ATC ORGANIZATION ARRANGEMENT

FUNDED

In 1989 ATC was established as the first humanitarian mine (and unexploded ordnance) clearance agency working as an “Implementing Partner” with the United Nations and its new mine action initiative.  The establishment of ATC in Afghanistan marked the first time that the United Nations had ever sponsored the training and maintaining its own  dedicated “Implementing Partner” for demining.  Those within the UN, who spearheaded this effort, believed that any successful demining agency would have to be modeled after, and ultimately would have to be competitive with, the best of the international organizations doing  clearance work.  From the beginning of their relationship the UN supported ATC in its efforts to become a credible force within the international arena of mine clearance. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ATC and the UN used the performance of the best and most competitive of the international commercial demining organizations as the benchmark by which they could measure their own success.  Within a few years ATC was outperforming these “benchmark organizations” as measured by both internal and external, quality control, performance and financial audits.  By the mid ‘90s ATC was being widely recognized not only for its demining expertise but for its expertise in providing logistical, financial and administrative support services to other humanitarian organizations working under the UN umbrella.  ATC has not only managed large non-demining projects, but has also managed and coordinated projects on which several separate and freestanding organizations have been brought together to work, in concert, on a single project; as ATC has grown and expanded, so has its set of organizational competencies.  By 1999 ATC had successfully bid on a quality assurance project in Northern Iraq.  Although Iraq, in the end, blocked the project from being initiated, ATC had, nevertheless, won the contract in competition with some of the very companies against which it had been benchmarked, only a few years earlier.  Using international “best accounting practices,” ATC continues to maintain and reinforce the firewall which separates the finances of its commercial and humanitarian projects.  Under the continuing auspices of the UN, ATC has grown into a mature and sophisticated international organization, which is ready and able to compete for both commercial and non-commercial projects, both within Afghanistan and internationally.  Although, from its inception, ATC has demonstrated the agility to quickly respond to new demands and challenges, the one constant in all of its endeavors has been a dedication to addressing the problems of societies damaged by military conflict.