Finding Funds Constant Challenge

A SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT

Mine Sign

OF The CAMBODIA DAILY

At the best of times fundraising is a tricky business of wooing elusive donors. Finding money for demining and victim assistance in Cambodia has never been easy. In recent months, however, a tough job has got tougher.

The yard outside a building on one of Battambang town’s main streets is full of Toyotas four-wheel-drive vehicles standing idle. They are fully fueled up, their paintwork shines and they are maintained at peak performance. But they aren’t going anywhere.

They belong to the demining organization Mines Advisory Group, which expects to formally stand down 126 deminers on the first of November. Recently about $1 million funding from Britain has dried up, said Archie Law, country manager of MAG, which has an annual budget of between $4 million and $6 million. "There is a very real possibility that we will be out of Battambang in a month. And that hurts," Law said.

Cambodian Mine Action Center had to overcome a sudden gap in its funds when the Netherlands did not come through with money CMAC had been hoping for. "They say, ‘OK, that money is going to the floods in China,’ " said Sam Sotha, director of CMAC. By trimming expenses and postponing equipment purchases, Sotha said he plans to avoid cuts in staff.

Vehicles at MAG are idled by funding loss.

NOWHERE TO GO: Vehicles at MAG are idled by funding loss.

Managers say they are constantly scrambling for funds because often the money is pledged over for short term—two years, one year or even less—rather than a longer period, which would enable the deminers to plan their activities more effectively. "We need people to commit funding for five years. We’ll do the job for five years," said Law.

The problem is not confined to demining operations. Handicap International, which pays for demining advisers and runs victim assistance programs, is financed by short-term funding contracts, all of them lasting less than five years.

Marc Bonnet, Handicap’s country representative, said he hopes that as his operations become more entrenched he can extend the length of the grants. "Now we are at the time of moving from emergency funds to more long-term funds," he said.

There is strong competition to receive funds from a limited pool of donors. "I think it is very difficult because many countries are infested by mines," said Sotha. Cambodia is just one of a dozen countries badly contaminated by mines, and one of 63 affected to some degree.

Most donors are governments, or agencies such as the United Nations trust funds that serve as a conduit for money given by individual governments.

Although 126 countries last year signed the Ottawa Treaty banning landmines, program managers say while this made donors more aware of the issue, it has not yet brought more money. A number of countries such as Canada, which promised $100 million, have said they will give considerable assistance, but it is not yet been spent on the ground.

"Huge pledges have been made by governments across the world for mine action and we don’t believe it is getting across to the demining community," said Law. "It was almost a bit like full stop, the end. The problem is fixed." Nonetheless, there is still a lot of money being plowed into demining by the world community.

CMAC’s annual budget is $12 million, but bilateral in-kind grants of equipment and loaned advisers pushes that number to $25 million, according to the agency, making it more than four times larger than other demining groups.

One of the ways CMAC protects itself from the ebb and flow of funding cycles is by receiving its income not through the UN’s general trust fund devoted to demining, but through a special CMAC trust fund administered by the UN, said Sotha.

"I do not want money to go to the general trust fund in New York," he said. "It’s like you put salt in the sea."

Another strategy is to tie work directly to the projects of development NGOs. Worldvision International and Lutheran World Service both give money to fund specific clearance teams at MAG, earmarked for specific territories. "If we cannot find the minefield in their [working] areas we can go into wider areas, if we can find a minefield we think is higher priority," said Prak Sury, regional coordinator for MAG.

Victim assistance NGOs, which run workshops and clinics for the rehabilitation of amputees, have the additional task of planning for the day when they will pull out. However, the government seems unlikely to be able to take over the work of running clinics, regional managers say, and they are studying alternatives.

Though the UN estimates that $200 million a year is spent on mine-related activities, fund raising for Cambodia still takes a huge amount of time and effort.

Law said despite his best efforts, he hasn’t been able to make up the $1 million funding gap in the month that passed since he realized it was lost.

"We might be able to get 30 percent of the deminers back to work in April next year. I would say that is the best-case scenario," he said. But his trained workforce—some of the deminers have five years of experience—will surely drift off. He said losing expertise was bad, but worse is the effect the stand-down will have on people waiting for their villages to be demined. "It’s the people on the ground who cop it," he said.

Story & Photo by Douglas Grindle