Poor planning and coordination of mine clearing operations by the United Nations has often hampered countries seeking to rid themselves of mines, according to a new report.

A study put out by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs contends that “poor management, compounded by inappropriate and unsupportive U.N. administrative and budgetary mechanisms, lack of forward planning and disputed lines of authority,” repeatedly have prevented a timely response to mines crises.

“One of the most critical deficiencies identified by the study team is the inability of the United Nations, in most instances, to provide the type of management and administrative support necessary for the rapid initiation of mine action programmes in war-torn environments,” the report says.

The study team, which last year reviewed U.N. demining operations in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Angola and Mozambique, produced its report titled “The Development of Indigenous Mine Action Capabilities.” While praising U.N. efforts to coordinate agency response to landmines problems, it calls its the overall U.N. performance “a mixed bag of inspired hard work, bureaucratic lethargy, and a very steep learning curve.”

Among the problems the world body has faced, the study argues, is that it has been involved in too few of the currently 64 conflict zones where more than 110 million mines are deployed.

“The United Nations must not wait for major political or military events to determine where it should mobilise international concern,” the report says. “It is not tenable that the U.N. is currently involved in only a handful of countries with mine problems.”

One way to improve U.N. field-level mine clearance, the report argues, is to have a national-level mine-clearance entity manage support activities, including budgeting, directly. Otherwise, the study team warns, U.N. support will often be marked by “painfully slow mobilisation, a reactive approach, and personnel and recruitment policies that are totally inappropriate to crisis situations.”

Beyond that, said team leader Robert Eaton, demining efforts have to concentrate not on the formidable military task of clearing every landmine, but on the more achievable humanitarian goal of removing the worst mines threats while building fences and training civilians to avoid less vital, mine-strewn areas.

“The issue is not the elimination of landmines — the issue is containing the terror,” Eaton said. The removal of all landmines, he noted, “hasn’t been done with the battlefields of the Second World War in Europe,” where long-term demining continues in countries like Belgium today.

The vital point, Eaton argued, is to establish priorities for areas that must be de-mined, such as key roads, dams and power lines; and then to “make tough decisions” over what other areas, like agricultural or grazing land, can be fenced off for the short term.

Such planning can drastically reduce the short-term problems of mine clearance, the study contends. In Afghanistan, for example, some 780 million square metres of land is mined – but only some 350 million square metres are “high priority” for clearance, according to a 1993 survey. All the high priority areas, the report says, can be “made safe for productive use in the next two to three years.”

“In Afghanistan, it is predicted that with this approach … the known mine problem can be dealt with even though the conflict and mine-laying continues,” said U.N. Under-Secretary-General Sergio Viera de Mello, the world body’s new emergency relief coordinator.

The United Nations is already taking up many of the study group’s criticisms and suggestions. Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Bernard Miyet argued that the call for “more inclusiveness and more cooperation” in demining is “exactly what we think is necessary” and what U.N. peacekeepers and relief workers are trying to do.

The U.N. Mine Action Service, now part of the U.N. peacekeeping department, said in a statement this week that a new Inter-Agency Coordination Group supported by Secretary-General Kofi Annan is already devising ways to improve management of mines efforts.

Among the report’s recommendations that have been accepted, the Mine Action Service added, is a “significant move to delegate authority to the field” and to assist the creation of national mines-clearance programmes in affected nations.

In recent years, Miyet argued, public and non-governmental support for the elimination of landmines has refocused the debate to allow for fresh approaches in addressing mines crises. “Now there is a renewed interest from the donor community” to address the problem, he said. “It was conceived as a technical problem for a very long time.”

Over the past year, however, awareness of landmines as a humanitarian, rather than technical or military problem, has grown, Viera de Mello noted.

Just a few years ago, he argued, it was unimaginable that nations would agree to a global ban on landmines – but popular pressure prompted nations to open a treaty to ban antipersonnel mines at Ottawa last December. The lesson, he said, is that “the war against landmines can be won.”