Contamination and Impact

Sri Lanka is extensively contaminated by mines and explosive remnants of war (ERW), including abandoned explosive ordnance (AXO). Most of the contamination is in the north, the focus of three decades of armed conflict between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which ended in May 2009. Contamination posed a major obstacle to the resettlement of nearly 300,000 people who were left displaced at the end of the conflict and also to the economic and social rehabilitation of the north.

Sri Lankan estimates of contamination fell sharply from 506km² at the end of 2010 to 255km² in July 2011 and to almost 125km² in February 2012. By the end of June 2012, the National Mine Action Center (NMAC) said Sri Lanka’s remaining confirmed hazardous areas (CHAs) totaled 118km².[1] The breakdown by district of the extent of CHAs in February 2012 is set out in the table below.

Remaining confirmed hazardous area (km²)[2]

Mines

Both sides in the conflict made extensive use of landmines, including belts of Pakistani-made P4 MK1 mines laid by the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) and long defensive lines using a mixture of mines and booby-traps laid by the LTTE defending approaches to the northern town of Kilinochchi. The LTTE also left extensive nuisance mining in many northern districts, particularly in areas of intense fighting and often emplaced as its fighters retreated in the face of army offensives.[3]

Operators have encountered a wide range of LTTE devices, including antipersonnel mines with antitilt and antilift mechanisms, and often containing a larger explosive charge (up to 140g) than Pakistani-made P4 MK1 mines (30g). They also encountered tripwire-activated Claymore-type mines, and to a lesser extent antivehicle mines.[4]

Cluster munition remnants

The National Strategy for Mine Action in Sri Lanka says cluster munitions were not used in Sri Lanka at any time in the conflict (see Mine Action Program section below).[5] A UN expert, however, concluded that unexploded submunitions were present in an area (Puthukudiyiruppu) where a boy was killed and a girl was injured as they tampered with a device collected for sale as scrap metal. Media quoted an email from the UN technical advisor in Sri Lanka in which he affirmed that “after reviewing additional photographs from the investigation teams, I have determined that there are cluster submunitions in the area where the children were collecting scrap metal and in the house where the accident occurred. This is the first time that there have been confirmed unexploded submunitions found in Sri Lanka.” A military spokesman denied the report.[6] A UN spokesman alleged the Sri Lankan military used cluster munitions in an attack on Puthukudiyiruppu Hospital in 2009 but the government rejected the report and the UN later retracted the statement.[7] The extent of any residual cluster munition contamination is not known.

Other explosive remnants of war

Extensive UXO contamination resulted from the final years of the civil war in 2006−2009, particularly in the northern Vanni region, as a result of government use of air- and ground-delivered ordnance and LTTE artillery attacks. Operators also reported encountering mortars, grenades, air-delivered rockets, rocket-propelled grenades, and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) or booby-traps, including mortar shells rigged with trip-wires and sometimes linked to mines. Both the SLA and operators have also reported finding caches of mines and AXO.[8]

Mine Action Program

Key institutions and operators

 The Ministry of Economic Development (until mid-2010 the Ministry of Nation Building and Estate Infrastructure Development) under Minister Basil Rajapakse (also a special advisor to the president) is the lead agency for mine action as the chair of the National Steering Committee for Mine Action (NSCMA), providing policy oversight to the sector. The NSCMA is made up of government ministries and departments with a stake in mine action, including the ministries and departments dealing with agriculture, disaster relief, resettlement, education, social affairs, and foreign affairs; the NSCMA is designed to “manage linkages within the government, mine action community and donors.”[9]

The NSCMA is not a permanent body. Its policies and decisions are implemented by the NMAC, set up in 2010[10] with responsibility for liaising with government ministries and development partners to determine mine action priorities, preparing a strategic plan and setting annual work plans to put it into effect. The NMAC, with eight full time staff in Colombo at the end of 2011, is also responsible for accrediting mine action operators, setting national standards, and acting as the secretariat of the NSCMA.[11] Clearance operations in the field are coordinated, tasked, and quality managed by Regional Mine Action Offices (RMAO), working in consultation with District Steering Committees for Mine Action. These committees are chaired by the government officials who direct district authorities.[12]

In 2012, the NMAC started working on a plan to transfer mine action to the Ministry of Defense by the end of 2013.[13]

UNDP supports Sri Lanka’s mine action through the two main activities of strengthening capacity at the NMAC to manage and coordinate the program (paying particular attention to data management) and through technical assistance to field operations. UNDP provides an international technical advisor to the NMAC, supporting preparation of mine action standards and the drafting of the mine action strategy. UNDP also provided funding and, until the second half of 2011, two international technical advisors to the two RMAOs in Jaffna and Vavuniya. In September 2010, UNDP set up two regional sub-offices at the government’s request in Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu in addition to the sub-office already operating in Mannar, which closed at the end of 2011.[14]

In January 2011, the government approved a National Strategy for Mine Action in Sri Lanka, which sets out a vision of Sri Lanka “free from the threat” of mines and ERW. It provides for a mission to establish a “sustainable national mine action programme able to plan, coordinate, implement and monitor all aspects of mine action.”[15] The strategy gives top priority to clearance of land required for resettlement of the internally displaced; high priority to land used for livelihood activities, land giving access to schools, hospital or temples, as well as land with essential infrastructure or within 3km of villages or main roads; and medium priority to land required for developing new infrastructure, land around military installations and land 3–5km from villages.[16] NMAC Director Monty Ratanunga said that the government expected to complete demining operations by 2020 as a result of expansion in humanitarian demining.[17]

Land Release

The total area released in 2011 was less than one-sixth the result reported by NMAC in 2010, but the seemingly dramatic drop mainly reflected a lower level of the surface visual inspection conducted by the SLA in the initial emergency response after the end of the war against the LTTE, which was reported as full battle area clearance (BAC). The emphasis for some operators has also shifted from BAC to explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) call-outs.

Five-year summary of clearance

Survey in 2011

Operators reported conducting extensive non-technical survey (NTS) in the northern districts that are the main focus of current mine action operations. NTS by five community liaison teams from the Mines Advisory Group (MAG) resulted in the cancelation of 86.31km², while its mine action teams conducted technical survey and clearance of defined hazardous areas.[18] The Swiss Foundation for Mine Action (FSD) similarly said its NTS teams canceled 5.26km² in Vavuniya and 49.34km² in Mullaitivu.[19] HALO Trust teams worked both in its operations area in Mullaitivu and Kilinochchi and (at NMAC’s request) in parts of Ampara, Mannar, and Trincomalee, cancelling 539 tasks covering a total of 148km². It said it also identified 143 previously unrecorded mined areas through survey.[20]

Mine clearance in 2011

Clearance of mined areas by the Sri Lankan Army’s Humanitarian Demining Unit (SLA-HDU) and eight humanitarian demining organizations rose by more than 25% in 2011, according to data released by NMAC, although it contained some significant discrepancies in the details reported to the Monitor by operators. Most of the clearance (more than 80%) was concentrated in three districts of Mullaitivu, Vavuniya, and the rice producing area of Mannar.[21] An expected reduction in the number of operators and mine clearance capacity in 2012 looked set to result in lower clearance rates.

Mine clearance in 2011[22]

* HALO reported clearing 2.08km² and destroying 30,620 antipersonnel mines and antivehicle mines.[23]

With some 1,200 staff, the SLA-HDU is the biggest operator, although some of this staff is required to fulfill other duties in the course of a year and continued to account for about one-third of the total mined area cleared, operating in eastern districts of Ampara, Batticaloa, and Trincomalee as well as in the north. It also possessed a fleet of 29 flails, which expanded in 2011 when Russia donated four more flails along with other equipment reportedly worth a total of US$2.6 million.[24] The SLA-HDU said the government would provide funding of some 250 million rupees (approximately US$1.9 million) in 2012.[25]

Most international operators, however, faced worsening funding constraints. Danish Demining Group (DDG), which reported clearing 0.8km² and destroying 16,038 antipersonnel mines in 2011, laid off two manual demining teams and loaned one ground preparation machine to the NGO Delvon Assistance for Social Harmony (DASH) in the same year because of financial shortfalls. It brought the teams back into operation in November 2011 but laid off seven manual demining teams at the end of May 2012, reducing personnel numbers to 234 (about half its previous capacity). Without new donors, it said it might be forced to leave mine action in Sri Lanka.[26] Similarly, FSD started 2011 with a total of 418 staff, but Norwegian government funding (which had supported five of its 18 manual demining teams and a mechanical demining team) ceased at the end of September; Swiss Development Corporation funding for three well-clearance teams and two technical survey teams stopped at the end of March 2012.[27]

HALO was an exception to this trend in 2011, when additional funding available mid-year allowed it to raise capacity to a total of 1,039 staff, including 930 clearance personnel. HALO reported the mined area cleared by its teams more than doubled to 2.1km², focusing on high priority resettlement and livelihood tasks. It also reported clearing 30,620 antipersonnel mines, nearly 60% more than the number it reported destroying in 2010 and also 60% more than the number recorded by NMAC (see BAC table below). In 2012, HALO expected to work on the heavily-mined frontline between LTTE and SLA positions in the Nagarkovil area of Jaffna, on some 107 minefields around Kilinochchi, and on another frontline area in Muhamalai.[28]

MAG also received funding to expand capacity in 2011, adding two mine action teams and a front-end loader; it also added mine detection dog (MDD) teams that were deployed in February 2012. However, it said that many of its teams would be made unemployed by October 2012 if it did not receive additional funding. In 2011, MAG reported manually clearing 0.49km², less than half the figure cited by the NMAC, but destroying 4,651 antipersonnel mines and 23 antivehicle mines.[29]

Battle area clearance in 2011

The SLA-HDU accounted for more than 80% of the BAC undertaken in 2011. Other demining organizations said that after the BAC conducted in the initial post-conflict emergency phase of operations, the focus had shifted to clearing mined areas. HALO reported clearing a slightly less than 1km² of battle area, destroying in the process 1,796 antipersonnel mines and 25 antivehicle mines, found in caches, as well as 62 items of UXO. But it also conducted 1,008 call-out EOD tasks, destroying 1,690 antipersonnel mines and one antivehicle mine, together with 1,124 items of UXO and 1,743 items of AXO.[30] The NMAC said reports alerting authorities to the presence of suspicious objects had nearly quadrupled, from 672 in 2010 to 2,317 in 2011.[31]

Battle area clearance in 2011[32]

* HALO  reported destroying 2,226 items of UXO.[33]                                           

Quality management

Quality assurance (QA) inspection of demining sites is conducted by teams based in Regional Mine Action Offices. Operators have reported that task sites are visited regularly by these QA teams, which also conduct post-clearance checks before handover. The NMAC also re-accredited all operators in 2011−2012 for the first time since 2004.[34]

Safety of demining personnel

HALO reported four minefield accidents in 2011, three of them involving mine detonations but all causing only light injuries. In one, an armored front loader detonated an antivehicle mine, causing severe damage to the vehicle but minimal injuries to the operator.[35] Other demining operators are understood to have had injuries as a result of accidents, but these were not reported to Landmine Monitor.

Risk Education

Government bodies and NGOs coordinated and supported by UNICEF deliver mine/ERW risk education (RE) in schools and through direct community-based RE. The Ministry of Education approved the curriculum for mandatory RE classes for grades six to nine in January 2011 and was preparing for its introduction in 2011−2012.

UNICEF supported RE delivery in eight districts through partners Sarvodaya, Rural Development Foundation (RDF), EHED-Caritas, People Vision, SHADE and Social Organizations Networking for Development (SOND), who conducted community presentations, house-to-house visits and a range of other activities, including plays and dance. Internews, a US-based NGO supporting media in emergency situations, became involved in 2010, broadcasting reports and public service announcements on ERW hazards; a series of short educational films prepared by Young Asia Television became available for broadcasting in January 2011.[36] Mass media messaging conducted in 2010 stopped in 2011 when UNICEF concluded the emergency phase of RE programming had ended.[37]

The SLA-HDU, which set up six RE teams with a total of 64 people in 2010, continued to receive training by UNICEF in 2011 and 2012.[38] International demining NGOs also supported RE, often through local NGOs. HALO used funding from the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development to support two Sarvodaya RE teams in Kilinochchi district. DDG reported it has developed an impact-monitoring tool for interviewing people returning to resettlement areas which enables it to monitor the effect of RE programs and encourages returnees to report suspected ERW items.[39]