Contaminated by: landmines (massive contamination), cluster munition remnants (light/unclear contamination), and other unexploded ordnance.

Article 5 Deadline: 1 January 2018
(Not on track to meet deadline) 

Signatory to the Convention on Cluster Munitions

The Republic of Angola reported a total of almost 129km² of confirmed mined area and a further 356km² of suspected hazardous area (SHA) as of mid-2014. International operators canceled 125km² of SHAs through non-technical survey (NTS), reduced 3km² through technical survey (TS), and confirmed 18km². They cleared 4.14km² of mined areas, destroying 3,800 antipersonnel mines. Land release figures for the Executive Commission for Demining (Comissão Executiva de Desminagem, CED) and commercial operators were not provided. 

The extent to which Angola is affected by cluster munition remnants remains unclear. There is no confirmed contamination, but a small threat may exist from either abandoned cluster munitions or unexploded submunitions.

Recommendations for action 

• Angola should continue efforts to work more closely with operators to improve the national mine action database so as to be able to plan effectively and to report accurately on land release.
• Angola should clarify and empower the management structure of the national mine action program, including the roles, responsibilities, and funding of the two mine action entities.
• Angola should increase its international advocacy to attract re-entry of donors and reverse the decline in international funding for mine action, and to compensate for the loss of national resources due to the deep financial crisis following the oil price crash in June 2014. It should update its national resource mobilization strategy accordingly, to ensure timely clearance in line with the Mine Ban Treaty Article 5 deadline and goals of the Maputo declaration by 2025.

Mine Contamination

Angola reported a total of almost 129km² of confirmed mined area and a further 356km² of SHA as of mid-2014. It has been unable to provide a more recent assessment of the problem.

Angola’s contamination is the result of more than 40 years of internal armed conflict that ended in 2002, during which a range of national and foreign armed movements and groups laid mines, often in a sporadic manner. Historically, the most affected provinces have been those with the fiercest and most prolonged fighting, such as Bié, Kuando Kubango, and Moxico.

All 18 provinces still contain mined areas. However, the precise extent of contamination is still not well understood in some cases. Based on the first results of a nationwide NTS, on which Angola reported in June 2014, nearly half of all remaining contamination is located in the provinces of Moxico (120km² across 447 areas) and Kunene (113km² across 168 areas). In the provinces of Bié, Benguela, Huambo, Huila, Kuando Kubango, and Kwanza Sul, all SHAs were recorded as confirmed mined areas as a result of survey by HALO Trust.[1] In Bié and Kuando Kubango, a considerable extent of suspected contamination was canceled by NTS or by eliminating discrepancies in the national mine action database.[2] As of 31 December 2015, HALO Trust reported that 475 minefields remained in its areas of operations: 80 in Benguela, 110 in Bié, 36 in Huambo, and 249 in Kuando Kubango, while Mines Advisory Group (MAG) reported 299 minefields remained in Moxico province.[3]

Landmine contamination affects some of the poorest and most marginalized communities in the country, including those experiencing chronic food insecurity.[4] In 2015, remaining contamination was predominately located in rural, underdeveloped areas.[5] Contamination continued to have a significant socio-economic impact for rural communities, as well as impeding the return of displaced persons and blocking access to land and water resources. International mine action operators reported that released land was rapidly being put to use by local communities for agricultural purposes and the development of housing and communal institutions such as clinics, schools, churches, and police stations, and in south-east Kuando Kubango, clearance was enabling future eco-tourism and social revenue-generating opportunities by returning national park and game reserve land to economic viability.[6] 

Cluster Munition Contamination

The extent to which Angola is affected by cluster munition remnants remains unclear. There is no confirmed contamination, but a small threat may exist from either abandoned cluster munitions or unexploded submunitions. Cluster munition contamination was a result of decades of armed conflict that ended in 2002, although it is unclear when, or by whom, cluster munitions were used in Angola.

As of May 2016, clearance operators had not found cluster munition remnants in more than eight years,[7] apart from HALO Trust, which reported finding and destroying 12 unexploded submunitions in 2012.[8] In 2011, HALO Trust and the National Institute for Demining (Instituto Nacional de Desminagem, INAD) affirmed that unexploded submunitions remained in Cuando Cubango.[9] In June 2016, however, HALO Trust reported that it had found only very few submunitions in more than 20 years of clearance operations across Angola.[10] Menschen gegen Minen (MgM) also reported that it had not encountered cluster munition remnants in nearly 10 years of operations in six Angolan provinces, including near Jamba an area in southeastern Cuando Cubango province where contamination might have been expected.[11]

More typical is the disposal of old or unserviceable cluster munitions identified by HALO Trust’s Weapons and Ammunition Disposal (WAD) teams in military storage areas, some of which were earmarked for destruction by the Angolan armed forces. Between 2005 and 2012, HALO Trust WAD teams reported destroying a total of 7,284 submunitions.[12] In May 2016, HALO Trust indicated that it had not been asked by the military to do any further destruction of cluster munition stockpiles since 2012.[13]

Other Explosive Remnants of War Contamination

There is also a significant problem with explosive remnants of war (ERW), especially unexploded ordnance (UXO). In 2015, during October more deaths and injuries resulted from UXO-related incidents than mine incidents in HALO Trust’s area of operations in Angola.[14] (See the Casualties and Victim Assistance country profile for further details.)

Program Management

Angola’s national mine action program is managed by two mine action structures. The National Intersectoral Commission for Demining and Humanitarian Assistance (Comissão Nacional Intersectorial de Desminagem e Assistência Humanitária, CNIDAH) serves as the national mine action center, reporting to the Council of Ministers. It also accredits NGOs and commercial demining companies. Under the vice-governor of each province, CNIDAH’s 18 provincial operations offices determine annual objectives.

The other mine action body, the Executive Commission for Demining (Comissão Executiva de Desminagem, CED), was established to manage Angola’s national development plan and is chaired by the Minister of Social Assistance and Reintegration (MINARS). It supports mine clearance in areas where development projects are a priority. In 2002, in order to separate coordination and operational responsibilities, Angola established INAD, which is responsible for conducting demining, verification, and training operations under the auspices of MINARS.

Tension between the two national authorities over who has the ultimate power to represent national demining efforts has persisted, to the apparent detriment of mine action.[15] Operators working under CED auspices remain reluctant to report to CNIDAH according to the agreed Information Management System for Mine Action (IMSMA) format. Part of the problem is that CNIDAH is still only a temporary governmental body. Transforming it into an agency would strengthen CNIDAH’s position, but this has been consistently delayed by lack of presidential approval.[16]

Strategic planning

Following a request by the Mine Ban Treaty Twelfth Meeting of States Parties, Angola elaborated a workplan for 2014–2017 based on the preliminary results of its national NTS. It projected clearance of 327 confirmed mined areas covering about 35.5km² by the end of 2017, proposing the following breakdown of tasks by operators (in the expectation that funding would be forthcoming):

• Local NGO APACOMINAS would clear 59 areas covering 5.2km² in Huambo, Kwanza Sul, and Malanje.
• DanChurchAid (DCA) would clear 12 areas covering 1.9km² in Moxico.
• HALO Trust would clear 155 areas covering 12.4km² in Benguela, Bié, Huambo, and Kuando Kubango.
• MAG would clear 29 areas covering 7.1km² in Moxico.
• Menschen gegen Minen (MgM) would clear 20 areas covering 2.3km² in Kuando Kubango.
• Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA) would clear 52 areas covering 6.8km² in Kwanza Norte, Malanje, Uige, and Zaire.[17] 

As described in Angola’s 2012 Article 5 deadline extension request, the national NTS and a mapping project designed to identify contamination and map ongoing clearance were intended to have clarified the extent of contamination nationwide before 2016. In May 2016, Angola announced a “Non-Technical Survey Completion Plan,” under which completion of survey/re-survey is expected by the end of 2016, with the survey results to be publicly presented in January 2017, in preparation for completing a first draft of a “final” Article 5 deadline extension request in January–March 2017.[18] (See Article 5 Compliance section below). However, according to MAG, as of October 2016, it was clear that additional resources, and several months in 2017, would be needed to finalize resurvey in Lunda Norte, Lunda Sul, Cabinda, Bengo, and Luanda provinces.[19]

Operators 

Four international NGOs conducted demining for humanitarian purposes in Angola in 2015: HALO (primarily in Bié and Kuando Kubango), MgM (in south-east Kuando Kubango), MAG (in Moxico), and NPA (in Malanje and Zaire, with support from APOPO in the province of Zaire).[20] DCA closed its operations in November 2015 due to lack of funding.[21] Humanitarian demining operators also included local NGOs APACOMINAS and Terra Mãe.

HALO’s capacity in 2015 included an average of 28 manual demining teams and three combined survey, explosive ordnance disposal (EOD), risk education, and marking teams. It employed some 400 staff, a decrease of 50 from 2014 due to reduced funding and clearance assets.[22] NPA deployed three teams of a total of 74 deminers at the end of 2015, along with two Mini Mine Wolf and four CASSPIR machines. It continued its partnership with APOPO, which used its mine detection rats on NPA’s tasks in Zaire.[23] MAG deployed one NTS team, six manual demining teams, one EOD team, and one mini-excavator for ground preparation, with a combined total of 148 staff at the end of 2015. It had to disband two demining teams in December 2015 due to reduced funding, and a further two teams in April 2016.[24] MgM’s operational capacity included one manual clearance team, and one mechanical team with two Armored Graders, one Wolf III Turbo Armored Personnel Vehicle, as well as two mine detection dog teams (MDDs).[25] In 2015, DCA had two teams for manual mine clearance, with ground preparation by a Minewolf.[26] 

Collectively, the four CED operators—the armed forces, the Military Office of the President, INAD, and the Police Border Guard—are working in all 18 provinces. They are tasked by the government to clear or verify areas prioritized by national infrastructure development plans.[27] A number of commercial companies[28] operate in Angola and are accredited by and report to CNIDAH, but are mostly employed by state or private companies to verify areas to be used for investment, whether or not they are known to contain SHAs.[29]

Information management

Angola has had persistent difficulties in gathering and managing accurate mine action data, making it difficult to have a comprehensive and accurate understanding of contamination. As a consequence, in 2007 to June 2014, Angola has provided widely different reports on the extent of its mine problem. In 2015, there continued to be two sides to Angola’s lack of a reliable mine action database: on one, CNIDAH’s database does not match NGOs’ own records; while on the other, CED operators fail to report to CNIDAH in the IMSMA format.[30]

While progress has been made over the years in reducing database discrepancies with NGO operators, Angola still needs to address database and reporting issues with CED operators. Operators did not report any significant improvements to the national mine action program’s information management capacity in 2015. MAG stated that due to internal issues within CNIDAH, updates to the database had been delayed and that as of May 2016, the database did not yet contain accurate data for MAG’s outputs in 2015.[31] HALO reported it had facilitated electronic transfer of updated data to IMSMA for Huila and Kwanza Sul provinces and archiving of some historical operator data, as had been previously done for the provinces of Benguela, Bié, Huambo, and Kuando Kubango in 2013.[32] In October 2016, however, MAG reported that an upgrade to the newer version of IMSMA, which occurred in February 2016, had not led to improved or more accessible data management.[33]

Quality management

CNIDAH is responsible for undertaking external quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC) of mine action activities, including QC of all completed tasks prior to handing over land to beneficiaries.[34] NPA, though, reported that in 2015 and through the first half of 2016, CNIDAH had not conducted external QC on any of its completed tasks.[35] MAG stated that CNIDAH visited clearance teams regularly in 2015, but was not aware of any sampling having been done.[36] MgM reported that only one external QC visit occurred during the year.[37] HALO indicated that QA at provincial level was generally weak owing to lack of funding and support. It also reported that while national mine action standards were in place in 2015, they were rarely monitored or evaluated.[38]

Land Release

The various problems with the national database, including the different reporting formats between CNIDAH and CED, make it difficult to describe in detail and with any degree of accuracy the extent of land released in Angola. Furthermore, clearance data for 2015, or the previous year, from the CED and commercial companies was not yet available as of October 2016, and CNIDAH did not respond to requests for updated data. Angola has also failed to submit any Mine Ban Treaty Article 7 transparency reports since 2014.

Survey in 2015 

International operators reported canceling nearly 125km² of SHA through NTS in 2015, and reducing a further 3km² through technical survey, while confirming as contaminated 274 mined areas with a total size of nearly 18km² (see table below).[39]

Antipersonnel mine survey in 2015[40]

In 2014–2015, HALO was requested by CNIDAH to resurvey Huila and Kwanza Sul provinces to update the national database, which still contained significantly high numbers of SHAs outstanding from the 2007 Landmine Impact Survey (LIS), and obtain greater clarity on the size of remaining contamination. Upon finishing its resurvey of Huila province, HALO reported 18 minefields remaining, including the fenced perimeter of Lubango airport.[42] Resurvey of Kwanza Sul province in 2015 allowed HALO to cancel 102 SHAs with a total size of more than 94km² from the database, while confirming 129 CHAs impacting over 8.6km².[43] HALO reported that the area had been previously surveyed by NPA during the LIS and then again to define a number of CHAs; however, despite the number of demining agencies, both humanitarian and commercial, that had operated in the province previously, the IMSMA database had not been updated with results.[44]

Clearance in 2015 

As set out in the table below, international NGO operators reported clearing a total of more than 4.1km² of mined area in 2015, destroying in the process nearly 3,800 antipersonnel mines, 1,200 antivehicle mines, and 820 items of UXO.[45] This is nearly double the area of clearance output from 2014, when the four NGOs cleared a total of 2.2km² of mined area and destroyed 2,665 antipersonnel mines and 461 antivehicle mines.[46]

Mine clearance in 2015[47]

Note: AP = antipersonnel; AV = antivehicle.

In addition to its mine clearance, HALO reported carrying out 209 EOD spot tasks in 2015, with the destruction of 47 antipersonnel mines, 26 antivehicle mines, and 1,482 items of ERW across six provinces.[48] NPA reported destroying 30 antipersonnel mines, nine antivehicle mines, and 3 items of abandoned explosive ordinance (AXO) during EOD spot tasks in 2015.[49] DCA reported clearing 21 items of UXO and 1,432 small arms ammunition (SAA) during seven spot tasks.[50]

MAG stated that due to a reduction in its number of clearance teams, it used a roving EOD team to reduce immediate threats in critical areas where clearance could not occur due to lack of capacity, and carried out 832 EOD spot tasks, destroying 88 antipersonnel mines, seven antivehicle mines, and 699 items of UXO, and visually cleared 54,820m².[51] MgM reported that in addition to its area demining in 2015, it re-opened 200km of roads previously closed due to the threat of mines.[52]

Deminer safety 

MAG reported that one deminer sustained light injuries from an uncontrolled detonation of an antipersonnel mine in January 2015.[53]

Mine Ban Treaty Article 5 Compliance

Under Article 5 of the Mine Ban Treaty (and in accordance with the five-year extension granted by States Parties in 2012), Angola is required to destroy all antipersonnel mines in mined areas under its jurisdiction or control as soon as possible, but not later than 1 January 2018. Angola is not on track to meet this deadline.

Angola’s latest extension request submitted in March 2012 was presented as an “interim period” during which efforts would be undertaken to better estimate the extent of the contamination and sort out database issues through a national survey and a mapping project to geographically represent the extent of contamination. Based on results of surveys and clearance, Angola plans to submit another extension request but has already predicted needing more than 10 years beyond 2018.[54]

The 2012 request indicated the size of the country, the different mine-laying techniques used, the fact that the locations and number of mines were not recorded, and lack of resources as the main reasons for Angola’s inability to comply with its initial deadline. Another significant impeding factor noted was Angola’s information management problems.[55]

In granting the request, the Mine Ban Treaty Twelfth Meeting of States Parties requested that Angola provide, to the Third Review Conference, updated information on the size and location of all mined areas identified during its NTS project, and asked Angola to submit a revised land release plan for the rest of its extension period.[56] Accordingly, in June 2014, Angola submitted its workplan for 2014–2017, which provided an update on progress in its national NTS and database clean-up, and set annual clearance targets.[57] Angola is way behind schedule in the tasks planned for its first extension period, but this is related to reduced funding. The NTS was due to be completed by 2013, and as of October 2016, activities were still ongoing.[58]

At the Mine Ban Treaty intersessional meetings in May 2016, Angola said the delay in the survey were “of great concern” to CNIDAH as it hindered Angola’s efforts to fully comply with its extended Article 5 obligations.[59] It pledged to complete survey in 2016 and prepare its next Article 5 deadline extension request by March 2017.[60]

The government of Angola was reported to have provided significant funding for demining in 2015, though this was almost exclusively in support of major infrastructure projects.[61] HALO and NPA reported that while this work was necessary, it was not addressing the provincial minefields that affect rural, poor communities, making assistance from international NGOs vital.[62] Despite not funding mine action by international operators directly in 2015, the government did make available in-kind support (free use of land for office space, institutional incentives such as tax exemptions on the import of goods, and land for building of staff houses).[63]

Angola has traditionally been one of the largest recipients of international mine action funding. Nevertheless, demining operators and officials have noted a critical decrease in financial support, and most worrying a disengagement of traditional donors such as the European Union (EU), with the exception of the United States (US) and Japan.[64] Collectively, the resources of the three largest operators, HALO Trust, MAG, and NPA, have decreased by more than 80% in 2008 to end 2015. DCA ended its operations in November 2015. This sharp reduction, combined with the national economic crisis brought on by the fall of oil prices, which has resulted in a decrease in government revenue by more than half, is jeopardizing the future of demining in the country.[65]

In 2016, HALO suspended its demining operations in Bié province, following the end of EU funding from the European Development Fund. This marked the first year that HALO would not have operational demining teams in Bié since it began operating in Angola in 1994. Bié remains one of the most mine-impacted provinces, with 110 confirmed mined areas.[66]

The Monitor gratefully acknowledges the contributions of the Mine Action Review supported and published by Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA), which conducted mine action research in 2016 and shared it with the Monitor. The Monitor is responsible for the findings presented online and in its print publications.