Sida's Contributions to Humanitarian Mine Action

This report examines the contribution of the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida) to Humanitarian Mine Action (HMA).

Sweden has lacked a specific policy guiding its support to mine action. Consequently, Swedish support to mine action has tended come as the result of ad-hoc decisionmaking rather than as the result of a cohesive policy position. In practice, Sweden's support to HMA has favoured mine clearance. Of its contributions over the past decade, Sida itself has categorized 85% as support for clearance activities. In its latest policy-intention document, Sida argues that support to mine clearance is important because clearance is the activity that eliminates mines and most effectively takes advantage of current Swedish capacities. More generally, Sida has emphasized the promotion of activities that help develop sustainable national capacities and to support the reorientation towards promoting impact in HMA. One of the conclusions of this report is that there is considerable need for Sida to develop a well-founded and comprehensive policy position in order to realize these objectives.