Article 6 of the Mine Ban Treaty recognizes the right of each State Party to seek and receive assistance from other States Parties in fulfilling its treaty obligations. The Monitor reports annually on support for mine action by affected countries and on international mine action assistance reported by donor states. In most cases, the Monitor relies on responses to requests for information sent to donors and affected states.

Key developments in 2012

Donors and affected states contributed approximately US$681 million in international and national support for mine action in 2012,^[1] $19 million more than in 2011, and $44 million more than in 2010. In addition to those contributions, appropriations from the UN General Assembly for mine action within nine peacekeeping operations provided $113 million in 2012, a 25% increase compared with 2011.

International support for victim assistance from mine action funding sources totaled $32 million, compared to $30 million in 2011, which was the lowest annual total for direct international support for victim assistance activities since the Monitor began reporting by sector in 2007. This sum accounts only for contributions dedicated to victim assistance activities from mine action funding sources, while many donors support victim assistance activities through other development or disability activities.^[2]

The top 10 donors and recipients remained mostly the same as they have since 2006. Afghanistan received more funding than any other country for the tenth consecutive year, and seven states and the European Union (EU) contributed 80% of funding in 2012.

A study^[3] commissioned by the UN Global Protection Cluster^[4] concluded that mine action was well funded, largely because of its unique structure, donor funding strategies, and the need to meet treaty obligations.

International contributions

In 2012, 39 donors contributed $497 million in international support for mine action in 52 affected states and four other areas, representing an increase of $30 million (6.4%) from 2011.^[5] This is the largest annual total of donor contributions ever recorded by the Monitor, dating back to 1992.

The vast majority of funding came from just a few sources. Contributions from the top eight mine action donors—the United States (US), the EU, Japan, Norway, the Netherlands, Australia, Germany, and the United Kingdom (UK)—accounted for 80% of all donor funding. This is similar to 2011.

The top six recipient states—Afghanistan, Lao PDR, Iraq, Cambodia, Somalia, and Libya—received 47% of the total international support. Donors contributed $57.6 million to institutions, organizations, and trust funds without designating a recipient state, including nearly $34.7 million to the ICRC, Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, and the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining (GICHD). The UN and organizations engaged in advocacy efforts also received global funds.^[6]

The majority of funding was provided for activities in the following sectors: clearance and risk education (84% of all funding), victim assistance (6%), advocacy (3%), and various funding that was not disaggregated by the donors (7%). Of the total contribution to victim assistance, 55% was provided to international and domestic NGOs.

National contributions

Twenty-eight affected states provided $184 million, 27% of global funding, in national support for their own mine action programs, a decrease of $11 million (6%) compared with 2011.

International Contributions in 2012

In 2012, 39 donors reported contributing $497 million in international support for mine action. This represents an increase of $30 million (6.4%) from the $467 million reported in 2011, and is the largest annual amount of donor contributions recorded by the Monitor. Support went to 52 states and four areas, with $57.6 million not earmarked for any specific country.

International contributions for mine action in 2012 totaled more than $430 million for a seventh consecutive year. Since 2006, when international assistance for mine action jumped from $371 million to $464 million, funding has ranged from $437 million to $497 million per year.

International support for mine action by year

Donors

In 2012, 26 States Parties, seven states not party, the EU, and five international institutions contributed $497 million to mine action. Australia, the EU, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, the UK, and the US contributed 80% of the funding. Another three donors contributed more than $10 million, while 14 of the 39 donors contributed less than $1 million.

Funding in 2012 increased by $30 million, led by the EU (up $41.4 million)^[7], the United Arab Emirates (UAE) (up $11 million), and Japan (up $14.6 million), followed by a combined increase of $12.6 million by Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the UK, and the US. ^[8]

However, 20 donors contributed less in 2012 than they did in 2011, including a $10.2 million decrease from Canada, which resulted in the lowest contribution Canada has made since the Mine Ban Treaty entered into force in 1999. In 2012, Australia contributed $23.0 million, down from its 2011 peak of $45.7 million, but consistent with its five-year average of approximately $26 million.

Summary of Annual changes: 2012

Brazil was the only new donor in 2012, contributing $100,000 through the UN Voluntary Trust Fund for Assistance in Mine Action (VTF) administered by the UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS) for Libya.

Three donors from 2011—the Czech Republic, Romania, and the International Road Union in Afghanistan—did not contribute to mine action in 2012.

Funding paths

In addition to bilateral aid, donors provided funding via several trust fund mechanisms, including: the VTF, administered by UNMAS; the Cluster Munition Trust Fund for Lao PDR, administered by the UNDP; the ITF Enhancing Human Security established by the government of Slovenia; the Common Humanitarian Fund in South Sudan; and the NATO Partnership for Peace Fund (PfP).

In 2012, 28 donors^[9] contributed $59 million to the VTF, of which 96% was earmarked, compared to 28 donors and $75 million in 2011 and 19 donors and $63 million in 2010. Australia, the EU, Japan, the Netherlands, and the UK were the largest donors to the VTF, representing 67% of all contributions. Several small donors used the VTF to contribute to mine action, including Andorra, Brazil, Estonia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Oman, and South Korea.^[10]

Contributions by donor: 2008–2012^[11]

* Other donors in 2012 included Andorra, Brazil, Estonia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Monaco, Oman, Slovenia, South Korea, Taiwan, Common Humanitarian Fund (Sudan), Corporación Andina de Fomento (CAF, Peru), NATO Partnership for Peace Fund (PfP), Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and UNDP. All of them contributed less than $1 million with the exception of the NATO PfP Fund, which contributed $1,161,917 to Azerbaijan for clearance operations on the border with Georgia, and UNDP which contributed $1,282,893 to Tajikistan and Azerbaijan.

Donors allocated $21 million in 2012 through the ITF Enhancing Human Security trust fund, down from $25 million in 2011,^[12] and $4.1 million to the Organization of American States (OAS) for mine action programs in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru.^[13]

In 2012 the Global Protection Cluster^[14] commissioned a study^[15] to assess the apparent decline in protection funding, which includes mine action. The study concluded overall funding was not in decline but rather was uncertain and fluctuates by country from year to year. It concluded mine action, in contrast to the other areas, was consistently well-funded. It found that geopolitical factors, particularly Mine Ban Treaty obligations, were the primary reasons for this consistent overall annual funding even if there were annual fluctuations or volatility among donors and recipient countries. Additionally, most donors have a mine action funding strategy and separate budget lines for allocating the funding to a limited number of mine-affected countries, unlike most other sectors.

Recipients

A total of 52 states and four other areas received $439 million from 39 donors in 2012. A further $58 million, designated as “global” in the table below, was provided to institutions, NGOs, trust funds, and UN agencies without a designated recipient state or area. The number of donors for each country, and the amount of support each country received, ranged from one donor contributing several hundred thousand dollars to 19 donors contributing $90 million (for Afghanistan).^[16] Fourteen states and one area, or 29% of recipients, had only one donor, a clear indication of weak support.^[17] The funding for eight of these 15 single-donor recipients was either for victim assistance or risk education. The other seven recipients received funding for clearance operations.

Of the 56 recipients in 2012, 11 received less than $1 million. As in previous years, a small number of countries received the majority of the funding. The top recipient states—Afghanistan, Lao PDR, Iraq, Somalia, Cambodia, Libya, and South Sudan—received nearly half of the total international support, the same as in 2011. For the five years from 2008 to 2012, support to Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Lebanon, and Sudan, in addition to funds categorized as “global,” consumed 62% of all contributions.

The largest increases were in Mali, Myanmar, and Somalia with $41.2 million combined in 2012 compared to $4.7 million in 2011.

Of the six new recipients in 2012, Mali received the most support with $7.7 million, including $6 million from Japan as well as contributions from France, Sweden, and the UK. The other five new recipients—the Philippines, Syria, India, Senegal, and Zimbabwe—received a total of $9.2 million.

Top recipients of international contributions: 2012

Global refers to funds from donors which were not earmarked for use within a designated recipient state or area and were allocated to institutions, NGOs, trust funds, the UN, the ICRC, or GICHD. Most advocacy funding is contained within this category of funding.

Other recipients include Albania, Armenia, Belarus, Burundi, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guinea-Bissau, India, FYR Macedonia, the Philippines, Solomon Islands, Thailand, and Uganda, as well as Nagorno-Karabakh and Western Sahara.

Funding by Thematic Sector

More than 80% of mine action funding supported clearance and risk education activities in 2012. Victim assistance contributions from mine action funding sources were $32 million compared to $30 million in 2011. In both 2011 and 2012, 6% of mine action support was allocated to victim assistance, down from 9% in 2008–2010, which indicates reflecting that victim assistance did not benefit from the overall increase in global mine action funding.

Contributions by thematic sector: 2010–2012

Victim assistance

Dedicated international support for victim assistance activities totaled $32 million in 2012, about the same as in 2011 ($30 million).

The Monitor does not provide a global breakdown of nationally-allocated resources for victim assistance because adequate data is not available. As the Monitor’s country profiles on victim assistance indicate, nationally-allocated resources through health, education, labor, and social welfare agencies and organizations (both governmental and non-governmental) largely support programs and activities that target persons with disabilities, regardless of the cause of the injury or disability, including landmine and cluster munition survivors. Funding and expenditures for programs that benefit the larger disability community are not disaggregated in Article 7 annual reports or other sources to account for support that reaches mine/explosive remnants of war (ERW) survivors.

Of the $32 million in direct contributions for victim assistance in 2012, almost 80% came from the US, Norway, Australia, and New Zealand. Twenty-two mine-affected countries did not receive any direct international support for victim assistance. Of the countries and other areas that received mine action support in 2012, those receiving victim assistance funding included 19 States Parties, 10 states not party, and one other area.^[18]

Victim assistance funding by donor

Victim assistance funding by recipient

Note: States Parties are indicated in bold. States not party and other areas (Kosovo) are indicated in italics.

Of the $32 million in contributions toward victim assistance activities in 2012, $17.7.million (55%) went directly to international and national NGOs, $11.3 million (35%) went through the ICRC and Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, $1.5 million (5%) went to the UN and the OAS, and $1.5 million (5%) went through ITF Enhancing Human Security.

Advocacy

In 2012, 3% of all reported support for mine action went toward advocacy activities ($13 million). Of the 39 donors reporting international contributions to mine action in 2012, 12 reported a supporting-advocacy activity, which was a decline of two donors from 2011, and four fewer than in 2010. Norway provided 65% of all funding for advocacy activities.

Advocacy activities included: support for the Twelfth Meeting of States Parties to the Mine Ban Treaty in Geneva and for the Third Meeting of States Parties to the Convention on Cluster Munitions in Geneva, travel sponsorship through UNDP for government personnel, and the sponsorship program of the Mine Ban Treaty Implementation Support Unit. The CMC, the ICBL, Geneva Call, Handicap International, Norwegian People’s Aid, Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor, and GICHD also received donor support for advocacy.

National Contributions

While there has been more transparency from affected states, national contributions for mine action activities continue to be under-reported overall as few States Parties report national funding in their annual Article 7 reports. Countries such as Algeria, India, Iran, Iraq, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam (all mine-affected states with significant contamination and major clearance operations, usually by the army) have never reported annual expenditures. Some unofficial estimates put annual government contributions to demining in Vietnam to be as much as $100 million.^[19] Twenty-eight states and other areas reported $184 million in contributions to mine action from their national budgets in 2012. Angola ($77 million) and Croatia ($40 million) accounted for 64% of the total. Chile, Denmark, and Venezuela, as well as Taiwan, receive all of their mine action funding from domestic sources. The mine action program in Angola, Azerbaijan, and Croatia receive more than 80% of their funding from national sources.

Few states reported national contributions to victim assistance, exceptions being El Salvador ($3.4 million)^[20] and Libya ($1.46 million).^[21] In addition, though not generally reported, many affected states contributed to victim assistance through national funding for rehabilitation staff and other medical professionals.

Other Funding Paths

The $497 million in international support to mine action in 2012 represents reported government contributions under bilateral and international programs. It does not represent the complete expenditures for field operations. Other funding sources include national funding, foundations, private fundraising by NGOs, and mine action allocations in countries with peacekeeping operations.

Peacekeeping operations

Peacekeeping operations in Cote d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Lebanon, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, and Western Sahara have mine action programs that are partially funded by UNGA assessments as part of peacekeeping mission budgets. In 2012, more than $113 million, which was a 25% increase, was allocated for mine action to peacekeeping missions globally, including $62 million in Sudan (Darfur) and South Sudan.

Peacekeeping assessed funds for mine action^[22]