2010 sustainable 101

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December 2010

SUSTAINABLE 101:VICTIM ASSISTANCE 10 YEARS ON

BRIDGING THE GAP

BETWEEN POLICY AND PRACTICE

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Copyright : December 2010 by Handicap International ASBL-VZWAll rights reservedFunded under a grant rom the Belgian Ministry o Foreign Aairs

Cover photograph: Khtoeup Veb rom Siem Reap Province in Camobia, cultivating his ricefeld John Vink Magnum, or Handicap International Cambodia 2008

Layout and Design: Enschede/ Van Muysewinkel nv/saResponsible editor: Bruno LeclercqPublisher: Handicap International ASBL-VZW

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For additional inormation or to receive a copy o the report, please contact: [email protected].

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SUSTAINABLE 101:

VICTIM ASSISTANCE 10 YEARS ON

BRDGNG THE GAP BETWEEN POLCY AND PRACTCE

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SUSTAINABLE 101: VICTIM ASSISTANCE 10 YEARS ON BRDGNG THE GAP BETWEEN POLCY AND PRACTCE

2

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 3

2. INTRODUCTION 4

3. DESCRIPTION OF THE STUDY AND ITS OBJECTIVES 5

4. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 6

5. METHODOLOGY 10

6. ANALYTICAL ASSESSMENT PART I: THE PROJECT MANAGEMENT CYCLE 12

7. ANALYTICAL ASSESSMENT

PART II: CROSS-CUTTING ISSUES 19

8. CASE STUDIES 23

9. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 30

10. REFERENCES 36

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1. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The research team at Handicap International would like to thank all those local civil society

organisations (and their representatives) which agreed to participate in this study and willingly

shared inormation about their work and their achievements and challenges with us. We hope that

we have been able to do justice to the very important work these local organisations are undertaking

or persons with disabilities including landmine/explosive remnants o war survivors, all over the

world.

The team would also like to acknowledge the invaluable support provided by those local intermediary

organisations and individuals which acted as inormation-providers and which enabled it to reach

otherwise inaccessible organisations and to surmount language and communication barriers.

Furthermore, the team would like to extend its thanks or the useul advice and eedback received

on both orm and content rom various individuals rom Handicap International and the International

Campaign to Ban Landmines.

Last but not least, the research team would like to thank the Ministry o Foreign Aairs, Belgium or

its nancial support or this study.

The Research Team

Joohi Haleem

Jennier Reeves

Stphane de Gree

November 2010

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2. NTRODUCTON

Recent studies such as Voices rom the Ground: Landmine and Explosive Remnants o War Survivors

speak out on Victim Assistanceundertaken by Handicap International in 2009 and annual reporting on

progress conducted by the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor show that even 10 years ater the

Mine Ban Treatys (MBT) entry into orce, victim assistance or the survivors o landmines/explosive

remnants o war (ERW) has remained one o the sectors which shows the least demonstrable progress.

During the Mine Ban Treatys rst decade, victim assistance (VA) has made the least progress o all the

major sectors o mine action, with both unding and the provision o assistance alling ar short o what

was needed.1 There is still ar too little knowledge and understanding o survivor needs in the very

dierent contexts where survivors live worldwide, and there is little to no assessment o the impact o the

VA initiatives which have been undertaken to date, to see what works, what does not, and why. This lack

o understanding o context-specic needs has meant that by and large, most survivors eel that their

needs are not being met2 and living as they oten do in remote and poorly serviced areas, they remain

marginalised on the ringes o mainstream society.

This particular study Sustainable 101: Victim Assistance 10 years on aims to begin the process o

mapping and assessing the current situation on service provision to persons with disabilities including

mine/ERW survivors in 29 aected countries around the world. It is intended to supplement gaps in our

knowledge and understanding o the challenges, constraints and opportunities which local civil society

organisations ace, and to build upon the available body o data and inormation on victim assistance

and disability-related service provision in the selected aected countries. The study and its various

outputs address multiple audiences: the primary target-group o national service-providers through the

accompanying online directory and tool-kit, and secondarily, the donors, policymakers and the

international humanitarian sector through the ndings presented in this report.

The project was ormulated to deliver three separate but mutually reinorcing products in order to

best present the inormation collected in the course o this study:

An online directory providing prole inormation on all the civil society organisations

identied (about 175 so ar) in 29 aected countries around the world, with an

accompanying tool-kit compiling available resources on victim assistance and

disability service provision,

An analytical assessment o organisational perormance in a select sample o casestudy countries, and

A BBC documentary titled Laos Bitter Harvest highlighting the scale o the problem

o unexploded ordnance (UXO) contamination or aected communities in the severely

aected country o the Lao Peoples Democratic Republic (PDR).

The 29 mine/ERW aected countries covered by this study are as ollows:

Aghanistan, Albania, Angola, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Burundi, Cambodia, Chad, Colombia,

Croatia, Democratic Republic o Congo, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guinea Bissau, Iraq, Jordan, Laos,

Lebanon, Mozambique, Nepal, Nicaragua, Peru, Senegal, Serbia, Sudan, Tajikistan, Thailand,

Uganda, Vietnam and Yemen.

1 See ICBL, Landmine Monitor Report 2009, Executive Summary, Special Ten-Year Review, Victim Assistance, p.53.

2 Handicap International, Voices rom the Ground: Landmine and Explosive Remnants o War Survivors speak out on Victim Assistance, September 2009.

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3. DESCRPTON OF THE STUDY AND TS OBJECTVES

The primary objectives o this study are:

Mappng o local cvl socety ntatves: To raise awareness o the initiatives and projects being undertaken by

local civil society actors such as non-governmental organisations (NGOs), community-based

organisations (CBOs), survivor associations, and disabled peoples organisations (DPOs) in order

to give their work greater visibility and exposure on the international stage, and to provide a clear

and concise picture o existing local knowledge, capacities, and constraints to donors, decision-

makers, policymakers and other humanitarian and development actors.

Knowledgesharng and normaton exchange: To provide organisations with a discussion platorm to exchange

ideas, experiences and perspectives rom dierent contexts and the opportunity to learn rom such

exchanges; to generate a dialogue on the major issues and concerns acing civil society practitioners

and to provide them with a voice on the international stage, through their inclusion into the online

directory and social networking site.

Capactybuldng: To acilitate the capacity-building and strengthening o member organisations and other

users o the online directory and social networking site: through a comprehensive compilation o

existing resources and links on victim assistance and programme management into a constantly

updated tool-kit; through the provision o e-discussion boards encouraging an exchange o ideas

and inormation (especially South-South cooperation) on best practices and lessons learnt; by

providing notications o upcoming trainings, conerences and workshops; and by enabling

member organisations to directly maintain their online proles and to regularly upload inormation

about their achievements and challenges.

The Sustainable 101 study documents and assesses the work being carried out by national and

local NGOs and other civil society actors in the 29 mine/ERW aected countries listed above. These

organisations provide services relevant to but not exclusively or survivors. This is reective o

common practice whereby most such organisations in the eld provide services to all persons with

disabilities, regardless o the cause o disability.

However, within the broad lens o disability service provision, there are ample reasons to justiy a

sharper ocus on victim assistance service provision. Firstly, the mine action sector oten has

specic knowledge about aected people and communities, including knowledge which may notbe generally available such as the number, location, and needs o survivors. This inormation may

have been gathered in aected communities by clearance teams, and through the undertaking o

community-based mine risk education (MRE) and awareness programmes. Secondly, survivors can

provide peer support to each other to help overcome the sometimes specic orms o trauma

associated with such injuries they are best placed to understand the situation and needs o ellow

survivors. Thirdly, advocacy by the mine action sector helps to ensure that survivors rights are

addressed and upheld where they otherwise might not be due to the general marginalisation o

persons with disabilities and their lack o access to the services and support they require. Finally,

providing services through victim assistance unding can also be seen as benecial to other persons

with disabilities, as without this VA unding, certain services might not otherwise exist or be

sustained.

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4. EXECUTVE SUMMARY

RATONALE FOR THE STUDY:

THE NEED FOR WELL-NFORMED DECSON-MAKNG AND MPLEMENTATON FOR VCTM ASSSTANCE

Over the years, while the normatve understanding o victim assistance has evolved

signiicantly with each successive 5-year Action Plan3 expanding beyond the notion o the

provision o care and support to survivors to include sustained eorts to build up their

capacities - the development o a comprehensive operatonal understanding has been more

challenging, encompassing as it does some o the most undamental human rights and needs,

and a broad range o services and activities4. This lack o clarity has been urther compounded

by the act that there is not one natural home or victim assistance, with responsibilities or

the coordination, planning, implementation and monitoring o VA activities oten being shared

on an ad hocbasis between the Mine Action Centre and the relevant national Line Ministry.

Most importantly however, the apparent lack o clarity stems rom a undamental contradiction

between the political and practical conception o victim assistance. So while on the one hand,

meeting the VA obligations set out by the Mine Ban Treaty and the Convention on Cluster

Munitions includes the establishment o national coordination mechanisms and ocal points,

the drating and implementation o national VA plans (with the inclusion o survivors), and the

earmarking o speciic VA unding (by donor and aected states), on the other hand, there are

calls or all eorts to be integrated into mainstream development processes i they are to have

a sustained and lasting impact on the lives o aected people and communities. The

International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) and the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC)

have long advocated or a twin-track approach to inclusive development and victim

assistance.5 This means ensuring that all persons with disabilities including mine/ERW

survivors are enabled to participate ully and meaningully in all phases o the development

cycle (policymaking, planning, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation), while at the

same time, having access to specialized programmes and services to build up their capacities

to engage actively in these processes.

Practitioners in the ield nevertheless recognise the need to ensure that VA service provision

does not result in the creation o a parallel set o services and acilities exclusive to mine/ERW

survivors, as it risks entrenching prevalent inequalities and discriminatory societal patterns.

This is borne out by the results o this study which show that more o than 80% o the

respondent organisations make no distinctions amongst their target-group(s) on the basis othe cause o disability.

The contradiction lies in the act that having separate or partially separate unding streams or

victim assistance entails separate processes o monitoring and evaluation i one is to truly

3 See www.mineaction.org/downloads/1/Nairobi_Action_Plan%5B1%5D.pdandhttp://www.mineaction.org/doc.asp?d=1300

4 Ambassador Susan Eckey o Norway, Victim assistance is a human rights issue that aims to address the rights and needs o people who are oten marginalised and

living in vulnerable situations in countries with limited resources and many competing priorities, Enhancing Cooperation and Assistance as concerns Victim Assi stance,

Discussion Paper, Intersessional Standing Committee Meetings, 24 June 2010, p.1.5 Inclusive Development and the Comprehensive and Integral International Convention on the Protection and Promotion o the Rights and Dignity o Persons with Disabilities,

prepared by the IDDC Task Group on the UN Convention, 2005, in Victim Assistance in In clusive Development: What does this mean or advocates?, ICBL Brieng Paper,

28 October 2010.
http://www.mineaction.org/downloads/1/Nairobi_Action_Plan%5B1%5D.pdfhttp://www.mineaction.org/downloads/1/Nairobi_Action_Plan%5B1%5D.pdfhttp://www.mineaction.org/downloads/1/Nairobi_Action_Plan%5B1%5D.pdf

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assess the impact and build in greater accountability and transparency o all the initiatives

undertaken with those unds. This presents all implementing organisations, international and

national, with the dilemma o having to account or service provision targeted at mine/ERW

survivors while at the same time, trying to ensure that the activities they undertake are non-

discriminatory towards other vulnerable and at risk groups in a population.

Another challenge aced by organisations is how to deine their most approprate and eectve

role, a role which complements and supplements the role played by the other actors in the

process, most importantly among them the state and its agencies, without duplicating eorts

while ensuring maximum coverage and impact. As this research shows, most local civil society

service providers (at least 85%) are attempting to deliver a combination o services

(encompassing the six pillars o VA, namely emergency care, physical rehabilitation, psycho-

social care, economic inclusion, advocacy, and data collection), either in response to

perceived needs and gaps resulting largely rom state neglect or incapacity to deliver, or to tap

into available unding streams, regardless o whether they have the capacity to do so in a

sustainable manner.

However this leads one to question the ultimate eectiveness and sustainability o such

initiatives, as one single civil society organisation may not always have the optimal set o

skills, expertise and resources, both human and inancial, in order to deliver services as wide-

ranging as physical rehabilitation and livelihoods recovery, consistently in a manner which

best ulils the needs o the people on the ground. Additionally while most civil society

organisations work in ways which by their very nature, are more community-driven and

grassroots-based, better coordination o both state and civil society initiatives can lead to

greater economies o scale and wider impact. Moreover, a stronger state-civil society nexus

can strengthen government capacity to provide adequate and eicient services to its

population, and ensure that popular organisation and capacity o poor people to assert their

claims to public resources, and to hold government accountable6 is reinorced and

strengthened.

In order to determine the most approprate and eectve role in victim assistance or a local

civil society organisation, it is irst and oremost imperative to develop a better understanding

o real and actual needs on the ground as well as to improve our knowledge o the eorts that

have been undertaken to date to meet the needs o people and communities aected by

mines/ERW as well as other persons with disabilities. Only through a more comprehensive

understanding o the existing baselne can it be possible to develop uture strategies and

directions, to reinorce existing capacities and to address inherent gaps and shortcomings.

In order to better understand the scope o services available in aected States, a

comprehensive mapping o all actors involved in services relevant to assisting the victims is

needed. 7 This study aims to highlight the invaluable work being carried out by one such actor

in the process, namely local civil society organisations in 29 countries around the world,organisations which have been active in the ield oering a range o services and acilities

within their available resources. This study by no means represents a comprehensive mapping

o all civil society organisations active in the domain o service provision. It should be viewed

instead as the beginnings o the process o compiling and consolidating inormation on such

6 Collier, 2000 as quoted in Solava Ibrahim and David Hulme, Has civil society helped the poor?A review o the roles and contributions o civil society to poverty reduction,Brooks World Poverty Institute Working Paper 114, University o Manchester, March 2010, p.10.

7 Ambassador Susan Eckey o Norway, Enhancing Cooperation and Assistance as concerns Victim Assistance, Discussion Paper, Intersessional Standing Committee

Meetings, 24 June 2010.

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initiatives, and should be urther expanded eventually to include other key stakeholders such

as government agencies and international non-governmental organisations in order to be truly

comprehensive.

This study would also like to call attention to the key issue o the tmelne or the tmebound

way in which victim assistance activities are oten undertaken, in recognition o the act that

or those whose lives have been aected by the impact o mines/ERW, the eects are, more

oten than not, lielong and permanent. While land clearance and stockpile destruction are

activities which are inite in nature, vctm assstance conssts o servces and actvtes whch

need to be provded over a much longer tme span, and thereore t calls or a undamentally

derent approach and response to undng, polcymakng and mplementaton than the

other areas o the mne acton sector. This must be taken into consideration when providing

support or locally driven VA/disability initiatives and programmes, the vast majority o which

as this study goes on to show, continue to suer rom unsustained and irregular unding lows.

A PARADGM SHFT

The Sustainable 101 studys ocus on highlighting the work undertaken by local civil society

actors such as survivor associations, sel-help groups, DPOs and CBOs, on victim assistance

and disability is in keeping with recent trends in the discourse and practice o victim

assistance. These trends suggest a paradgm sht echoing the paradigm shit taking place

globally within the larger disability sector rom the old charity-based model o development to

the social or rights-based model advocated under the Convention on the Rights o Persons

with Disabilities (CRPD).

In this rights-based model o development, persons with disabilities are viewed not as

beneiciaries but as rights-holders playing a more proactive and engaged role in the

processes determining and inluencing their lives. The human rights-based approach

requires that rights-holders living in poverty are ully involved and take action in determining

their needs and the responses that will be provided to answer them. This is in stark contrast to

a top-down, service-led approach where such decisions are made externally and where poor

people do not participate in the processes that aect, simply because they are wrongly

considered to be mere beneiciaries or recipients. This approach undermines peoples dignity

and their conidence to think, plan, and negotiate. Though providing people with new schools,

wells and boats can serve them on one level, leaving them with less dignity and power to

negotiate with others is a ailure on another level.8

What are the implications o such a paradigm shit or the prevail ing policymakin g and practice

o victim assistance? It connotes a major shit in the balance and dynamics o power (o

decision-making and access) by placing people and communities aected by mines/ERW right

at the centre o the entire process raming and deining them not merely as the passivevictims o these weapons expecting their needs to be ulilled in compliance with the

obligations imposed by the two treaties on all States Parties, but as active, engaged members

o their communities and societies demanding and claiming their rights and entitlements.

Such an approach is key to overcoming the oten inherent and entrenched orms o multiple

and intersectional discrimination9 resulting rom prevalent physical, socio-cultural,

behavioural, political and economic barriers and prejudices - that exclude and prevent

8 Action Aid, Human Rights-based approaches to poverty eradication and development, June 2008, p.7, http://actionaid-staging.rubylithcms.com/rubylith/les/HRBA%20

paper.pd.

9 Convention on the Rights o Persons with Disabilities, Article 2, 2009.

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survivors and other persons with disabilities rom accessing and enjoying their undamental

rights and reedoms. The key question then becomes one o ensuring equtable access and

equalty o opportunty and choce or all.

Improving access, opportunty and choce should be seen not only in terms o improved

physical accessibility, but as encompassing:

Improved access to high-quality education, inormation, technologies and

training;

Better nutrition and health;

A more cohesive and supportive social environment;

More secure access to, and better management o natural resources;

Better access to basic and acilitating inrastructure;

More secure access to inancial resources; and

A policy and institutional environment that supports multiple livelihood strategies

and promotes equitable access to competitive markets or all.10

As local civil society organisations have more potential to be representative o poor and

marginalized groups in society (as compared to state structures or international humanitarian

actors), and can thereby be seen as working directly toward the establishment o processes

and mechanisms that acilitate and improve access, opportunity and choice or these groups,

it then becomes imperative to recognize their work and to strengthen their capacities or

greater eectiveness, impact and coverage. At the same time, it is important to point out here

that any such capacity-building should seek to enhance the acilitative role o civil society

actors rather than enabling them to supplant the state, which must ultimately be held

responsible as a duty holder or the provision o basic services to its population and or the

ulillment o its rights.

10 Department or International Development (DFID-UK), the DFID Approach to Sustainable Livelihoods, National Strategies or Sustainable Development, 2004,

http://www.nssd.net/reerences/SustLiveli/DFIDapproach.htm#Top.

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5. METHODOLOGY

In order to meet the twin objectives o mapping and assessment, the data collection or the study

was conducted in two separate processes using two dierent questionnaires. The rst questionnaire

the PROFILE questionnaire was developed to collect basic inormation about the respondent

organisation, its contact details, the services it provides, its beneciary target group(s), its

management and stafng structures, its unding mechanisms, etc. Each organisation was

additionally asked to provide case-studies o best practices or innovative projects that it had

undertaken or was currently undertaking. The Prole questionnaires were developed in English and

then translated into nine languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Nepalese, Khmer,

Vietnamese, Thai and Dari). The dissemination o the questionnaires was either done by the

research team by email, telephone or direct contact wherever possible (as in the case o Cambodia

where one o the team members was based), or through local intermediaries or inormation

providers. These local inormation providers were mainly drawn rom Handicap Internationals

existing network o contacts in the eld, and consisted o organisations or individuals involved in

delivering services to persons with disabilities, such as the ICBLs national Victim Assistance Focal

Points, disability organisations or survivor associations. In some select cases, such as in Angola,

where direct contact with organisations proved difcult to establish or where a suitable organisation

could not be identied to take over the task o data collection, a consultant was briey employed to

obtain inormation rom the relevant organisations.

The inormation collected through this process was used to develop individual online proles or

each o the respondent or member organisations. In the interests o transparency, each respondent

organisation was inormed at the outset o the intended use o the inormation being requested

rom them. By making the directory available on-line and providing each member organisation with

the option to maintain and update its own prole, the project hopes to ensure that inormation

provided in the directory remains relevant and up-to-date. The social networking aspect o the

website is designed to encourage dialogue and debate between the dierent member organisations

and to acilitate greater transer and exchange o knowledge and inormation, giving practitioners

the opportunity to learn rom each others experience. Over time other organisations are expected

to enlist in the directory once the value o the greater visibility and exposure aorded to their work

and the increased opportunities or knowledge-sharing becomes apparent.

The second, almost simultaneous phase o data collection was the analytcal phase or which an

ANALYTICAL questionnaire was developed using the project management cycle as a basis. Thisphase was conceived as an evaluative or assessment exercise to critically analyse the unctioning

o the organisations and to identiy any challenges they might ace in the eective and sustainable

implementation o their activities. It is hoped that an improved understanding o the ground

realities o VA and disability service-provision will help donors, pol icymakers and other international

actors to provide support which is both timely and relevant.

With this purpose in mind and based on the project management cycle, the analytical questionnaire

was divided into sections, each assessing the respondent organisations capacity to conduct

adequate needs assessments or its target population, and based upon these, to plan, execute and

monitor its activities. Respondents were also asked to reect on those past and current unding

trends which might impact on their activities, on the involvement o beneciaries in their activities,

on their coordination with other national and/or international stakeholders (including networks),on their capacity to train and retain sta, and on the challenges and opportunities posed by a host

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o actors, among them lack o political will, unsupportive legislative rameworks, lack o access to

inormation, discriminatory attitudes towards disability, and rampant corruption and nepotism.

There were two key dierences between the two phases o data-gathering: one, the inormation

collected during the second more analytical phase was kept condential and all respondents were

duly inormed o this, and two, the sample size or the second phase was deliberately limited to a

ew select countries chosen rom the 29 countries covered by the rst phase o the study. Ensuring

the condentiality o the respondents was deemed necessary to enable them to give as accurate a

picture as possible o their current realities despite the, at times, politically sensitive nature o the

questions and answers. The decision to limit the sample size was taken in order to develop a more

detailed understanding o the situation in the case study countries, and to use the context-specic

ndings (through case study analysis) to generate more generic, cross-cutting themes o interest.

While this report on the analytical assessment largely draws upon the ndings o the second data-

gathering phase, relevant inormation has also been used rom the prole questionnaires completed

by respondent organisations in the initial phase.

SELECTON CRTERA FOR RESEARCH SAMPLE FOR ANALYTCAL STUDY

Thepurposive sampling method, prioritizing logistics and access, was employed to select the case

study countries or the analytical phase o the study. The selection o countries was based on

practical considerations o logistics and access as well as the need to ensure that the sample was

adequately reective o the regional diversity within the group o 29 ocus countries. Even more

importantly, the need to preserve the condentiality o respondents and the integrity o the data

collection methods by reducing the risk o bias or prejudice was taken into consideration. Thereore

or the analytical phase, it was considered essential or the research team to have direct access to

the respondent pool rather than relying on the intermediary inormation providers used or the

initial mapping phase. Direct access or data gathering was necessarily subject to the constraints

imposed by linguistic, geographical, and communications barriers. Additionally there were

budgetary and security constraints on direct access to certain locations. It is important to point out

here that in drawing conclusions or a more generic analysis, the research team tried to ensure that

the specic conditions o each context, such as the prevailing level and quality o services available

to people with disabilities including survivors, the political, socio-cultural and economic

environment o each case study country, and the existing level o capacity o local civil society

actors and the specic nature o the challenges aced by them, were taken into account.

Members o the research team conducted eld missions to Lebanon, Croatia, Bosnia and

Herzegovina, and Cambodia, where data was gathered through semi-structured interviews and

ocus group discussions using the analytical questionnaire as a basis. Analytical questionnaires

were also completed by a small number o respondent organisations in Aghanistan, Angola and

Jordan, where interviews were conducted either by consultants hired by the project or throughdirect electronic communication between the research team and the respondents. Logistical and

budgetary constraints prevented the research team rom covering Latin America in the second

phase o the data-gathering process.

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6. ANALYTCAL ASSESSMENT

PART : THE PROJECT MANAGEMENT CYCLE

A total o about 45 organisations in the our main (Lebanon, Cambodia, Croatia and Bosnia

and Herzegovina) and three secondary case-study countries (Aghanistan, Angola and Jordan)

were assessed or their strengths and weaknesses in each o the dierent stages o the project

management cycle namely, needs assessment, planning, implementation, and monitoring and

evaluation. The indings o this assessment are discussed in Part I o the Analytical Assessment.

Additionally the respondent organisations were asked to relect upon a ew cross-cutting

thematic issues o relevance to them namely, survivor/beneiciary inclusion, meeting the

needs o persons with disabilities including mine/ERW survivors, and coordination

mechanisms and their role in these mechanisms. These responses are discussed in Part II o

the Analytical Assessment.

UNDERSTANDNG NEEDS AND CAPACTES

Cartagena Action Plan (CAP) #24: Enhance the collection o appropriate data to develop,

implement, monitor and evaluate the implementation o relevant national policies, plans and

legal rameworks, and link such data with national injury surveillance and other relevant data

collection systems.

As the Landmine Monitors research has made apparent year ater year, the planning and

implementation o victim assistance activities at the national level has not oten been guided

by any comprehensive understanding o existing needs and capacities. Reliable data on the

number o aected people and communities needing support, their location, and the kind o

support they need is simply not available in most countries. Although most countries maintain

national casualty databases, these databases do not go beyond providing incidence data or

each casualty or survivor with there being little to no ollow-up data available on the post-

incident conditions and needs o survivors. There is also insuicient linkage o casualty

databases to databases which may be maintained by other sectors (such as the health,

education, inance, and labour and employment ministries), or those maintained by

organisations themselves. Even when a casualty database is regularly maintained andupdated, there are oten issues with how the data is used, shared with and accessed by the

dierent stakeholders (government, local civil society, international humanitarian community

etc.). Due to a lack o coordination and inormation exchange between ministries and

government agencies, and between government and civil society organisations in most case-

study countries, and due to an insuicient disaggregation o data collection on the basis o

gender, age, ethnicity, livelihood proiles, geography, etc., whatever available data there is on

mine/ERW survivors rarely eeds into national statistics on poverty, gender, disability and the

distribution and quality o basic services or all population groups. The lack o adequate

coordination between the dierent stakeholders also means that there is very little knowledge

at national and even local levels, o existing capacities and resources and o the dierent

initiatives being undertaken. This oten leads to either duplication and overlapping or

persistent gaps in service deliver y, as a result o which, the needs o traditionally marginal isedand deprived groups may continue to be overlooked.

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The lack o coordinated and comprehensive needs assessments mechanisms is a recurring

problem in almost all the case-study countries, but was especially cited as being a major

challenge in accessing inormation by respondents in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Croatia

and Angola. In Angola or instance, a mine victim survey is planned or this year by the Inter-

sectoral Commission on Demining and Humanitarian Assistance (CNIDAH), but many o the

Angolan organisations interviewed or the S101 research were not aware o it, although it is

due to take place in their area o operation.

Another challenge to collecting reliable data on the real needs o persons with disabilities

including mine/ERW survivors is posed by prevalent socio-cultural belie systems and

discriminatory attitudes and behavioural patterns towards disability and in particular

disability and gender, due to which the marginalization and exclusion suered by most

persons with disabilities goes unacknowledged and unchecked. This was ound to be the case

in countries like BiH, Croatia, Cambodia and Aghanistan where most respond ent organisations

mentioned the diiculty inherent in having disability issues suiciently prioritized on the

national agenda, and in Angola, where it was more diicult to involve emale beneiciaries in

the consultation process. In Jordan cultural issues were also listed as a challenge to collecting

inormation, and it was considered important to be sensitive to traditional cultures and

belies.

Funding issues at the project inception stage also, oten posed a challenge to conducting

comprehensive needs assessments with one respondent organisation pointing out that

understanding the needs takes too much time and we have to do it without resources as most

donors do not support this phase.

The majority o the organisations surveyed claimed to know the needs o their target group(s)

and intended beneiciaries because they are rom the area, have irst-hand knowledge o the

local community and context, and work at the grassroots level.This inormation is oten more

exhaustive and detailed than what most existing databases are able to provide, and working

directly and sometimes through peer support, with aected survivors and communities on the

ground also, enables local civil society organisations to gather detailed inormation on their

needs. In Angola, the respondents said that it was best to use participatory methods to collect

inormation or needs assessments with one organisation describing its use o a Rapid

Participatory Diagnosis approach to understanding the scale and scope o the problem. In

contexts such as Angola, Jordan and Aghanistan, it was also deemed important to consult

local traditional leaders in the community consultation process. In Angola and Lebanon, most

respondents were o the opinion that inormation was best collected by local people using

local languages. One aith-based organisation in Angola worked through the church network,

while another mentioned that it would be useul to have access to reports o previous projects

undertaken by other NGOs, government agencies and local civil society actors in order to learn

rom their experiences in providing services to persons with disabilities including mine/ERW

survivors.

While the value o the grassroots knowledge which most local disability/VA service providers

draw upon cannot be denied, at the same time, it is important to recognise that there may be

a risk o entrenching prevalent inequities and power imbalances and urther marginalising the

most vulnerable as the people working or these local organisations may either belong to the

local power elites themselves or they may be reluctant to challenge the existing power

dynamics in the region. It is thus imperative to balance out existing local knowledge with

exhaustive needs assessments using vulnerability and poverty mapping tools.

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14

PLANNNG

CAP Action #22: Develop, i they have not yet done so, a comprehensive national plan o action

that addresses all aspects o victim assistance with objectives that are speciic, measurable,

achievable, realistic, and time bound, ensuring that such a plan takes into account broader

national policies, plans and legal rameworks that promote and guarantee the rights o

landmine victims in accordance with the highest international standards, and thereater

implement, monitor and evaluate the implementation o such a plan.

Organsatonal plannng

Up to 85% o the organisations surveyed during the irst phase o the data-gathering process

claimed to have ormal strategic and work plans in place, ranging rom 1-5 years in duration

and outlining the key objectives and activities o the organisation. These plans were developed

in consultation with sta members, and sometimes beneiciaries and even donors. Most o

the respondents also claimed that these plans were linked to national mine action/victim

assistance strategies or disability plans where they existed, though given the inadequate

level o coordination in most o the case-study countries, it was not clear to the research team

how these links were maniested and what was the inluence o national plans on the setting

o organisational priorities. In case study countries such as BiH, a victim assistance sub-

strategy was drated with the participation o a ew key civil society organisations, but those

organisations which had not been involved in the drating process, did not eel the need to

engage with the strategy and its objectives in any capacity in the course o their own activities.

None o the other disability organisations and associations representing those aected by war

was included in the plan either.

A number o respondents pointed out that they were not always able to meet all the objectives

o their plans due to a lack o unding and sta capacity implying that some o the planned

activities may have constituted a wish list rather than being based on a realistic assessment

and understanding o what was possible within available resources. These respondents

admitted that this necessarily led to a decrease in their ability to deliver services eectively

with a corresponding narrowing o the beneiciary pool. Those respondents which said

however, that they developed realistic plans taking into consideration access to and

availability o resources - both human and inancial - appeared to be more eective in meeting

their core objectives. An important point to consider here, and linked to earlier observations

on the lack o comprehensive needs assessments, is that while plans may be ormulated and

implemented, i they are not truly responsive to the speciic needs on the ground and do not

actively involve beneiciaries in the decision-making and implementation process, their

impact on improving the living conditions o their target group(s) can only be limited at best,

and detrimental at worst. However it was beyond the scope o this study to assess the

potential impact o some o these plans.

MPLEMENTATON

nternal organsatonal capactes

By and large, most respondents (at least 75% o respondent organisations were dependent on

project-based grants or their survival) linked their limited organisational capacity to a lack o

sustained and regular unding or meeting their core costs as opposed to unding or project

activities. With a limited unding cycle determined by the duration o the project cycle, most

o the surveyed organisations ound it diicult in practice to retain skilled and trained sta

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and to invest resources to build their capacity or undraising, proposal writing and donor

liaison, better communications, data management and research among other things. A number

o respondents also voiced the need or improving their technical skills and inancial

management capacities. Erratic and variable unding lows were inevitably ound to lead to

high sta turnover with a corresponding loss o knowledge and capacity, and an inability to

improve the quality o their service delivery, and caused some organisations to be reluctant

about widening their beneiciary pool despite a high demand or their services.

Some respondents said that they had had to rely on volunteers due to a lack o unding or

salaried sta. However, they did cite certain advantages o working with volunteers, part icularly

when those volunteers were beneiciaries themselves, in terms o making activities more

inclusive and participatory.

Most o the respondent organisations seemed to have a good understanding o their particular

strengths and weaknesses and had made eorts (including partnering with international

organisations, employing external consultants and technical specialists, and enabling sta to

attend training courses and workshops) to build up capacity within the resources available to

them.

External actors aectng mplementaton

CAP Action #26: Ensure that capacity building and training plans are developed and

implemented to promote high quality standards and availability o age-appropriate and

gender-sensitive services in all components o victim assistance, and enhance the capacity o

both women and men and national institutions charged with implementing national policies,

plans and legal rameworks, including through the provision o adequate resources.

CAP Action #27: Increase accessibility o both emale and male landmine victims to quality

services and to overcome physical, social, cultural, economic and political barriers, with a

particular ocus on rural and remote areas.

Some o the most commonly cited external challenges to eective and sustainable

implementation included lack o eective national legal/policy rameworks (or the health and

education sectors, or the mine action sector, or the non-proit sector as a whole, disability

legislation etc.) or their inadequate enorcement, lack o political will at the national level,

lack o unding, lack o physical security in the operational environment, bureaucratic

constraints, lack o access to relevant inormation, logistics, geographical isolation, lack o

eective national coordination mechanisms, discriminatory attitudes towards beneiciaries

and corruption/nepotism. The extent to which these challenges exist or impact on

organisational capacity or implementation, varies rom country to country and according to

each individual organisations capacities.

Ironically, some o the challenges that local service providers ace were also constraints on

the S101 research. Thus in countries that ace problems o physical insecurity due to conlict,

such as Iraq and Aghanistan, or where modes o transportation and communication were

diicult and unreliable, such as in Angola, it was more diicult to gather reliable and

comprehensive inormation or this study.

Geographical isolation and inaccessibility, oten accompanied by physical insecurity, was

mentioned as being a major constraint to implementation in countries like Aghanistan and

Angola and largely accounted or the disparity in the quality and coverage o services between

rural and urban areas. In Angola, the problem o geographical isolation is compounded by the

lack o adequate inrastructure. The country is vast, road networks are poor and badly

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maintained and the local service-providers do not have suicient resources or transport.

Another signiicant challenge highlighted by respondents in Angola was the lack o internet

access, which they elt hampered their links with the international community and limited the

undraising opportunities available to them.

As mentioned previously, a prevailing culture o discriminatory attitudes and taboos against

disability oten posed a serious challenge to respondent organisations in BiH, Croatia,

Cambodia and Aghanistan, and made it diicult or them to access government resources or

to highlight the needs o people with disabilities in comparison to other disadvantaged groups

in the population.

A general lack o government capacity combined with limited understanding o needs on the

ground, lack o political will and inadequate resource mobilisation to plan, implement and

coordinate service delivery to persons with disabilities including mine/ERW survivors,

imposes huge constraints on the unctioning o local civil society actors by obliging them to

ill in the gaps in service provision without having access to the resources and inrastructure

o the state. Besides the undamental rights-based issue o government responsibility and

duty in the domain o service provision, service delivery by civil society actors can never be

sustained in the long term owing to the latters high dependence on external unding, the

diiculty o going to scale and their inability to recover costs through user charges.11

Some civil society organisations have tried to resolve these external challenges through

advocacy to eect policy change at the national level, but with varying degrees o success.

Fundng and nancal sustanablty

The majority o respondent organisations rom all the case-study countries considered the

lack o regular sustained unding as a key concern, and in act or many, it was the main

problem they reportedly aced (with at least 75% o surveyed organisations reliant on project-

based grants). A s discussed earlier, a lack o unding was also seen to be one o the contributin g

actors or the inability o some orga nisations to realise all their plans. Some o the responden t

organisations expressed a need to increase their capacity or undraising and proposal writing

as they oten ound themselves restricted rom accessing international donor unding owing to

overly complex international donor procedures or simply due to a lack o inormation about

available sources o unding. It is nevertheless important to highlight here the lack o

sustainability and excessive donor dependency caused by an over-reliance on grant-based

unding.

Several o the respondent organisations used a combination o unding mechanisms in order

to diversiy their unding sources and to make up or any shortalls in donor unding.

International non-governmental organisations (INGOs) and national governments were the 2biggest donors or at least 30% and 20% o the respondent organisations respectively, with

oreign governments and private individual donations being the biggest source o unding or

about 10% o them. 12 About 5% o the organisations surveyed charged beneiciaries/users or

services provided, while another 5% o them undertook various income-generating activities

such as rental o oice space etc.

11 Solava Ibrahim and David Hulme, Has civil society helped the poor?A review o the roles and contributions o civil society to poverty reduction, Brooks World Poverty

Institute Working Paper 114, University o Manchester, March 2010, p.10.

12 The gures cited here are based upon responses received rom about 170 organisations during the rst Prole phase o the data-gathering process.

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There have been repeated calls or aected states to contribute long-term national unds to

victim assistance, and or donor states in a position to assist to increase multi-year unding

or victim assistance13. The International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) in one o its

statements at the Intersessional Standing Committee Meetings o the Mine Ban Treaty in June

2010, incited countries to not end your international cooperation eorts once a country has

inished its clearance obligations. Instead, continue to channel mine action unds to victim

assistance as victims needs will continue over the long term 14. It highlighted the need to

acknowledge that attitudes, practices and national resources will not be changed in a matter

o one or two years. Thereore ensure sustanablty and eectveness o VA projects by

commttng to long term nancal support .15

While it is possible to solicit and undraise speciically or VA donor unding - some

organisations ound it relatively easier to raise unds under the VA banner by invoking donor

obligations under the Mine Ban Treaty - the services oered by these organisations were not

limited to any one single group o r community. In Colombia several donor-unded projects work

to strengthen capacity to meet the needs o mine/ERW survivors, but simultaneously also

beneit other persons with disabilities. Against this though, is the argument that unding

should not discriminate against people based on the cause o disability, but should be based

on need and has been a reason commonly cited by several big donors such as the European

Union, Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and Department or International

Development (DFID), UK among others or their seeming reluctance to earmark unds

speciically or victim assistance activities.

mplementaton carred out n partnershp wth nternatonal organsatons

Over the last 10 years, INGOs have played a signiicant role in helping to develop the capacities

o national NGOs and other civil society actors in several countries. This support has taken

several orms ranging rom an INGO establishing operations and then handing over to national

management and ownership, to a close partnership with a national organisation, to the

provision o support more remotely as a donor.

Most respondent organisations in Lebanon, BiH, Croatia, Aghanistan and Cambodia were

generally positive about their experience o working with international organisations. The

beneits they mentioned included gaining o international experience and heightened

visibility, improved access to donor unding, and the enhanced ability to inluence international

conventions and advocacy campaigns on a global level. Nevertheless, a ew also mentioned

challenges such as those posed by the random, non-context speciic application o

international concepts and standards at the local level, or by the dierent and sometimes

conlicting agendas o the INGO and its local implementing partner.

In Angola in particular, some o the survey participants expressed dissatisaction with theirrelationship with international organisations when asked to comment on the perceived

beneits and challenges o working in collaboration with them. Some o them elt imposed

upon by their international partners which in their view, were more willing to support projects

based on their own priorities rather than on the needs deined and identiied by the national

partners and their beneiciary populations. This was also echoed in the responses received

13 Survivors Call to Action, Cartagena Summit on a Mine-ree World, Colombia, 29 November-4 December 2009.14 ICBL Statement on International Cooperation and Assistance - Victim Assistance, Intersessional Standing Committee Meetings, 25 June 2010, Geneva,

http://www.apminebanconvention.org/leadmin/pd/mbc/IWP/SC_june10/Speeches-Special/SpecialSession-VA-25June2010-ICBL.pd.

15 Ibid.
http://www.icbl.org/index.php/icbl/Library/News-Articles/intersessionals10/intlcoop-vahttp://www.icbl.org/index.php/icbl/Library/News-Articles/intersessionals10/intlcoop-va

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rom some organisations in Aghanistan. The respondents did not eel that such a manner o

working led to a real partnership approach. They were reluctant about participating in research

projects which did not yield any material or tangible beneits or their own work. However

some o the INGOs which were interviewed in the course o this study also experienced

diiculties, or instance, by being excluded rom national coordination activities (e.g. in

Angola, an INGO was excluded rom a VA evaluation workshop).

MONTORNG AND EVALUATON

CAP Action #28: Monitor and evaluate progress regarding victim assistance within broader

national policies, plans and legal rameworks on an ongoing basis, encourage relevant States

Parties to report on the progress made, including resources allocated to implementation and

challenges in achieving their objectives, and encourage States Parties in a position to do so to

also report on how they are responding to eorts to address the rights and needs o mine

victims.

The internal monitoring and evaluation systems o the respondent organisations vary

considerably. The vast majority o them said that they know i their services are eectively

meeting the needs o beneiciaries rom the eedback received rom the beneiciaries

themselves. Some also used questionnaires or held eedback meetings. A ew had more ormal

monitoring systems in place with dierent indicators to monitor progress and impact.

On a more macro level, there appeared to be no nation-wide evaluations o VA activities in any

o the case-study countries, which was surprising, particularly given that the other pillars o

mine action have been subject to evaluation on a regular basis. This issue is also linked with

the lack o inormation on needs and capacities. Without an adequate understanding o needs

and capacities, it is not possible to adequately assess the impact o programme activities.

Similarly without planning processes and speciic objectives and goals in place, it would be

diicult to monitor and evaluate outcomes and impact.

With responsibility or the planning and implementation o VA and disability-related activities

shared on a sectoral basis between the relevant line ministries in each country, the survey

ound that there was oten a lack o clarity about the most appropriate agency to monitor and

evaluate progress and impact.

There were some notable exceptions though: the Lebanese Mine Action Centre plans to issue

Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) or VA activities later in the year; in Jordan there are

eorts to ensure that services provided or people with disabilities meet required standards

with the Higher Council or the Aairs o Persons with Disabilities (HCAPD) planning to accredit

all disability organisations and to regularly monitor their activities; in Croatia most o the

respondent organisations received their unding rom the national government, which iscurrently in the process o putting more stringent monitoring mechanisms in place.

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7. ANALYTCAL ASSESSMENT

PART : CROSSCUTTNG SSUES

RESPONDNG TO SURVVOR NEEDS

Much has been said already about the need to develop context-specic responses to actual needs

on the ground in ways which ensure equitable access and equality o opportunity and choice or all

persons with disabilities including mine/ERW survivors. In order to do so, it is imperative to build

upon existing local knowledge o the context and to improve our understanding o existing needs,

capacities, resources and constraints to avoid overlapping and duplication o eort and to increase

coverage and quality. It is worth noting here though that NGOs operating in service delivery

should be careul not to adopt an exclusively needs based approach that neglects the poors rights

and ails to challenge the structures and institutions that brought about their deprivations in the

rst place. The danger here is that NGOs in service provision might sometimes seek to maintain

these exploitative structures which provide them with unds to nance their projects.16

Based upon their rst-hand grassroots knowledge o their communities and areas, most o the

respondent organisations highlighted the challenges inherent in undertaking economic inclusion/

livelihoods recovery and rehabilitation programmes, given the extended investment o time and

resources required to build up the skills, knowledge and employability o this traditionally

marginalised target group to enable them to overcome widespread discrimination and social

exclusion, which restricts their access to jobs, markets, entrepreneurship development and micro-

nance acilities17. Despite the inherent challenges, the study ound that as many as 80% o the

organisations surveyed during the rst phase o the project (more than 170 in number) were oering

socio-economic services in some orm or the other vocational training, small business support,

peer and/or psychosocial support to persons with disabilities including mine/ERW survivors. This

seems to be in direct response to two principal actors one, that improved economic and

employment opportunities have consistently been agged by survivors and other persons with

disabilities as being key to their successul inclusion into mainstream society18, and two, that due

to a lack o capacity, resources and an insufcient understanding o real needs, there has been ar

too little government support or such activities. 19 As a consequence, local civil society actors have

stepped in to ll in the gaps. Whether such activities undertaken by civil society actors can besustained over the long term remains doubtul, or reasons discussed earlier in this report, as well

as because addressing the root causes o livelihood vulnerability and insecurity requires the

establishment o linkages at multiple levels with multiple stakeholders, and o structural

mechanisms which eventually lead to equality o access, opportunity and choice or all vulnerable

groups, including persons with disabilities.

16 Solava Ibrahim and David Hulme, Has civil society helped the poor?A review o the roles and contributions o civil society to poverty reduction, Brooks World Poverty


17 an estimated 80 per cent o all people with disabilities in the world live in developing countries. O these, some 426 million live below the poverty line and oten

represent the 15-to-20 per cent most vulnerable and marginalized poor in such countries, The right to decent work o persons with disabi lities, Arthur OReilly,

International Labour Ofce, Geneva, 2007. (ISBN 9778-92-2-120144-1)

18 ... that the States Parties reconsider the importance o measures to ensure economc ncluson since this vital component o Victim Assistance has oten been ignored in

the past, Survivors Call to Action, Cartagena Summit on a Mine-ree World, Colombia, 29 November-4 December 2009.19 Most eforts remained ocused on medical care and physical rehabilitation, oten supported by international organisations and unding, rather than on promoting

economic sel-reliance or survivors, their amilies, and communities,Landmine Monitor Report 2009, Executive Summary, Special Ten-Year Review, Victim Assistance,

p.53.

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SURVVOR NCLUSON

The Survivors Call to Action calls on all states to guarantee meaningul participation o landmine

survivors in all areas o victim assistance at all levels20. Participation may take place at the civil

society level, or the government level, and through coordination mechanisms. In many countries,

survivors have in act taken the initiative themselves and set up their own associations, such as in

Croatia, the Karlovac Association or Mine Victims; in BiH, Eko Sportska and UDAS, and the

Landmine Survivors Initiative (LSI); in Uganda, the Ugandan Landmine Survivors Association (ULSA)

with its many member associations representing the dierent districts o Uganda; and in Cambodia,

the local NGO, Yodiee, established by a person with disability who was unable to nd a job, and

wanted to provide socio-economic support to people in the same situation as his, to list a ew.

Most o the respondent organisations which participated in the initial data-gathering phase claimed

to have active beneciary involvement in the planning and implementation o their day-to-day

activities, with at least 45% o them employing beneciaries as volunteers and about 15-20% o

them employing beneciaries as paid sta members.

In terms o their inclusion in national VA and disability coordination mechanisms, some o the

associations run by survivors, particularly those in BiH, were critical o the role played by the

national coordinating body and questioned its right to represent survivors.

MPROVNG COORDNATON

CAP Action #23: Establish, i they have not yet done so, an inter-agency coordination mechanism

or the development, implementation, and monitoring o appropriate national polices, plans and

legal rameworks, involving the ull and active participation o landmine survivors and other relevant

stakeholders, and thus ensuring that the entity is assigned primary responsibility or overseeing

this coordination and has the authority and resources to carry out its task.

Coordination is crucial to eective VA planning and implementation or several reasons: it enables

the participation o all the relevant stakeholders, links national civil society actors with government

actors, acilitates exchange o inormation and sharing o resources, helps to improve understanding

o main issues and concerns, and to avoid duplication o eort while addressing gaps, and enables

all participants to benet rom each others experiences. Additionally, it can be instrumental in

helping civil society actors to identiy and determine their most appropriate and eective role in the

domains o service delivery, advocacy and policy change. Advocacy work and policy change, in

order to have an impact, cannot be done in isolation and must be conducted in collaboration with

other actors. However, eective coordination o VA activities remains elusive to many countries,

despite eorts made in recent years. Given the crucial role o coordination in developing a cohesive

and structured response to needs on the ground, simply saying it should take place is not enough,

and it is important to identiy the reasons why coordination is not happening as it should and setinto place the concrete mechanisms to support it.

As identied during the course o this research, two main gaps in coordination were ound to exist:

between government and civil society actors in general, and between survivor associations and VA

organisations, and more mainstream disability-related organisations. A number o disability and

veteran organisations (and some government bodies) surveyed in Croatia and BiH claimed not to

pay any particular attention to the needs o mine/ERW survivors in order to avoid any discrimination

on the basis o the cause o disability. Consequently they did not see any value in being part o VA

coordination mechanisms.

Other causes o ineective coordination may be a lack o political will, and government incapacity

to hold meetings, disseminate inormation, and monitor activities due to an insufcient allocation

20 Survivors Call to Action, Cartagena Summit on a Mine-ree World, Colombia, 29 November-4 December 2009.

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o time and resources. Factors that impede coordination may also include divergent political or

stakeholder interests and agendas. While some political dierences may be obvious in a post-

conict country, others may be less so. There may be competition between various stakeholders or

the same pool o unding. In Angola or instance, the competition or scarce resources among the

national NGOs was cited by an international NGO, as being an obstacle to eective coordination

among them. One organisation may have more political inuence than others to lobby government,

or there may simply be personality dierences between the sta o the dierent organisations.

However, it should not be assumed that political dierences mean that civil society organisations

will not coordinate together there are plenty o examples o good coordination among groups that

may have been opposed to each other during conict and may still be political rivals. It is useul to

conduct a stakeholder analysis, and study the interests o the dierent organisations and the power

relations between them. External bodies, particularly international organisations, should be

mindul o the act that coordination problems may be due to actors that are not immediately

obvious to the outsider.

At times, the study ound that there was conusion within the mine action centre (MAC) itsel as to

its role in victim assistance. Among the survey respondents, a range o attitudes towards

coordination could be ound, ranging rom support towards coordination eorts to eeling some

resentment and viewing the MAC as controlling, with some survivors questioning the MACs right

to represent them. In Lebanon, the MAC is a military body, it chairs a victim assistance steering

committee, and although at rst glance a military body might not appear to be appropriate or this

role, certain advantages can be identied, such as that it is authoritative enough to coordinate the

activities o a diverse group o actors in a politically diverse context, and that it acilitates access to

sensitive areas through providing permits etc.

One way to strengthen coordination mechanisms and processes can be to demonstrate to

stakeholders the benets o coordination. I the coordinating body provides incentives or

example, capacity-building and training courses on subjects related to project cycle management,

inormation on survivors and their needs, ways to increase the visibility o the work done by local

service providers accompanied by a genuine culture o generating dialogue, knowledge-sharing

and inormation exchange, then local civil society organisations may be more inclined to play an

active role in ensuring the eectiveness o coordination mechanisms.

THE EVOLVNG ROLE OF CVL SOCETY ORGANSATONS N VA AND DSABLTY SERVCE

PROVSON

The role played by civil society actors in VA may lie in the domains o advocacy, policy change and/

or service delivery, and can vary rom country to country depending on several contextual actors

including: the specic needs o aected people and communities; the services delivered by other

providers, including government, UN agencies and INGOs; the existing strength and capacity or

engagement o national/local civil society as a whole; and available resources combined with thecapacity or mobilisation o these resources, amongst other actors.

23% o the respondents surveyed in the rst phase o the data-gathering process were only involved

in service provision, 10% were only involved in advocacy and awareness-raising, and 70% were

engaged in both service delivery and advocacy. The majority o organisations engaged in advocacy

work believed that their work had been instrumental in eecting policy change at the national level.

However, it may be benecial to pay greater attention to which role(s) may be the most appropriate

one(s) to play or local civil society organisations in a given context. Many actors may assume roles

based on present needs, but may not have taken into consideration longer term sustainability, or

how their activities may t into the wider sector, or how their activities may impact on other

organisations. For example, by providing services directly, local civil society organisations may riskabsolving governments o their primary responsibility to ensure the basic rights o their populations.

It should also be noted that civil society organisations do not work in isolation, and their individual

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roles may be best worked out through the coordinated eorts o all relevant stakeholders, including

both government and civil society actors.

In case study countries such as Croatia, BiH, Aghanistan and Colombia, besides lling gaps in

services, local organisations also help survivors and other persons with disabilities to access

services by providing them with inormation about available services as well as acilitating them to

access these services in accordance with their rights. For example in Croatia, one local NGO worked

with the Mine Action Centre to compile a guidebook o the legal rights o survivors with a directory

o service providers. In Colombia, government ofcials recognise the crucial role played by NGOs

and view this as an integral part o VA activities within the country. Advocating on behal o survivors

and helping them to navigate conusing government regulations to access services and benets is

seen as being the responsibility o the local NGOs.21

Some organisations do not provide services at all, but see their role entirely as acilitating survivors

access to services, and advocating on their behal. The respondents varied considerably in their

views about their roles in advocacy and policy change, with some viewing it as the primary ocus o

what they do, while others regarded it as very secondary, i important at all, to their primary role o

providing services. Some thought it would detract rom their service provision activities. Overall

though, as mentioned earlier, up to 70% o organisations surveyed in the rst phase o data-

collection claimed to be active in both service provision and advocacy and awareness-raising.

In a Victim Assistance Workshop organised by Handicap International in May 2010 in Amman,

Jordan, the advantages and disadvantages o a civil society-government partnership in advocacy

work were discussed at great length. Some NGO participants saw governments as partners with

whom they could work together to advocate or survivors rights, while others viewed governments

as the targets o their advocacy work. Working on policy change can only be eective i there is

recognition o the constraints that governments ace, and i civil society organisations see the

government as an ally to work with rather than as an adversary. For example, several NGOs in

Lebanon were sympathetic to the challenges their government aced as a result o political

instability. In BiH, most civil society respondents spoke o the challenges caused by complex

national governance structures. They were also understanding o the lack o unds available due to

the global economic recession. Another lesson learned was the need or patience. I legislation is

new, then changes may take time to ollow through. For instance, local civil society actors in Croatia

credited themselves or bringing about necessary changes in the law, but also recognised the act

that it would take time or the new policies to take eect.

As well as lobbying politicians and government bodies, a number o respondents also saw their role

as involving the changing o the mind-set among the public at large, or example through education

in schools about disability rights. A number o respondents also emphasised the need or a

paradigm shit away rom a purely medical approach to an approach based on human rights,

which empowers persons with disabilities to ght or their rights as individuals as well as

collectively.

On the whole it can be argued that collectively, it is best or civil society organisations to be involved

in all three activities provided they have the capacity to do so. Service delivery can create the

necessary knowledge base or advocacy work because NGOs providing services to the poor are in a

better position to collect the necessary data needed to lobby or policy change. On the other hand,

those organisations operating in advocacy need to make sure that they do not lose touch with the

grassroots.22

21 ICBL, Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor 2010, Colombia Country Prole, 2010, http://www.the-monitor.org/index.php/cp/display/region_proles/theme/509.22 Solava Ibrahim and David Hulme, Has civil society helped the poor?A review o the roles and contributions o civil society to poverty reduction, Brooks World Poverty


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Project : Provson o psychologcal assstance to and capactybuldng o survvors

Duration: 10 months (May 2009 - March 2010)

Goal: Strengthening and integration o mine victims into society through group

psychotherapy and education, to enable them to cope with the lasting eects o disability,

and to improve their employment prospects.

Actvtes:

a) Group psychotherapy

Main Objective:

1. To empower victims by assessing their skills and capacities and by supporting them

according to their individual needs, abilities and preerences.

The current group consists o 6 mine victims, our o whom are amputees, one has internal

injuries and one is the child o a survivor. The group is led by a proessional psychotherapist

and the observer is a social worker.

b) Conducting of seminar Promotion of rights of the mine survivors and coordination of

social services and activities - 27 participants

Main Objectives:

1. To promote exchange o inormation and knowledge on the scope and nature o the

problems aced by organisations/institutions involved in the protection and

implementation o rights or persons with disabilities;

2. To improve cooperation and networking between these organisations/institutions, and

relevant governmental and non-governmental actors.

The target audience o this seminar included both mine victims, and institutions and

organisations directly or indirectly involved in the protection and implementation o rightsor persons with disabilities.

8. CASE STUDES

The selected case-studies were collected in the rst Prole phase o the data-gathering process

and represent a ew interesting examples o the range o activities being undertaken by local civil

society actors in the eld o service delivery to persons with disabilities including mine/ERW

survivors. These examples do not necessarily include the respondents o the second Analytical

phase o data-gathering.

CASE STUDY : MNE AD, CROATA

Name o Organsaton:

MNE AD, CROATA

Target Group:

Landmne/

ERW survvors

Locaton o Actvtes:

Zagreb, BrodPosavna,

Karlovac, LkaSenj,

OsiekBaranja,

SsakMoslavna,

SbenkKnn,

VukovarSriem and

Zadar

Knd o Actvtes:

Psychologcal Support

(proessonal

psychologcal and peer

Support), Psychosocal

support (counsellng,educaton, rghts

awareness, eld vsts,

nancal ad,

scholarshps,

ncentves or

selemployment)

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24

Outputs o the seminar:

Exchange o key inormation on the jurisdiction o the organisations working on

protection and implementation o rights or persons with disabilities

Imparting o inormation on the basic rights o mine/ERW victims and survivors

Denition o key issues or upholding the rights and interests o mine/ERW victims

Establishment o contacts between seminar participants and delineation o rst

steps towards urther cooperation and collaboration

c) Organsaton o workshop Rehabltaton, employment and selemployment o

persons wth dsabltes 8 partcpants

Main Objective:

1. To educate mine/ERW victims on the available prospects and opportunities or

proessional rehabilitation, employment and sel-employment.

Outputs o the workshop:

Imparting o inormation on the services and acilities provided by the Croatian

Employment Institute and Fund or Proessional Rehabilitation and Employment

o Persons with Disabilities

Provision o relevant resource material and useul contact inormation to

workshop participants, who were encouraged to disseminate the inormation to

other persons with disabilities in their communities

d) Organsaton o the workshop ttled Expandng the network o psychosocal and

economc support, n Karlovac County and Ssak County (23 partcpants)

Main Objective:

1. To improve linkages between survivors and introduce them to the dierent available

orms and possibilities or psychosocial and economic support.

Outputs o the workshop:

Imparting o inormation about the existence and activities o the Association o

Mine Aid and the Croatian Mine Victims Association o Karlovac County

Participants made amiliar with the various orms o assistance and peer support

available

Identication o the needs o the participants in terms o proessional

psychological support and peer support

Imparting o inormation about planned project activities and economic

reintegration opportunities through the presentation o the upcoming project

Socio-economic reintegration o mine survivors in the community

Identication o interest or inclusion in the economic reintegration projectthrough concrete business development ideas.

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e) Feld vsts

Main Objectives:

1. To enable mine/ERW victims to gain better insight into their social environment

2. To provide adequate psychosocial support to individuals living in remote locations and

those who have mobility problems

3. To provide a common platorm to enhance communication and inormation exchange

between mine/ERW victims on their rights and opportunities

Field visits were made to Slavonski Brod, Bogdanovci, Vinkovci, Beli Manastir, Karlovac,

Plaskog, Zagreb, Gospic, Otocac, Sisak, Petrinja and Jabukovac, to a total number o 23

survivors, including approximately 60 members o their amilies, and the amilies o 2

mine casualties.

) Fnancal assstance

Main Objective:

1. To provide nancial assistance or basic medical needs and travel expenses incurred or

group therapy sessions

Outputs:

2 survivors and the amilies o 2 mine casualties were provided with nancial assistance.

Project : Support or the educaton o mne/ERW vctms

Duration: 12 months (June 2008 - May 2009)

Main Objectives:

1. To provide the nancial resources necessary to cover the basic costs o regular education

and the necessary educational programmes or the school year 2008-2009.

The target group or this project consisted o mine/ERW victims and covered about 27

individuals.

Outputs o the Project:

Identication o the educational needs o persons directly (through injury) and

indirectly aected by mines/ERW (members o their amilies)

Provision o nancial support or basic educational needs and additional

education or qualication purposes

Increase in the knowledge and skills o the beneciary group

Improved employment opportunities

Provision o support in terms o psychosocial and legal consultation

Building up o sel-esteem o mine/ERW survivors and their amilies

Completed by:

MARIA BREBER

Poston n organsaton:

Member o Presdental

Councl

Contact:

+385992771372;

mariabreber@

gmal.com

Organsaton:

MNE AD, CROATA

Number o years o

operatng n country:

Formally snce 2003

(7 years), but more

actvely snce March

2006 (4 years).

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CASE STUDY : ECO SPORTS GROUP, BOSNA AND HERZEGOVNA

The Eco Sports Group uses water and more specically, water sports as the

medium or the psychological rehabilitation, social integration and education o

persons with disabilities, although the organisation preers to use the term

psycho-physical well-being, reusing to label the participants as victims.

Eco Sports Group is the rst organisation in the world to use water sports such

as scuba diving and rating or the rehabilitation o large groups o persons with

disabilities. Through a new and innovative approach ocused on water sports,

which are even considered extreme to some degree, they have given persons

with disabilities rst o all, a eeling that they are worthy and that they can do

what others cannot, but they have also given them the means to apply this new

ound condence to their real lie situations, amilies and daily activities. Unlike

many others, they have taken persons with disabilities into the open

2010 sustainable 101

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