CAMEO Landmine Clearance

1.1 Context. Since the second civil war in Sudan began in 1983, the United Nations estimates that 1.3 million Sudanese, primarily civilians, have died, four million Sudanese have become internally displaced, and hundreds of thousands more have fled to neighbouring countries where they suffer in refugee camps while awaiting re-entry into their now mine-strewn homelands. This "forgotten war" is also particularly vicious, with the UN's having recorded evidence of extrajudicial killings, slavery, forced labour, torture, and the kidnapping and abuse of children. Greatly exacerbating this suffering is the current famine in south central Sudan, particularly Bahr-el-Ghazal Province bordering on Equatoria.

1.1.1 Ironically, in the southernmost parts of the province of Equatoria, along the border of Sudan with Kenya, Uganda, and the Republic of Congo, lie arable lands which could be cultivated were it not for the land mine and unexploded ordnance (UXO) hazards there, effectively preventing the return of refugees and internally-displaced persons (IDP) despite the fact that the peace situation is considered by the UN to be stable there. The scene is similar in the towns.

1.1.2 There is also an urgent and immediate vital need for a para-medical capability in these areas, because women and children continue to become victims of land mines and UXO as they gather food and firewood. At the same time, there is an absolute imperative to create awareness and avoidance of mines and UXO.

1.1.3 At the same time, the literacy rate in rural women is only about 5%, and it must be raised if these informal and historical community leaders are to be able to educate others about mines and UXO, let alone use trauma kits.

1.2 Rationale. Operation Save Innocent Lives-Sudan (OSIL-S), which has the mandate from the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) which is the de facto government in these regions, to coordinate all humanitarian mine action and victim assistance, has asked CAMEO for help to build its capacity to organize and implement its mandate. This assistance will be at both the organizational (infrastructure) level and the working level. This proposed project forms an integral part of the working level capacity-building portion of the overall programme to raise OSIL-S' capacity. At the same time, this project will partially fill the large gap between the almost total lack of victim assistance at settlement level and the NGO/UN-sponsored field medical facilities at Yei and in Lokichokkio in northern Kenya. To date, few land mine victims have been able to be stabilized on site for transport to these medical facilities, resulting in their deaths due to gangrene and/or organ failure.

1.3 Project description. This project seeks to begin the creation of a mine awareness and victim assistance network for OSIL-S to tap into all available community resources to educate their client communities in mine awareness and the use of trauma kits for mine victims. Expatriate and indigenous NGOs already working in the area will be enabled to instruct their client populations at the same time as they fulfil their primary missions. Where no other NGOs exist,

OSIL-S will set up a community-based mine awareness cell along with education in literacy and training on the use of trauma kits.

- provision of ready-made portable trauma kits to OSIL-S for distribution to settlements in southern Sudan in the target areas of Kajo Keji, Yei, and Yambio;

- training OSIL-S supervisory personnel on the use and maintenance of these kits;

- provision of mine awareness materials to OSIL-S and assisting OSIL-S to empower rural women to provide a continuing mine awareness education in the target communities;

- assisting OSIL-S in its organization of its mine awareness and victim assistance programme; and

- working with UNICEF/OLS (Operation Lifeline Sudan) as an adjunct for assistance to OSIL-S and as a certifying and reporting agency for project implementation and accounting.

2. Objectives of the Project. CAMEO's overall objectives are to raise the capacity of OSIL-S to achieve its mandate of coordinating all mine action and victim assistance in the pacified areas of Sudan's Equatoria Province and to provide an advisory and training team to OSIL-S for ongoing programme coordination in order to reduce the high incidence of suffering and death. This project is the first of a series of projects which CAMEO proposes to implement over the next five years to achieve these aims. This project seeks to create and sustain a mine awareness and victim assistance capacity in selected communities in high mine hazard areas in Equatoria Province.

3.1 Upon project approval, CAMEO will engage its Public Health and Victim Assistance Director and an assistant on a full-time basis to go to Nairobi, Kenya, to discuss final project details with OSIL-S. She is already fully familiar with the overall requirements, having accompanied CAMEO's Executive Director and Chief Technical Officer on a reconnaissance to OSIL-S in January/February 1998. At the same time, CAMEO will appoint a logistician and

a clerk accountant to work full-time at CAMEO's Head Office in Cornwall, Ontario, to coordinate all administration for this project, including the acquisition of pre-packaged trauma kits and mine awareness packages from South Africa for delivery direct to OSIL-S. There will be no administrative delay on start-up, because these actions have been pre-planned and are only awaiting funding.

3.2 The main project activities are listed in para 1.3.1 above. The method of implementing these activities will be by OSIL-S personnel under the advice and coordination of the CAMEO Public Health and Victim Assistance Director and her assistant, a mine technical specialist. Should this project be approved in August 1998, it would begin on 1 September 1998.

3.3 The duration of this initial project will be from 1 September 1998 to 31 March 1999. The scope of the project allows for such flexibility because it is designed to be implemented on a continuing basis, as long as funding is

available, for a total of five years for OSIL-S to achieve full capacity in these areas of expertise. As the project continues into subsequent years, more areas of southern Sudan will be able to be targeted, with the accompanying increase in lives saved and mine incidents avoided.

4.1 The primary participants in this project are: CAMEO personnel, OSIL-S members, the southern Sudan Community Health Network (primarily rural women), UNICEF/OLS, and other expatriate and indigenous NGOs working in southern Sudan and their client communities. Project beneficiaries are primarily women and children who are at the highest risk from the land mine and UXO hazard.

4.2 The project is designed to help OSIL-S empower rural Sudanese women as the principal community health providers to cope with the land mine hazard in their communities by stabilizing land mine victims for evacuation to a medical facility and educating their communities in mine awareness to reduce the incidence of these unspeakable sufferings.

5.1 CAMEO personnel will work with OSIL-S personnel both in Nairobi, Kenya, and Yei, Sudan. Liaison will be maintained with UNICEF/OLS in Nairobi and the ICRC in Lokichokkio, Kenya, and with the Norwegian People's Aid medical facility in Yei. All deliveries of trauma kits and mine awareness materials from South Africa will be to Nairobi, which will be CAMEO's logistics base. From Nairobi, these items will enter southern Sudan either on UNICEF/OLS aircraft or by CAMEO/OSIL-S ground vehicle. Expected obstacles such as the non-availability of OLS aircraft will be circumvented by a flexible approach to transportation and pre-positioning of supplies in Sudan where secure storage exists.

5.1.1 Training standards will be those recommended by the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS).

6.1 Expected results include a decrease in mine and UXO accidents in target areas and a decrease in fatalities in those areas which have received trauma kits and medical/literacy training. Concrete indicators of success include the percentage distribution of trauma kits and mine awareness materiel to the target communities, and the provision of essential training to these communities.

6.2 In addition to a continuing victim stabilization capacity, this project transfers to local initiatives the expansion of the mine awareness network to beyond the immediate settlements visited and it leaves behind increased literacy in the rural women's network which has broad social and community advantages. This project can be readily extended in "modular" segments in follow-on projects, and to do so would achieve economies of scale should the extension be granted before the conclusion of the current segment on 31 March 1999.

6.3 The benefits from this initiative are very readily absorbed, not only by OSIL-S but also by the communities assisted, because they are basic lifeskills for living in a mined environment. OSIL-S partners will be trained also in project management and in administration and logistics.

7.1 Low risks not requiring specific detailed handling but rather only normal managerial oversight are in the technical, managerial, environmental, financial (including completing the project on-time and on-budget), and social risk areas.

7.2 Medium risk is found in logistics, where personal special attention must be paid to safe delivery and storage of supplies and equipment. It is also found in political risk, so CAMEO will have special procedures to deal with unexpected power shifts, and in gender risk, so CAMEO will have to be particularly sensitive to the cultural and societal limitations placed on Sudanese women as it seeks to raise their individual skills and recognized community worth.

7.3 High risk areas lie in security of people and goods and in living in a very disease-prone country. All CAMEO personnel, both expatriate and indigenous, will require full immunization, and will adopt a highly secure life style on project.

8.1 This project will be coordinated with UNICEF/OLS who have the essential contacts with the Government of Sudan (Khartoum), the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (not the SPLA) and its local NGO Operation Save Innocent Lives-Sudan (OSIL-S), and the local community authorities of the targeted areas. The project will also be coordinated with other expatriate NGOs working in the medical and women's issues sectors in southern Sudan (NPA, MSF, WODRANS, etc.).

9.1 CAMEO is a land mine practitioner NGO charity whose primary mission is to conduct mine action and victim assistance in war-torn societies. It is composed of former Canadian Military Engineers personnel who have extensive hands-on experience in UN mine action on the ground and extensive overseas administration and logistics experience (Cambodia, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Mozambique, Angola, and the former Yugoslavia, for example). CAMEO's Executive Director carried out a CIDA landmines study in Mozambique in 1996, and knows CIDA's particular needs.

9.2 Canadian visibility is assured in this project, because OSIL-S has chosen CAMEO as its primary partner in its mission to coordinate mine action and victim assistance in southern Sudan.

9.3 This project is highly innovative and catalytic for southern Sudan because no other practitioner demining NGOs are working in southern Sudan. The HALO Trust was there before, but has been replaced in all its functions by CAMEO, which will be the sole practitioner demining NGO working with OSIL-S and which will place Canada on a plane equal to that of the NPA in the Horn of Africa.

10.1 This project will be monitored on a continuing basis through e-mail and telecommunications between OSIL-S HQ in Kenya and CAMEO HQ in Canada. Evaluation of activities will be done at project mid-point and end-point, because the project duration is of only seven months (1 September 1998 to 31 March 1999).

10.2 Reports will be at mid-point and end-point in concert with the evaluation of project activities.

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Sudan Projects