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Last Updated 14th October 2023.
Mine Action is a Protection “Area of Responsibility” (AoR). This means that it is not a designated global cluster like other sectors, but is an ‘Area of Responsibility‘ under the Protection cluster. This is similar to the Child Protection, Gender Based Violence, and Housing Land and Property sectors. However, unlike Child Protection and Gender Based Violence, there isn’t a clear ‘before’ and ‘after’ in the funding data in 2018 where the sector becomes ‘visible’. For these other two AoRs, data pre-2018 is unreliable and very small. However, for Mine Action, this is not really the case (at least pre-2017).
How much funding is the Mine Action sector forecast to receive in 2023?
Funding to the Mine Action sector is forecast to be between $156m and $256m in 2022. Our central estimate is $193m. For reference, the Mine Action sector received $133m last year.
This forecast is based on our 95% probability range. In other words, we are 95% sure that funding will be between $156m and $256m. Below are the other forecast ranges for the Mine Action sector. As we become less sure about our forecast, the range narrows. So for example, we think there’s a 50% probability that funding will be between $177m and $213m.
But we need to put this into context. What does the forecast mean in terms of reaching the funding that is required for the sector (also known as the funding requirement)? The total funding requirement globally is determined by how much is needed in each context. If you hover over the donut below you’ll be able to see the chances of reaching 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% of the funding that is required.
We think that it’s almost certain that the sector will receive 25% of funding required in 2022, and highly likely that it will receive 50% of what is required. The funding requirement is $341m – which is higher than any point in the last six years. This high requirement will make it difficult for the sector to reach the funding requirement in 2023.
How does the 2023 forecast compare to previous years?
Funding received by the Mine Action sector has fluctuated quite a bit in the last six years. Indeed, funding received had been in a cycle of ‘increase then decrease’ – that is until the sector more than doubled funding received last year.
The sector is one of the more volatile in terms of funding received. Most other sectors with large changes in funding received mainly have an upward trajectory, with increases year-on-year (apart from Emergency Telecommunications).
However, we think that the sector will outperform previous years in 2023. We think that funding will be somewhere between 46% and 75% of the funding requirement.
The Mine Action sector funding requirement has increased over the last few years. The requirement rose to a seven year high of $341m in 2023. Yet, the funding requirement is quite low compared to other sectors. Sectors with low funding requirements tend to be more volatile as they are dependent on a fewer number of contexts. Thus, if one context includes a funding requirement in one year, but then doesn’t in the next year, it has a greater impact on the change in the funding requirement.
What’s most remarkable is that there was no funding gap in 2019. This is a great achievement, and is one of only two times in the 2016 to 2020 period where this happened, the other being Emergency Telecommunications in 2017.
This also isn’t the first time we’ve mentioned the Emergency Telecommunications sector. It could be that sectors with a low amount of funding, i.e. below $100m, share similar characteristics: fewer contexts, thus more volatile funding requirements, more volatile funding into the sector, but also more likely to hit the holy grail of 100% funding requirement met.
Mine Action closed its funding gap in percentage terms in 2022. Will this continue into 2023? We’ve defined two consecutive years of a growing funding gap as a ‘real humanitarian recession’ in this story. Therefore, will the sector have a growing funding gap in 2023 and be on the cusp of a recession soon?
The answer is no. We think that it’s almost certain that the sector will experience real growth this year (closing the funding gap), with only a remote chance of a continuation of the humanitarian recession for the Mine Action sector in 2023.
How does the 2023 forecast compare to other sectors?
We’re fairly sure that the Mine Action sector will rank 14th of the sectors in terms of funding received in 2023. The sector is fairly low value (in monetary terms) compared to others.
The current state of things
Funding to the Mine Action sector by September this year had reached $118m – beyond the $75m the sector received in 2022. This is slightly unexpected. Previous years seem to follow a similar trend over the year, and whilst 2022 was a departure from this, it is difficult to know why 2023 has not fallen historical precedent.
In regard to previous years, we can see that 2018 to 2021 are actually quite aligned in terms of funding received, and how funding progressed throughout the year.
Features of the Mine Action sector in 2022
The average Mine Action response was funded at only 21% of what was required in 2021, which isn’t great. Four contexts failed to report any Mine Action funding – despite requiring funding.
In terms of successes, one context received over 100% of the funding requirement (Yemen), and another two contexts received over 50% of the funding requirement: Afghanistan (95%), and Somalia (85%).
This begs the question: why are some contexts more funded than others? Is it just year-on-year variation, donor preferences, underreporting, or something else? We’ll explore this in more detail in the future in our Stories section. We’re also currently working on an “Inequity Index” to measure the extent to which a sector is unequal – stay tuned!
One noticeable feature of this when we compare to other sectors is that there are only 18 identified funding requirements for Mine Action in 2022 on FTS. This is far fewer than many other sectors (Food Security had 41 requirements in 2022), and still fewer than Mine Action’s “AoR” cousins, Child Protection and Gender Based Violence (39 each).
The Mine Action sector has a number of donors who account for between 10% and 25% of the sector each, namely the Governments of Germany (22%), Saudi Arabia (22%), the USA (15%), and Norway (12%). Other contributors included the Governments of the UK, and the Netherlands, the CERF, ECHO, and the European Commission.
We can measure the diversity of a sector’s funding by using a metric called the Herfindahl Hirschman Index. On a scale of 0 to 10,000, a sector is unconcentrated with a score less than 1,500. Mine Action has a score of 1,446 indicating an unconcentrated sector.
In terms of those receiving funding, specialist Mine Action agencies receive much of the funding. This includes the specialist Mine Action organisations: HALO Trust (29%), Dynasafe (22%), UNMAS (11%), NPA (9%), CCCM – a Colombian Mine Action organisation (5%), and UNDP (5%).
Methodology
The usual health warning: FTS doesn’t capture everything. It is a platform that relies on voluntary reporting by organisations. But it is the most comprehensive source of data for humanitarian funding.
For forecast methodology, click here. We’ll be keeping a record of all our forecasts and success over time, which you can find here.
To find out methodology and sources for other things on this page which aren’t the forecast, click here.
Note: Numbers in ‘The current state of things’ graph may differ from elsewhere on the page as the data was extracted on a different date (8th July 2023) than other numbers that also show how much was received (i.e. the column chart).
