Not a State Party to the Mine Ban Treaty 

Convention on Cluster Munitions Article 4 deadline: 1 August 2020
(Not on track to meet deadline)

Recommendations for action

• The National Regulatory Authority (NRA) should facilitate and accelerate application of agreed new survey methods with a view to defining the scope of its cluster munition and unexploded ordnance (UXO) contamination.
• The NRA should make explicit the priorities for survey and clearance.
• Lao PDR should incorporate survey and clearance priorities in a multi-year workplan for the remaining years up to its Convention on Cluster Munitions Article 4 deadline.
• Lao PDR should establish a budget line for sustained national funding of the sector. 

Contamination

Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) is heavily contaminated with cluster munition remnants and other explosive remnants of war (ERW), as well as landmines to a lesser extent.

Mine contamination

The extent of mine contamination in Lao PDR is not known, the main threat being from unexploded ordnance (UXO). All sides in the war in the 1970s laid antipersonnel mines, particularly along borders and around military bases and airfields. A Handicap International (HI) survey in 1997 found mines in all 15 provinces it surveyed—contaminating 214 villages[1] — and a decade ago one clearance operator estimated Lao PDR may have as many as 1,000 mined areas.[2]

The remote location of many mined areas means that mines had little impact, are not a clearance priority, and made up only 1% of the more than 93,800 ERW cleared by operators in 2014.[3] The NRA, however, has stated that “with a steady expansion of land use ‘mined areas’ will become areas for growing concern.”[4]

Cluster munition contamination

Lao PDR experienced the heaviest aerial bombardments in history during the Indochina War of the 1960s and 1970s, which left it with the world’s worst contamination from unexploded submunitions. The United States (US) dropped more than two million tons of bombs between 1964 and 1973,[5] including more than 270 million submunitions (known locally as bombies). Clearance teams have found 29 types of submunition, including most commonly BLU 26, 24/66, and 63.[6] 

Lao PDR has claimed that cluster munition remnants contaminate approximately 8,470km² and overall contamination from UXO covers up to 87,000km² (around 35% of Laotian territory).[7] Such estimates, however, are based on bomb targeting data that bears little relation to current contamination and does not reflect the results of clearance. The NRA reports that 14 of Lao PDR’s 17 provinces and a quarter of all villages are contaminated by UXO,[8] but insufficient survey has been conducted to provide a credible estimate of total contamination. A new survey methodology approved by the NRA at the end of 2014 is expected to generate the first estimates based on evidence of contamination. 

Unexploded submunitions accounted for close to two-thirds (63%) of all items cleared in 2014.[9] UXO Lao, Lao PDR’s largest clearance operator, reported in 2011 that during 15 years of operations, submunitions had accounted for 49% of all items cleared.[10]

The NRA identifies submunitions as the most common form of remaining ERW contamination and responsible for close to 30% of all incidents.[11] Submunitions are also said to be the type of ERW most feared by the population.[12] UNDP has reported that as a result of submunition contamination “economic opportunities in tourism, hydroelectric power, mining, forestry and many other areas of activity considered main engines of growth for the Lao PDR are restricted, complicated and made more expensive.”[13]

Other explosive remnants of war

The extent of contamination from ERW is not known but believed to be massive. Clearance operators have reported the presence of at least 186 types of munitions in Lao PDR.[14] These reportedly range from 20-pound fragmentation bombs to 2,000-pound general-purpose bombs and sometimes bigger items.[15] Other major causes of incidents are artillery shells, grenades, mortars, and rockets.[16] 

Program Management

The NRA, created by government decree in 2004 and active since mid-2006, has an interministerial board chaired by the deputy prime minister and composed of representatives from 11 government ministries.[17] Until 2011, the NRA came under the supervision of the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare. From June 2011 to November 2012, a series of decrees appointed high-level officials from the Prime Minister’s Office, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the National Committee for Rural Development and Poverty Eradication at top leadership positions within the NRA Board.[18] 

A new decree issued in February 2015 increased the size of the board to 22 members, including, for the first time, a permanent deputy chairman to take care of the daily business of the board. The decree also specifies that the NRA “has a government budget included in the general budget” of the board’s president.[19]

The NRA’s structure and role was set out in an agreement released in November 2012 defining it as the “secretariat for the Party Politburo and the Lao government for the overall management and consideration of policy matters, planning, projects and coordination of the implementation of the Lao PDR National Strategy for the UXO sector for the entire country.”[20] Its role includes setting policy, coordinating, and regulating the sector, accrediting operators, setting standards, and conducting quality management. It also has the mandate to serve as the technical focal point for matters relating to international weapons treaties.[21]

In 2014, the UNDP supported a technical advisor to the NRA and UXO Lao, and a program and finance advisor. Sterling International, funded by the US Department of State, provided a technical advisor supporting quality management and operations at the NRA, a second advisor supporting the national operator UXO Lao, and a third advisor providing support to both organizations as required.[22]

Strategic planning

Lao PDR embarked in 2010 on a plan for 2010–2020 known as “Safe Path Forward II” (SPF), a revised version of which was approved by the government on 22 June 2012. The strategy identified six general goals, including reducing the number of casualties each year from 300 to less than 75,[23] and the release of an average of 200km² a year, more than triple the 2013 rate of clearance and land release. It called for release of priority land through data analysis, general survey, technical survey, roving response, “and/or, finally, full clearance.”[24]

In 2010, the government adopted UXO clearance as a ninth Millennium Development Goal, targeting removal of all UXO from priority agricultural land by 2020.[25] Announcement 93, published by the government in November 2012, stated all provincial and district development projects affected by UXO must undergo survey and clearance before implementation and must also allocate funding to cover the cost.[26] The government identified 64 priority areas planned to become small rural townships, 167 focal sites to consolidate and “stabilise” remote rural communities, and more than 1,680 priority projects.[27]

In December 2014, after more than two years of debate in the mine action sector and trials conducted in 2014 in Xieng Khouang and Savannakhet provinces, the NRA board approved new standards for evidence-based survey, which came into effect with a letter issued on 21 January 2015.[28] It stated that all organizations must implement these survey procedures. Initial priority in survey would be given to 64 priority development areas and 167 resettlement areas, but the NRA was also considering options for a national survey.[29]

In the meantime, however, tasking continues to be decided at a provincial level and operators observed that few of the confirmed hazardous areas recorded in the NRA’s Information Management System for Mine Action (IMSMA) database had been tasked for clearance.[30] UXO Lao reported little integration of mine action into rural development and poverty eradication plans.

Operators

UXO Lao, the largest operator with about 1,000 personnel, operates in nine provinces. Other humanitarian operators in 2014 included APOPO, HALO Trust, Handicap International (HI), Mines Advisory Group (MAG), and Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA). International commercial operators include Auslao UXO Clearance, BACTEC, Milsearch, and Munitions Management Group (MMG). National commercial operators include ASA Power Engineering, Lao BSL UXO Clearance, Lao Uneod Cooper, OUMMA UXO Clearance, PSD, SBH, and XTD UXO Clearance. 

Lao PDR is also in the process of developing the role of the army in mine action. It set up a 15-strong humanitarian demining unit in February 2012 in line with a government directive to develop a humanitarian mine action capacity. The unit received explosive ordinance disposal (EOD) training at the UXO Lao training center funded by the US Department of State. The NRA said it would receive accreditation and operate subject to NRA quality assurance, but the team was subsequently reported to have stood down.[31] However, the NRA reported in 2015 that five army teams had completed training, funded by the US (one team) and the government (four teams), and that another five teams would receive training in 2015−2016, funded by South Korea. The government provided 100 million kip (US$12,500)[32] for training an additional army EOD team in humanitarian clearance in 2014 and 500 million kip (US$63,000) to conduct survey in Xaisomboun province. The NRA expected army teams to start operating in the course of 2015 once funds had been received.[33] 

Land Release

The amount of land released by clearance rose only marginally (4.5%) to nearly 68km² in 2014, and the increase came mainly from humanitarian operators (see table on battle area clearance in 2014 below). Moreover, when items destroyed in battle area clearance (BAC) and roving operations (see table on roving clearance operations in 2014 below) are combined, humanitarian operators also accounted for 98% of submunitions destroyed in 2014.[34]

No systematic mine clearance was conducted during 2014, although operators cleared a total of 151 mines (antivehicle and antipersonnel) during UXO clearance. Seventy-eight mines were destroyed during regular UXO clearance operations and a further 73 during roving clearance.[35] The overwhelming majority of the mines were cleared by UXO Lao.

Survey in 2014 

At the end of 2014, the NRA board adopted a survey methodology based on the Cluster Munition Remnants Survey (CMRS), described as a form of quick technical survey, which NPA had developed in Lao PDR since 2011. The survey methodology represents a shift from request-based to evidence-based clearance, focusing clearance on confirmed hazards. Many operators had started to apply this or similar survey approaches. MAG, working in Xieng Khouang, has incorporated evidence points using previously investigated US bomb strike data. 

NPA, working in three southern provinces of Attapeu, Saravane, and Sekong, increased the number of survey teams from 15 to 18 after cutting team size from six people to five, and surveyed a total of 114km² in 2014, 71% more than the previous year and of which only one-third (almost 39km²) was confirmed as hazardous. In the process, NPA reported destroying 13,530 submunitions and 718 other items of UXO.[36] 

Clearance in 2014

BAC was conducted over a reported 67.8km² in 2014, destroying in the process 27,048 submunitions as well as many other UXO items (see table on Battle area clearance in 2014 below). Roving clearance saw operators destroy a further 31,450 submunitions in 2014 (see table on roving clearance operations in 2014).

Results for mine action in Lao PDR are shaped by the performance of UXO Lao, the largest operator and working in nine provinces. It reported a slight rise in the amount of land cleared in 2014 but was unexpectedly hit by cash flow difficulties, which forced the lay-off of 19 teams and 200 personnel in the last quarter of the year, part of the peak season for productivity. UXO Lao’s budget for 2015 appeared to be fully funded, but with close to three-quarters of donor funds earmarked for particular provinces or activities, it was unclear whether management would be able to rehire the teams that were stood down. UXO Lao’s workplan for 2015 foresaw a 40% drop in area subjected to technical survey and clearance.[37]

Operationally, UXO Lao was in a process of transition from request-based to evidence-based clearance, which was expected to yield substantial gains in efficiency. It reported dramatic gains in items cleared per hectare in the first two months of 2015, but in 2014 teams still followed both approaches and the proportion of evidence-based clearance reportedly varied according to the province. Despite a small (7%) increase in area released through clearance in 2014, NRA data, based on reporting received directly from UXO Lao’s provincial teams, showed a fall in the total number of submunitions and other ERW cleared by UXO Lao.[38]

HALO Trust,working in Sepon and Vilabouly districts of Savannakhet province,increased its operational staff by nearly two-thirds in the course of 2014, with additional funding from the US Department of State and from the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID). It recorded sharp increases in the area surveyed (from 4.5km² in 2013, to 14km² in 2014), confirming 105 areas as hazardous and doubled the amount of land released through clearance. HALO attributed higher productivity to increased experience of teams and digitized reporting of technical survey from teams in the field using tablet computers.[39]

MAG, working in two districts of Xieng Khouang province and four districts of Khamouane, operated with roughly the same capacity in 2014.[40]

The NRA recorded clearance by 11 commercial companies in 2014 and while long-established operators such as Milsearch, MMG, and BACTEC worked on tasks related to mining ventures and dam construction, many commercial operators appeared to have engaged in site verification. Their contribution to tackling Lao PDR’s contamination as measured by items cleared, therefore remained minimal.

Battle area clearance in 2014[41]

In the meantime, along with increasing survey, operators are also conducting more roving EOD operations (see table below). The NRA reported that operators destroyed 31,450 submunitions in 2014, more than double the number destroyed the previous year.[46]

Roving clearance operations in 2014[47]

Cluster Munition Convention Article 4 Compliance

Under Article 4 of the Convention on Cluster Munitions, Lao PDR is required to destroy all cluster munition remnants in areas under its jurisdiction or control as soon as possible, but not later than 1 August 2020.

As the country with the world’s heaviest cluster munition contamination, it is clear that Lao PDR will not complete clearance within its Article 4 deadline and will need to apply for an extension. However, while the need for an extension is no surprise, Lao PDR will need to show progress toward defining the extent of its cluster munition contamination and providing a baseline for measuring progress in implementing its targets.

In the past five years, the amount of land cleared annually has almost doubled (see table below). However, much of that clearance, based on requests rather than evidence of contamination, has targeted land with few items and has made a proportionately modest contribution to tackling the national problem. The NRA has observed that “targets expressed in hectares are not realistic and have been a major cause of inefficient clearance in the past” and endorsed evidence-based clearance focusing on areas with confirmed contamination.[51] 

Five-year summary of battle area clearance