At present, humanitarian* demining in most affected areas begins with a UN led emergency response. That is controlled by ex-pats, usually with a military background, and largely paid for by "ear-marked" donations from UN countries. Those donations sometimes take the form of staff and goods. At the same time as the UN arrive (and sometimes before) the specialist charitably funded clearance groups tend to move in, funded by individual government's aid budgets and/or Trusts and donor charities. The HALO Trust makes a point of being in dangerous areas first whenever possible. The Mines Advisory Group (MAG) and Norwegian People's Aid (NPA) are widely represented around the world and probably have the highest profile of the other "charitable" clearance groups. Following the charitable groups come the commercial companies. Some are regionally based, as with MineTech and Mechem in Southern Africa. Others may appear to be regionally based but are actually initiated by profit taking outsiders - as is increasingly the case in the former Yugoslavia (UXB International, for example). A few, such as the recently suspended Afrovita in Mozambique, are locally based, although sometimes run by naturalised outsiders. (It is reported that Afrovita has been recently suspended by the Mozambican National Demining Council for not delivering written SOPs for approval, but this situation may be temporary).
There are exceptions to the above in every affected region. The UN's Mines Action Centre Afghanistan is the most striking exception. It funds a group of semi-autonomous commercial demining** NGOs from its base in Pakistan, and by doing so has pre-empted the slow move towards commercial demining in evidence elsewhere.
While there are a few new charitably funded demining groups (such as MgM in Angola), most of the new players are commercial companies. Names such as Danex, Bac-Tech., ABC, ECC, EOD World Service, Gitec, Interim Mekong, Ribbands Expl Ltd., Search training Int., Tauber DeDeComp, join the familiar oldies like Bombs Away, Gerbera, and RONCO. With the massive funding available for work in the former Yugoslavia, European groups from equipment suppliers to EOD companies are keen to get involved and new allegiances and companies arise weekly. Elsewhere around the world the process is slower, but appears to be unstoppable. Both MineTech and Mechem are keen to operate outside Southern Africa, and MineTech have won contracts in Bosnia - breaking a tradition of one-way assistance by taking Africans to Europe to help solve the problem, but mostly it is a one way business.
One reason for the growth of commercial demining is that it can appear to be cheaper than the alternatives. Some remote funders may also believe it is more "professional". As far as cost advantages are concerned, a real cost comparison could only be made if you had identical areas cleared, numbers of devices found, land area opened up, operating conditions, terrain, vegetation, security constraints, speed, etc. In other words, meaningful cost comparisons are more than hard to get. Examples at the extremes of expense and cheapness do exist (see below), but as exceptions they are not a reliable guide. As far as "professionalism" is concerned, the well thought of companies are usually staffed by men who have worked in the charitable sector - so the same level of professional ability pertains.
Another reason for people establishing commercial companies rather than charities is simply that it is generally much harder to establish a charity than a company. The paperwork and search for initial funds can take far too long to get. So demining charities arise rarely, and when they do they tend to be headed by people with intense personal commitment, (such as the late Colin Mitchell, HALO; the McGraths, MAG; and Kruessen and Ehlers, MgM). Charities have to accept all manner of restrictions and require a peculiar persistent determination to get going.
High cost is often attributed to UN organised demining. This is not always down to the cost of the UN bureaucracy. For example, when a donor country supports demining in an affected region by sending the UN military Technical Advisors (TAs), the cost of each TA place typically runs to around US$200,000 per year. Often, each TA does a six month tour, half of which is spent learning the ropes when he arrives and preparing to hand over to his successor when he leaves. The TA may have gained experience, but he is unlikely to have contributed a great deal to the mine clearance effort. The cost of his input is inordinately high.
The above example relates to one UN scenario. MACA in Afghanistan is a contrast. The few TA ex-pat staff involved there are long-term and run a unique system that makes their demining costs per square meter among the lowest in the world (they claim the lowest but no realistic comparison exists). The MACA system came about because of UNOCHA deciding not to be based inside the country (its base is in Pakistan), and many other features of it are unique to the area so it could not be easily duplicated in another region. However, MACA costs are low partly because all the staff of the commercial demining companies it leads are local to the region and so paid at "local" rates. The local management of demining companies happens in Southern Africa too, where using a locally managed and staffed company can appear to be supporting the provision of an indigenous demining capacity as well as saving money, so can be attractive to donors looking for best value. Donor beware.
While all commercial demining companies share a concern to make a profit, there are huge differences between their working ethos. Neither the size of the company nor its country of origin are reliable indicators of its approach or its ethics. Some of the early commercial players were European based, as large as Royal Ordnance or as small as Rimfire, and still acquired a bad reputation. Rimfire went to the wall and Royal Ordnance keeps on. Many other commercial companies (with or without internationally experienced staff) have also behaved in a suspect manner but have avoided the spotlight.
Some commercial companies are run by people who have moved sideways from the charitably funded or UN sector and have both experience of on-the-ground demining and high personal standards. Some others are run by remote businessmen, or by ex-military men with little or no actual experience of demining. One high profile company is fronted by a "famous deminer" (who speaks regularly at conferences) whose mine-fame lies in having designed and marketed virtually undetectable anti-personnel mines (among other devices). Another is run by a man who trained an African brigade to carry out genocide in the late 80s. I give these examples of "characters" to make the point that these are not necessarily people who will take self-regulation as seriously as self-interest.
At the top of a sliding scale of humanitarian credentials in commercial demining, I cite the examples of Greenfield Consultants and Specialist Gurkha Services (SGS). Greenfield work in Angola and Kurdish Iraq (at least). SGS work in Mozambique and Cambodia (at least). They are very different organisations but have one important feature in common. When possible, they both work with development NGOs. Greenfield in Angola with CARE and SGS with Handicap International in both Mozambique and Cambodia. The safety records of Greenfield and SGS, incidentally, are reported to be excellent. Their senior staff are men with hands-on experience and appear to have the commercial insight to see which way the wind is blowing.
At the other end of the scale are cowboy companies that have been established to make a fast buck out of a "fashionable" donor area. These may lack concern for humanitarian issues but that does not necessarily make them bad at clearing ground. In between come varying levels of demining competence and indifference to humanitarian issues, sometimes varying within the lifetime of the same organisation. During my field research I have found some commercial demining companies that have laid mines to discredit other companies; laid obvious mines and ordnance in areas in order to get an easy clearance contract; left mines and ordnance that are clearly visible just outside the area they are clearing; and claimed that there are mines in a clear area for financial advantage. It all happens, or has happened. The question is not how to punish the companies that have behaved in this way, but how to control their future behaviour? One answer is found in the best examples - MACA, Greenfield and SGS.
MACA have TA staff on hand to make sure that standards are maintained and improved whenever possible. They are effectively acting as the humanitarian NGO partner to the commercial companies they support. Greenfield and SGS work alongside humanitarian NGOs, so having an external check to complement their own. And while the best companies may not require external regulation today, it is always conceivable that they would change hands or run into financial difficulties that changed their priorities, so some kind of independent quality assurance should always be built into a contract with a commercial company.
A few new players have entered the charitable NGO field with demining as only one part of their expressed purposes. The Irish newcomer HMD is an example in Angola. (HMD have not yet started work on clearing mines and rebuilding a hospital, so it is too early to judge how well the marriage of purposes will work).
When a direct association with a humanitarian organisation is not possible, it must be up to the funders to dictate the "humanitarian" part of commercial mine clearance. The funder should accept responsibility for checking every stage, from survey to "declared safe", and checking that the standards are applied to deminer equipment and working conditions as well as ground clearance. In an ideal situation the National Government or a UN team of independent assessors can assume this role, but this cannot be relied on to let the funders off the hook yet. National Government and UN moves to control standards have been made. For example, in Angola, deminers must either be trained by INAROEE or trained by an INAROEE approved instructor. Just as with CND in Mozambique, INAROEE must approve the SOPs of all demining groups - and there are examples of organisations failing in both countries so the test seems "real". Unfortunately, I hear that the same rigour is not applied to the INAROEE/UNOPS test of Quality Assessors in Angola and some "failures" continue to work there (presumably as a result of conditions dictated by remote funders!).
The approach of remote funders can often be questionable. Smaller funders may simply want to donate, feel good and forget. Larger donors may find all kinds of political considerations influencing their judgement. For example, when an organisation like the EU has decided to fund clearance in an area, there may be considerable loss of face and political advantage if they cannot do so. In those circumstances, local governments can impose all manner of unreasonable conditions and constraints (usually financial, but also on which organisation actually does the work) and the funder may be pressurised to accept those terms. This happened recently in Zimbabwe, where the contracts to both clear and QA the "Cordon Sanitaire" border minefield has been awarded very controversially. Obviously, funders should have the integrity to avoid political manipulation but their inability to do so is probably the responsibility of their political masters rather than the individuals directly involved.
Around the world, a sub-industry of Quality Control specialists has arisen. Some companies place experienced men in the field with the teams they are assessing, but at least one has been known to subcontract the work to a commercial clearance company who simply send in their spare deminers. So the assessors must also be subject to regulation.
Below, I suggest five ways that a funder could control the activities of commercial demining companies. Some of these will seem obvious. The reason I have included them is that they have all been overlooked in the recent past.
Assurance about the actions of commercial companies may best be achieved by their working alongside a non-commercial body which is relying on their work. It is not only that the one checks on the other. It is also that a sense of common purpose usually arises and this keeps the commercial company on course. MAG set the lead in terms of trying to integrate demining with general development some years back. It was obvious to them that their work would be better targeted and achieve a greater impact if they worked in close collaboration with other agencies in the area. As a charitably funded NGO themselves, it was relatively easy for them to "marry" with other charitable organisations - although the clash of military/development backgrounds has not always led to an easy life. The same clash of military/development backgrounds has been overcome by Greenfield and SGS in their work with development NGOs, so proving that it can be if the will is there.
Other charitable clearance groups integrate a general humanitarian concern with their work whenever possible (acting as couriers for medical equipment, making mines-awareness presentations, repairing road-bridges, etc) without making a thing of it (even HALO do this kind of work unofficially). Most UN regimes act similarly, integrating resources (officially or otherwise) for the greater good. An integrated approach to ground clearance has always been recognised, and extending that to supporting other development work is hardly revolutionary. Slowly the integration of charitably backed demining with wider regional development is becoming recognised as a way forward. Funders wanting to avoid the constant checks they must make on commercial companies, can write their cheques to those charitably funded demining groups with a good record of field activity (MgM, HALO, MAG, etc) or the UN's MACA with its unique approach to commercial humanitarian demining.
It seems likely that, if bureaucracy can be kept out of the equation, the integrated approach to controlling commercial demining by linking it to a development organisation may turn out to be economic, sustainable and mutually beneficial.
To sum up, commercial demining is burgeoning. Some companies have set a high standard. Some need to be regulated. A system of regulation could be imposed by the funder, the UN, or by linking the work of commercial demining companies with that of humanitarian NGOs. Examples of all three control systems exist as models, although the current models of remote control by the funder are less than satisfactory. Demining donors - governments, Trusts, or individuals - can be giving for many reasons. If it matters to them that the money is effective at getting ground cleared, they should look to the dynamic charitable or UN clearance groups, or the commercial companies with established humanitarian credentials.
The future I favour is the continued integration of demining with wider development aims - and with a place for commercial demining in that union.
Notes:
*"Humanitarian" demining is a loose description that seems to cover any ground-clearance that is not being done as part of a military operation. I use it more strictly. The OED defines "humanitarian" as "concerned with promoting human welfare" and the word "humane" as "benevolent, compassionate and merciful".
** I use "demining" to mean "ground clearance", the latter being the removing of all explosive material from a defined area.