Summary: Signatory Angola has spent the past decade pledging to ratify the convention, but the government still has not introduced ratification for parliamentary consideration and approval. Angola has participated in all the convention’s meetings. It voted in favor of a key United Nations (UN) resolution on cluster munitions in December 2018.

Angola disclosed in September 2017 that it does not possess any stocks of cluster munitions and commented on past use. Angola is not known to have produced or exported cluster munitions.

Policy

The Republic of Angola signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 3 December 2008.

Angolan representatives have promised the country’s ratification to the convention over the past decade, but the government still has not referred the convention to parliament for consideration and approval. [1] Most recently, in September 2017, Angola informed the convention’s Seventh Meeting of States Parties that the Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and National Mine Action Authority (CNIDAH) would make a strong case for the Council of Ministries to approve ratification of the convention during 2018. [2]

Existing legislation, such as Angola’s Penal Code and constitution, enforce its implementation of the convention’s provisions. In September 2017, Angola said it views existing laws and regulations as “sufficient to charge, prosecute and punish any national or foreign citizen who in the Angolan Territory develop, produce, acquire, stockpile, retain or transfer to anyone directly or indirectly, assist, encourage or induce anyone to engage in any activity prohibited under the Convention of Cluster Munitions.” [3]

Any state may provide an Article 7 transparency measures report detailing the actions they are taking to implement and adhere to the Convention on Cluster Munitions. Angola has committed to provide a voluntary report as proof of its “good will and progress” and in September 2017 shared summary findings from its draft report covering the period from 2009 to 2016. [4]

Angola participated extensively in the Oslo Process that created the Convention on Cluster Munitions. It did not attend the formal negotiations in Dublin in May 2008, but signed the convention in Oslo in December 2008. [5]

Angola has participated in every Meeting of States Parties of the Convention on Cluster Munitions, most recently the Eighth Meeting of States Parties in Geneva in September 2018. It has attended regional workshops on cluster munitions, most recently in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in August 2016, where it endorsed a commitment to ratify the convention. [6]

In December 2018, Angola voted in favor of a UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolution that urges states outside the Convention on Cluster Munitions to “join as soon as possible.” [7] 

Angola is a State Party to the Mine Ban Treaty. It is not party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons.

Production, transfer, and stockpiling

Angola is not known to have produced or exported cluster munitions.

Angola informed States Parties in September 2017 that it does not possess any cluster munitions as its stockpile was destroyed by 2012 and said that disposal teams from the Angolan armed forces and HALO Trust destroyed a total of 7,284 submunitions from stocks in 2005–2012. [8] In the statement, Angola said that the highest ranks of its army and Ministry of Defense have confirmed Angola no longer stockpiles cluster munitions.

Angola must still provide a transparency report for the convention to formally confirm that all its cluster munition stocks have been identified and destroyed.

Use

Deminers in Angola have cleared unexploded submunitions and other remnants of air-delivered cluster munitions from at least eight of the country’s 18 provinces, most in the south and southeast of the country. [9] However, a lack of firm evidence means it is not possible to conclusively attribute exact responsibility for the past use of cluster munitions in the country during fighting between the government of Angola’s armed forces and rebel UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) forces from 1975 until as late as the year 2000.

Angola told States Parties in September 2017 about the past history of cluster munition use while cautioning that the information was “very limited.” It said that cluster munitions were used after the country became independent in November 1975 and “the racist regime in South Africa with heavy air force and artillery decided to carried [sic] out a series of attacks to the southern and southeastern provinces of Angola to prevent the independence, with the excuses of following the freedom fighter of SWAPO and ANC [independence movements for Namibia and South Africa respectively] inside Angola and also to stop the government forces attacking the rebels movement UNITA supported by USA.” [10]

According to the statement, Angola said it rapidly “became a cold war battlefield, with the Angolan government forces supported also by Soviet Union and Cuba.” It said:

The war planes from South Africa Air Force were used on a daily base [sic] to strike government forces, SWAPO and ANC positions and other areas of the country indiscriminately. In that period, the Angolan Air Force also attacked UNITA positions to retaliate their extemporaneous ground attacks. This was the time when Clusters Munitions were used in Angola.

The types of cluster munitions cleared by deminers in Angola include Soviet-made RBK 250-275 cluster bombs. [11] In 2016, HALO Trust cleared two Alpha submunitions during survey operations in Cunene province along with the remnants of CB470 cluster bombs. In September 2017, Angola said the Alpha bomblet was developed in Rhodesia in 1970 and later in South Africa in the 1980s. [12]

Policy

The Republic of Angola signed the Mine Ban Treaty on 4 December 1997 and ratified on 5 July 2002, becoming a State Party on 1 January 2003. Angola has not formally reported any legal measures to implement the Mine Ban Treaty.[1] Under Article 13 of Angola’s constitution, any international law approved and ratified by Angola is an integrated part of Angolan law and automatically enters into force at the national level after its publication and entry into force at the international level.[2]

Angola regularly attends meetings of the treaty, most recently the Seventeenth Meeting of States Parties in Geneva in November 2018, where it provided a general statement with particular emphasis on clearance progress.[3] Angola also attended the Third Review Conference in Maputo in June 2014. It did not attend the intersessional meetings in Geneva in May 2019.

Angola hosted a National Mine Action Summit in Luanda on 9–10 August 2010. In August 2011, the Third National Meeting on Demining was held in Luanda.

Angola is not party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons. Angola is a signatory state to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

Production, transfer, use, stockpile destruction, and retention

Angola states that it has never manufactured antipersonnel mines.[4] It is not believed to have exported the weapon in the past. There have not been any confirmed instances of use of antipersonnel mines since Angola ratified the Mine Ban Treaty in 2002.[5]

Angola completed destruction of its stockpile of antipersonnel mines on 28 December 2006, just ahead of its 1 January 2007 treaty deadline. It destroyed 81,045 mines between October and December 2006, in addition to 7,072 antipersonnel mines apparently destroyed in 2003.[6]

As of December 2018, Angola retained 1,304 antipersonnel mines for training and research.[7] Angola reported that the mines are used in training courses for detection and clearance techniques.

20-Year Summary of Mine Action

Note: ERW = explosive remnants of war; CHA = confirmed hazardous area.

The Republic of Angola acknowledged using antipersonnel mines as a signatory to the Mine Ban Treaty from December 1997 to April 2002. Angola became a State Party to the Mine Ban Treaty on 1 January 2003. Angola has not enacted national legislation to implement the treaty. Angola completed destruction of its stockpile of 88,117 antipersonnel mines in December 2006. As of 2019, Angola reported retaining 1,304 antipersonnel mines for training purposes.[6]

Angola requested two extensions to its Article 5 deadline: a five-year extension until January 2018, and then an extension for a further eight years until December 2025. The most significant challenge identified by Angola to meeting this deadline is lack of funding.[7]

Landmines and ERW in Angola are the legacy of four decades of armed conflict, which ended in 2002. Mine clearance began in 1994 during the United Nations Angola Verification Mission. A Landmine Impact Survey was completed in 2005 and non-technical survey (NTS) was conducted in the lead up to the 2017 extension request. All 18 provinces are now reported as surveyed.[8] It was reported that the NTS allowed for a significant reduction, by as much as 90%, to the areas recorded in the CNIDAH database.[9]

Contamination and Impact

Angola’s contamination is the result of more than 40 years of internal armed conflict that ended in 2002, during which a range of national and foreign armed movements and groups laid mines, often in a sporadic manner. The most affected provinces have been those with the fiercest and most prolonged fighting, such as Bié, Kuando Kubango, and Moxico.

Historically, humanitarian demining efforts in Angola have focused on urban and peri-urban areas due to security concerns in the countryside during the years of conflict, and in response to the needs of growing urban populations. HALO Trust reported in 2018 that many cities and towns in Angola had witnessed significant urban expansion. However, rural populations were largely left without mine action support and in 2018, remaining contamination was predominantly located in rural, underdeveloped areas.[10] Much of the land released through mine action is used for agriculture, particularly by poor communities reliant on subsistence farming.

The lack of safe land also has implications for government development projects. CNIDAH confirmed in 2017 that the government was developing a new strategy of economic diversification, including expansion of agriculture, livestock, tourism, and mining, and the presence of landmines was a serious impediment to many of these projects.[11]

Mine Ban Treaty Article 5 Compliance

Angola has submitted two extension requests, one in March 2012 for five years and one in May 2017 for a further eight years, until the end of 2025. Reasons given for being unable to fulfil the Article 5 deadline commitments included operational challenges and the magnitude of contamination.

The revised extension request, submitted in November 2017, set out annual targets for clearance on a province-by-province basis. Significant effort was made to accurately define all remaining mined areas for inclusion in the Article 5 extension request. However, the figures are inconsistent within the report, between the annual targets and the estimates of contamination remaining to be addressed.

The total cost for activities planned during the period of the extension is US$348 million.[12] Funding has been a key challenge to enable Angola to meet its extension request. In 2016, the loss of funding from the European Union Development Fund for demining impacted all international operators, followed by a steady decline in funding in 2017, and the critical loss of US funding in April 2018. From 2007 to 2017, collectively the resources of the three largest operators, HALO, MAG, and NPA declined by nearly 90%.[13] The government of Angola has provided significant funding for demining, but almost exclusively in support of major infrastructure projects, and it has faced severe budget cuts following the global crash in oil prices. Clearance of rural areas has typically not been funded by the government.

Mine Action Program

Management

CNIDAH is the national mine action center that reports to the Council of Ministers. It is responsible for accreditation of NGOs and commercial demining companies and has 18 provincial operation offices.

The CED reports to the newly created Ministry of Social Action, Family, and Women’s Promotion (Ministério da Acção Social, Família e Promoção da Mulher, MASFAMU, formerly the Ministry of Social Assistance and Reintegration, or MINARS). It supports mine clearance in areas where development projects are a priority and is the coordination body for activities conducted by the national public operators (the Armed Forces, the Military Office of the President, INAD, and the Police Border Guard).[14]

INAD was established in 2002 and is responsible for demining operations and training.

Strategic planning

Angola has submitted an annual workplan to meet its Mine Ban Treaty Article 5 deadline extension request for 2019–2025.

Information management

Angola’s mine action program has experienced difficulties in information management for more than a decade, impeding efforts to achieve a comprehensive, accurate understanding of contamination. This has included a lack of integration of the mine action data held by the CED and has resulted in widely different and conflicting claims of the extent of its mine problem, including in Angola’s Article 5 extension requests.

In early 2016, Information Management System for Mine Action (IMSMA) New Generation (NG) was installed with the help of the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining (GICHD). The cleaning up of discrepancies resulted in significant areas of suspected hazardous area (SHA) and CHA being cancelled from the database.[15] INAD is responsible for the IMSMA database for the CED and efforts were being made to harmonise the CED data with the CNIDAH database.

Gender mainstreaming

Gender is not referenced in Angola’s 2019–2025 mine action workplan, nor is it included in Angola’s national mine action standards in place since 2018.[16]

Land Release

Survey

Determining the full extent of contamination in Angola has been problematic, and problems with the national database and differing reporting formats between CNIDAH and the CED have made it difficult to accurately provide the extent of land release. Data from the CED and commercial companies has not been made available.

The Landmine Impact Survey was conducted in 2004–2007. By the time of the second extension request (May 2017), a non-technical survey had been completed in 15 provinces, with three provinces ongoing.[17] It was reported by CNIDAH and MAG, HALO Trust, and NPA that the NTS had allowed for a significant reduction, by as much as 90%, to the areas recorded in the CNIDAH database.[18]

In 2018, the Republic of Angola received US$7.1 million (more than double compared to 2017) from four donors.[1] As in 2016 and 2017, Angola did not receive international support for victim assistance in 2018. Instead, all funds were allocated to clearance and risk education activities.

International contributions: 2018[2]

The government of Angola has contributed some $276 million to its mine action program since 2014, or 84% of its total mine action budget. In 2018, it contributed AOA6.7 billion ($45.1 million) resulting in a $33.5 million overall budget.[3]

In 2014–2018, Angola was one of the 15 largest recipients of international mine action funding and received more than $50 million. However, a downward trend has been apparent since 2014 with a decline in international assistance that has dropped from $32 million in 2014 to less than $10 million per year from 2015–2018.

Summary of contributions: 2014–2018[4]

Casualties in 2017—details

There is no national casualty surveillance system. The 2017 mine/ERW casualty data for the Republic of Angola was provided by three demining operators: HALO Trust, Mines Advisory Group (MAG), and Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA). Therefore, casualties were only reported in the provinces where these NGOs are conducting mine clearance: Benguela, Bié, Huambo, Kuando Kubango, Lunda Sul, Malanje, Moxico, and Zaire.

MAG reported that in the three provinces whaere it works—Moxico, Lunda Norte, and Lunda Sul—accidents probably go unreported due to lack of communication and reporting systems.[3] In a 2015 report, HALO also noted that “anecdotally, the heavy toll of landmines in Angola is well known. However, at national and provincial levels Angola has always lacked an effective mechanism for systematic recording of accident data and as a result, its impact is underestimated.”[4]

HALO conducted a desk review of all mine/ERW incidents in the country between 1975 and 2015, combining media reports with their own survey and data records. In 2016 and 2017, HALO updated its findings based on resurvey of mined areas. As of 31 March 2017, HALO has identified 1,651 casualties from 815 mine/ERW incidents in nine provinces.[5] While not representative of all casualties in those provinces over the time period, the review indicates that antivehicle mines are the most common cause of injury and that the fatality rate from explosive devices was higher than previously believed. The review also indicates that the years with the most mine/ERW casualties were 2002 and 2003, when Angolans returned to their homes after the conclusion of the civil war.[6]

As of the end of 2014, the National Intersectorial Commission for Humanitarian Demining and Assistance (CNIDAH) had registered 9,165 survivors in the provinces of Benguela, Cabinda, Cunene, Huambo, Huíla, Malanje, Namibe, Uíge, and Zaire as part of its national mine/ERW victim survey.[7] The survey was suspended due to a lack of funds. CNIDAH estimates that the total number of injured mine/ERW casualties may be between 40,000 and 60,000.[8]

The Angolan government conducted a nationwide census in 2014, according to which, 88,716 people were living with a disability caused by landmines or other explosive devices. Survivors were identified in all 18 provinces with one-quarter living in Luanda. Mine and ERW survivors represented one-eighth of the total population of persons with disabilities, with 2.5% of the Angolan population identified as persons with disabilities.[9]

Cluster munition casualties

CNIDAH’s national victim survey identified at least 354 cluster munition survivors, all in the province of Huambo.[10] The 2014 and 2015 Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor reports included these figures. Subsequent information has not reconfirmed this data and calls this total into question. The survey of survivors in Huambo was conducted by the Institute for the Support of Vulnerable Children (Instituto ao Apoio a crianca Vulneravel, IACV), which is not a mine action organization, and the survey questionnaire used by the IACV did not specifically identify cluster munitions as a possible cause of injury.[11] In 2015, HALO conducted a desk review of all known landmine and ERW incidents from 1975 through 2015. While the review was limited to HALO’s area of operations, including Huambo province, in the course of the review it could not identify any cluster munition victims.[12] NPA compiled a desk review on potential cluster munition contamination in Angola but did not record any cluster munition casualties, despite documenting clearance and identifying some unexploded cluster munitions.[13] As such, reports of cluster munitions victims in Angola could not be confirmed as of May 2017.

Victim assistance action points

• Fully support the prosthetic and orthopedic centers, including provision of materials, so survivors and persons with disabilities can obtain prosthetic and orthotic devices.
• Include landmine survivor assistance in the planning of disability support services.

Victim assistance planning and coordination[1]

International commitments and obligations

Laws and policies

The Republic of Angola’s “Accessibility Law,” which was produced with participation from persons with disabilities, came into effect in October 2016.[2] The law requires buildings, transportation, and communications be changed to increase accessibility.[3]

Major Developments in 2017–2018

In 2017, activists led by the Platform for Inclusion joined a protest in Luanda on discrimination against persons with disabilities. The protest was violently disrupted by authorities on the basis of the protest not being in compliance with notification requirements.[4]

The Department of Mine Victims Assistance of CNIDAH received very little financial assistance for any activities limiting the ability of the unit to conduct monitoring and reporting beyond remote communications.[5] This continues a trend over the last several years in which the Department’s activities have become increasingly constrained by limited funds.

Needs assessment

One of the few activities the Department of Mine Victims Assistance was able to complete was a series of interviews with female mine victims to understand their particular needs. The department concluded that an association specifically of female mine victims should be formed to advocate for assistance and support,[6] but the department is not in the position to effect this recommendation.

Angola still lacks a casualty reporting mechanism. The Department of Mine Victims Assistance registration project documenting the needs of individual survivors has been suspended since 2014 due to lack of funding. Mine action operators collect and report casualty figures internally and occasionally to the media.[7]

Medical care and rehabilitation

Due to a continuing lack of raw materials in the country, Angola’s rehabilitation programs are limited to physical rehabilitation and the repair of existing prosthetic devices. Few public rehabilitation centers are able to produce new prosthetics or mobility devices. The Lwini Foundation, a privately-run and funded facility, continues to produce devices.[8]

Socio-economic and psychosocial inclusion

The Associação Nacional dos deficientes de Angola (ANDA) continues to lead its community-based rehabilitation program, “Vem Comigo” (“Come with me”), and expanded it to Malange, Huila, Bié, Moxico, Cabinda, Uige, and Cuanza Sul provinces.Due to the perolous economic situation in much of Angola, reintegration activities are limited in their effectiveness.[9]

Cross-cutting

Victim assistance providers and activities[10]

Note: N/A = not applicable.