertaking the all-important MRE. As Antonio Saoulo, a fifty-six year old former refugee now residing in Bairo Luzi in central Moxico, states: “Once resettled, MAG’s Community Liaison teams helped us understand the safe and dangerous areas in our village and provided us with the education we needed to make our families safe.”
It is due to these extended periods in the interior of the Province that in 2006 the CL teams accessed and educated almost 26,000 children, former refugees and members of the local community residing in Eastern Angola (made up of Moxico, the UNHCR transit centres on the border of Zambia and DR Congo, and the diamond-rich Provinces of Lunda Norte and Lunda Sul). This represents close to 10% of the impacted communities in the three Provinces – not an unimpressive feat considering that the three provinces make up a significant amount of Angola’s land mass.
Moreover, the successful repatriation process by UNHCR since the cessation of conflict has resulted in the return of approximately 378,000 former Angolan refugees between 2002 – 2006 many of whom have returned to their former homes in eastern Angola. With 80,120 Angolan refugees still residing in DR Congo and a further 26,450 in Zambia (eastern Angola borders both countries), more are expected to be repatriated throughout the course of 2007 even if many will choose to integrate locally into their respective host state. Durable solutions to the problems that returnees face are sacrosanct if they are to be repatriated and then successfully (re)integrate into areas which they may not have visited for sometimes decades.
Therefore, whilst MRE is a vital aspect to any CL work, MAG Angola is in the process of fully developing a participatory, integrated and holistic approach to Community Liaison. It is only by understanding the needs of the impacted communities and using their extensive local knowledge of an area is it possible to identify, prioritize and locate contaminated neighbourhoods.
As the landmine impact survey - a project that MAG significantly contributed to through grass-roots research – represents the country’s hazards as they appeared during the period the survey was conducted, it is also necessary to seek more up to date information. That is especially the case in a country like Angola where hazards fluctuate over time due to rapid population movements, changing socio-economic conditions and new land use patterns.
Subsequently, MAG has developed new and integrated systems of information gathering techniques and surveying approaches on location that include:
- GPS mapping - CL teams thematically map households, infrastructure and former military positions in order to gain an overall understanding of the location of settlements vis-à-vis possible mine sites. Furthermore, such maps greatly facilitate the development of clearance plans for the technical teams.
- Door to door spot reporting – MAG collects data on possible locations UXO and ERW contaminated areas as well as sensitise individuals to the important work of MAG.
- Village meetings and civil society identification – teams conduct meetings with representatives from different demographic groups within each community so gaining a comprehensive understanding of the needs of various actors within each settlement as well as the community as a whole. Such activities enable MAG to prioritise the numerous blockages found within communal areas. Indeed, locals face severe restraints due to the presence of landmines on key access routes and in agricultural areas which prevent them from undertaking essential farming activities (landmines have an impact on in excess of 270,000 people residing in eastern Angola in over 390 localities). Furthermore, it is estimated that over 29% of all socio-economic blockages occurring in Angola as a result of landmines are found in the Province.
- Detailed conflict analysis – by gaining a thorough understanding of the local dynamics of the conflict in any given area, it is possible to determine the exact location of military positions and therefore obtain a better understanding of the contamination.
Only once all these data collection and information gathering functions have been completed and assessed is it possible to prioritise informed technical responses in order to maximise the number of beneficiaries. As Landon Shroder, MAG Angola’s Community Liaison Manager states, “by working with affected communities and analyzing the nature of the conflict we can facilitate the development of the most integrated clearance plans to help contaminated communities develop in a risk-free environment”. Thus, effective clearance planning followed by integrated humanitarian mine action (in the form of both rapid response spot clearance and rational mine action teams) can only occur after those areas have been identified through the valuable CL work.
The results of this integrated and informed beneficiary-focused approach have been dramatic. With close to 50,000 items of unexploded ordnance (UXO) and more than 150 mines discovered and subsequently destroyed, it is hardly surprisingly that long-standing members of the community such as Antonio Saoulo are welcoming MAG’s continued presence within the area – “we would like to thank MAG for removing the mines around our village. We are now at home here with our children and living in peace”.
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