Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Disposal Of Explosive Ordnance And Environmental Risk Mitigation, Roly Evans, Andy Duncan

The Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction

Humanitarian mine action (HMA) survey and clearance operations have always focused on the contamination that can be seen. Whether it is anti-personnel (AP) mines, anti-vehicles (AV) mines, or explosive remnants of war (ERW), our efforts focus on removing items that pose an immediate blast and fragmentation hazard to humans. However, in certain circumstances, explosive ordnance (EO) also poses a significant environmental hazard, not least from the toxicity of its components, such as heavy metals and explosives. The understanding of contamination from EO in air, soil, and water has developed significantly in recent decades.[i] ^{[ii] [iii] [iv]} This has mainly …

Measuring Behavior Change Resulting From Eore And The Need For Complementary Risk Reduction Activities, Helaine Boyd, Sebastian Kasack, Noe Falk Nielsen

The Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction

Risk education (RE) in mine action has been around since 1992.[i] However, explosive ordnance risk education (EORE)[ii] operators are still struggling to measure how and whether EORE has resulted in positive behavior change.[iii] Of course, various monitoring and evaluation (M&E) methods have been pursued in the past, predominantly the use of knowledge, attitude, practice, and beliefs (KAPB) surveys; simpler pre-/post-EORE session surveys; the use of proxy indicators such as number of explosive ordnance (EO) accidents or victims; and number of explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) callouts from the community. However, these methods come with some limitations in accurately …

Whither Hma Policy: Linking Hma And Development Assistance, Lewis Rasmussen, Ph.D.

The Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction

In 1988 The HALO Trust was credited with coining the term “humanitarian demining” as it differentiated military demining in Afghanistan from efforts designed specifically to reduce the ongoing threat to civilians, livelihoods, communities, and public infrastructure in terms of post-war reconstruction. Since then, many donor governments began to shift policy and programming to reflect this distinction. As but one example, the U.S. established an inter-agency Humanitarian Demining Program in 1993, which included the Agency for International Develop (USAID). Unfortunately, for many years the demining and development assistance communities proceeded more along parallel tracks, acknowledging each other and vectoring off to …

Detonating The Media: Raising The Profile Of Mine Action, Paul Mccann

The Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction

In January 1997, Diana, Princess of Wales, travelled to Angola with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). She did not travel alone. Around ninety international journalists and TV crews accompanied her. It is unlikely that Angola’s sleepy second city of Huambo saw similar numbers of press until September 2019, when her son, Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, walked in her footsteps. The two visits, separated by twenty-two years, produced arguably the greatest amount of media attention ever achieved by humanitarian mine action (HMA). Comparable with the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention (APMBC) conference in December 1997, such exposure is …

The Journal Of Conventional Weapons Destruction, Issue 24.1 (2020), Cisr Journal

The Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction

• Mine Action on the Korean Peninsula
• Raising the Profile of Mine Action
• A New Approach to IMAS Compliance
• Disposal of EO and Environmental Risk Mitigation
• Explosive Ordnance Risk Education - Measuring Behavior Change

Confidence-Building Through Mine Action On The Korean Peninsula, Guy Rhodes, Ph.D.

The Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction

The Korean Peninsula is divided by a strip of land, the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), which represents the de facto border between North Korea, and South Korea. Contrary to its name, the DMZ is the most militarized zone on earth, and it delineates a stand-off between militaries composed of several million professional and reservist soldiers on both sides. It is the “Cold War’s last divide and one of the most symbolic barriers between two nations. It is also heavily mined with both anti-personnel and anti-vehicle landmines, and contaminated with unexploded ordnance (UXO) from extensive ground battles and heavy aerial bombardment.

This …

The Lethality Index: Re-Conceptualizing Ied Clearance Planning And Delivery In Iraq, Mark Wilkinson

The Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction

Explosive hazard clearance (EH) comes at a cost and, logically, with accountability expected as a quid pro quo both for those conducting and those funding clearance activities.[i] Today’s accountability problem arguably begins with the recognition that EH clearance, particularly in complex environments contaminated with improvised explosive devices (IEDs), differs radically from conventional mine action operations of the past, introducing various new factors that influence costs and cost-effectiveness. This, in turn, begs two questions: “What factors?” and “How are they measured?” Hence, before the mine action community can evaluate cost-effectiveness leading to accountability, it must first re-conceptualize clearance itself based …