The HALO Trust
Linking Development To Mine Action
The HALO Trust supports strong links between development initiatives and mineclearance.
Mine-affected communities are often doubly disadvantaged because NGOs and other development actors are unable or unwilling to visit them. They desperately need help in catching up and rebuilding their social capital and livelihoods.
However HALO does not believe that it is appropriate to forcefully tie funding for mineclearance to the plans of development agencies. Mineclearance assets are expensive and need to be targeted first to the communities where mines are already known to be killing and maiming people and their livestock.
Often these are rural communities far from district centres, which are not easily targeted by city-based NGOs, who are seeking to achieve economy of personnel and vehicle movement for greatest effect.
Therefore the notion that demining should only take place where development is planned, is not only absurd, but can be positively dangerous and result in some of the most impoverished mined-impacted communities left with no mineclearance for another generation or longer. The mines are fixed – so both the mineclearance operators and the development agencies need to go where the mines are harming people.
That is why HALO talks of linking development to demining, rather than demining to development.
