Current U.S. Funding Support

The U.S. spent $17 million a day (today’s dollars) for nine years bombing Laos.[xix] However, the U.S. has provided on average only $2.7 million per year for clearance in Laos over the past 15 years. Put another way, the U.S. spent more in three days dropping bombs on Laos ($51 million in today’s dollars) than they have spent in the last 15 years ($40 million)[xx] cleaning them up.

In Fiscal Year 2010, Congress designated $5 million specifically for UXO clearance in Laos, the largest amount allocated in any given year to date. According to the FY2010 Omnibus Appropriations Bill:

“Not less than $5,000,000 shall be made available for unexploded ordnance removal in Laos, and that not less than $3,500,000 shall be made available for similar activities in Vietnam. The conferees further direct the Department of State to plan for similar or higher funding levels for these purposes in subsequent fiscal years, similar to that proposed by the Senate.”

We applaud this specific allocation. It represented a tremendous step forward – or so we thought. Unfortunately, despite a specific Congressional mandate for $5 million for bomb removal in Laos this year and in subsequent years, the Department of State is only requesting $1.9 million for next year (FY11). [xxi]

The funding levels for UXO clearance in Laos have always been disproportionate to the magnitude of the problem. For comparison, below we list what we understand to be the amounts proposed for FY11 and allocated for FY10 by the State Department’s WRA for select countries:

Source: U.S. State Department PM/WRA[xxii]

These examples demonstrate the stunning disparity in WRA funding for UXO clearance programs worldwide. There seems to be little regard for the level of contamination in each country or the source of the UXO. Fifty percent of the worldwide UXO casualties occur in Laos.[xxiii] In many cases, the U.S. had no involvement in the conflicts that created UXO contamination. On the other hand, in Laos the U.S. was directly responsible for much of the problem. It is not clear why two programs that fall within the responsibility of the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs (Laos and Vietnam) are proposed to be cut so dramatically in FY11. The combined funding for all three Southeast Asian countries, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, in FY11 is equivalent to the funding for Angola alone.

http://legaciesofwar.org/resources/congressional-hearing-uxo-laos/channapha-khamvongsa-statement/