CMAC - Cambodia

Five-Year Strategic

III. CMAC Background and Strategic Assumption

1. CMAC History

On the average, landmines and UXO maimed or killed over 600 Cambodians every month in 1992 when the Royal Cambodian Government and UNTAC established the Cambodian Mine Action Centre (CMAC) to rid the country of the calamity. The CMAC’s humanitarian mand ate is to clear land for resettlement of Internally Displaced People (IDP), agriculture, community development, and reconstruction of infrastruc- ture. Under the UNDP project of Assistance to Demining Programmes, CMAC grew rapidly from a small group of local deminers and a few international experts at the start in 1993 (when the group was known as MCTU), to a large

national organization that employed close to3,000 deminers and HQ personnel by June 1998. CMAC’s organizational structure for the Executive is established on four functional areas: Mine Awareness, Mine Verification, Mine/UXO Clearance and Training. The largest component of CMAC includes the CMAC demining platoons.

At its peak in 1999, there were 67 humanitarian demining platoons and three contract (development) demining platoons. Currently 48 normal and mobile platoons are deployed in six separate demining units in 8 different provinces. The CMAC function of minefield verification encompasses a number of discrete activities: survey, verification and mine marking. 16 EOD teams are deployed throughout the country to handle EOD tasks. In an important structural change accomplished during the year of 1999, Community Mine Marking has been moved under the Mine/UXO Awareness Branch. Training and re-training activities are now primarily conducted at the CMAC Training Centre in Kampong Chhnang.

The Royal Government of Cambodia has continued to be one of the most active supporters of the international movement to ban landmines. This was confirmed in 1997 when Cambodia became one of the signatories to the Ottawa Treaty on the total ban of landmines - one of the most effective and widely supported international conventions ratified through the United Nations. Through tireless efforts by the Government and the Cambodian Mine Action Centre, with generous support and contributions from donor countries, CMAC has been able to free hazardous areas of mines and UXO totalling to more than 90 square kilometres from 1993 to 2001. CMAC has found and destroyed over 148,820 anti-personnel mines; 2,930 antitank mines and 667,160 items of UXO.

In July 1998, Project Phase III Document to support Mine Action Programmes was signed between UNDP and the Royal Government of Cambodia. In line with the earlier phases, the Phase III Project had three components: (1) providing financial resources contributed by donors to cover CMAC’s operations in line with its humanitarian mandate and 1996-2000 Strategy, (2) channelling in-kind contributions of specialised military personnel contributed by donors to provide technical advice to CMAC, and (3) institution building in the areas of leadership, planning, administration and financial management, through technical advisors funded from UNDP core resources.

In the period 1993 - 2000, no less than USD 63 million was given to CMAC through the UNDP Trust Fund, not including the Government’s contribution of USD 1.76 million over the same period to CMAC and its Governing Council. The seven Immediate Objectives of the project were: Interventions for Casualty Reduction; Verification/Area Reduction Activities; Land mine and UXO Clearance Operations; Land mine/UXO Information and Planning; Ownership through Institutional/Corporate Development; Ownership through Human Resources and Capacity Building; and Regulatory Functions.

In 1999–2000, a number of negative audit and evaluation reports about CMAC were instigated by the Government and UNDP, and by mid-2000 considerable progress was made towards restoring donor confidence. However, a perceived lack of substantive consultation by the Government regarding the establishment of and appointments to the new CMAA on 4 September 2000, led to a further crisis of confidence. The holding of a National Symposium: Mine Action in Cambodia, on 16 November 2000, chaired by the Prime Minister, restored some confidence. Unfortunately, the flow of funds to CMAC was so low by early-October 2000 that 1,937 deminers and staff had to be retrenched. To introduce better management practices, the Prime Minister approved a revised structure for CMAC on 30 January 2001.

In 2000-2001, the Royal Government of Cambodia played a very important role in CMAC reform. A CMAC Reform Committee was established to develop recommendations for the Governing Council on reforms to be implemented in CMAC, which would enable the organization to recover the confidence of its donors, partners, and key players. A series of workshops were held to solicit additional input from upper and middle management of CMAC and also included partners, donors and all stakeholders in order to understand and address the needs of the Cambodian population, donor community and partners.

In 2002, the fourth audit of CMAC was carried out by KPMG for the period of 2001 and the follow-up audit on the previous audit recommendations (Audit Reports 1998, 1999 and 2000). The Audit Report 2001 released in August 2002 was a full financial and management audit of CMAC activities funded by the UNDP Executive Trust Fund and the Netherlands Government through Norwegian People Aid (two separate audits conducted by KPMG in 2002). The audit assessment result was “Partially Satisfactory” for UNDP Trust Fund and “Satisfactory” for NPA-CMAC Project in Audit Opinion. Compared to the previous audit assessments, it clearly indicates a major improvement within CMAC management as a result of the major changes in management practices and behaviour with efforts and commitments made towards improving policies and procedures, thereby ensuring transparency and cost effectiveness and maturing improvement of productivity.

2. Strategic Planning Analysis

Through Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunity and Treat Analysis (SWOT analysis), Political, Economics, Social Culture, Technology, Legal and Environment Analysis (PESTLE Analysis) and stakeholders analysis CMAC has gained a large experiences and lessons learnt in mine action both in management and technical skills. Based on historical data and the ICR Mine/UXO Victim report, the following factors have been considered when defining the 5 years strategy:

Resources for mine action activities are scarce when compared to the scope of the problem. Before the Level 1 Survey it was estimated that there was 2.900 km² of suspected mined areas. The clearance capacity of CMAC is currently about 10 km²/12km² per year.
The number of the civilian mine/UXO victims has not dramatically decreased over the past 10 years of demining activities:

Chart 4: Civilian and Military Casualties

The number of UXO victims has reached a proportion of 50 % of all mine/UXO victims. Tam pering caused 69 % of the UXO victims.
The 30 most affected districts by mine/UXO accidents account for 66 % of all casualties. According to the CMVIS (Cambodia Mine/UXO Victim Information System), "unlike mine casualties, UXO incidents tended to be more geographically spread, and during 2000, more victims involved in UXO incidents were recorded on the Vietnam-Cambodia Border and central Cambodia, than mines. Mine accidents in stark contrast were concentrated on the Thai-Cambodian border."

The two priorities of CMAC are to decrease the number of mine/UXO victims and to support development. However, the CRC Mine Victim reports have not been fully used for prioritizations of the mine action activities by the LUPU (Land Use Planning Unit).
CMAC has developed, or is developing, several tools to increase its flexibility to address specific needs: Community Mine Marking Teams, CBMRR (Community Based Mine Risk Reduction), Mine Awareness Teams, and the Quick and Multi-Skilled Reaction Teams.

Based on these elements, an overall strategy for CMAC should include the following aspects:

The UXO problem should be distinguished from the mine problem. As most of the UXO accidents happened through tampering, a large and consistent UXO awareness program should be developed, in conjunction with UXO clearance, to reduce the number of victims. Reporting channel of UXO by the communities should be discussed for further improvement. The CRC victim reports would be an indicator of success for such a program.
An effective Technical Survey should be at the center of CMAC’s activities to decrease the number of casualties, to release land to the communities, and to identify the boundaries of the minefields for further clearance. As a national priority, the Technical Survey should start in the 30 most affected districts according to the CRC Mine Victim reports. The priority should also take in account the government requirements in terms of macro-economic development activities.
Mine action activities should be carefully targeted to ensure an efficient and effective use of resources. The deployment of the resources should be balanced between development needs through the PRDC process and mine risk reduction. The PRDC should target its priorities on 1) infrastructure, such as roads, schools, pounds, hospitals…2) some settlement if required (bearing in mind that we should avoid settling new people in small areas surrounded by large mine fields, which put the population at risk). Rather, sufficient flexible resources should be deployed to address urgent needs identified by the communities at village level (CBMRR) and during the Technical Survey for risk reduction.
CMAC should deploy its resources in a cost-effective manner by using the toolbox concept for survey and clearance.

3. CMAC Strengths in Mine Action

CMAC has several strengths to conduct mine action activities in Cambodia and attract the donor support:

CMAC is a national institution which get the support of the Royal Government
As the largest demining organisation in Cambodia, CMAC has the capacity to deal with mine/UXO problems at national level
CMAC has about ten-year experience in mine action, including awareness, survey, mine/UXO clearance and training.
CMAC clearance cost is relatively low comparing to the mine action sector in general.

4. Strategic Assumption

Results from the Impact Survey, stakeholders, SWOT and PESTLE analysis and in order to support the Government Policy of Poverty Reduction, there is a real need for CMAC to continue to play its crucial role for saving lives and supporting development for Cambodia.