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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 …

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 …

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 …

A New Approach To Understanding, Achieving, And Demonstrating Imas Compliance, David Hewitson

The Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction

Mine action organizations routinely state that they are “IMAS compliant,” but it isn’t clear exactly what that means, how anyone knows with confidence whether they are compliant or not, or who is authorized to make such statements. This article draws on recent work by Fenix Insight Ltd. to database the requirements and recommendations found in IMAS, setting out a rigorous, evidence-based approach to answering key questions about the compliance status of mine action organizations. It suggests methods for determining which requirements are relevant to which organizations, what different levels of compliance there might be and how to integrate compliance checking …

Seventh Mine Action Technology Workshop: A Space For Innovation, Arsen Khanyan, Inna Cruz

The Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction

The 7th edition of the Mine Action Technology Workshop, a biennial event organized by the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining (GICHD), took place from 7–8 November 2019 in Basel, Switzerland. Titled Remote Sensing and Robotics in Mine Action, the workshop welcomed 165 participants from forty-nine countries, representing eight-five organizations.¹ It offered a platform to discuss and share ideas and experiences that promote the efficient use of innovation and technology in humanitarian mine action (HMA). This unique event is aimed at bringing together mine action professionals, manufacturers, national authorities, operators, and representatives from the United Nations as well as …

Understanding The Logic Of Rebel Restraint On Landmine Use, Henrique Garbino

The Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction

Non-state armed groups (NSAGs)² have become the most frequent users of landmines and the main drivers of new landmine contamination. Often portrayed as the “perfect soldier” due to their low cost, easy availability, and high lethality, landmines have become the weapon of choice of many rebel groups. An initial assessment by Geneva Call reported that, in 2005, at least sixty rebel groups in twenty-four countries had used mines. ^3-5 In contrast with state governments, rebels have considerably less incentives to comply with existing humanitarian norms.⁶ Engaging them in restricting or renouncing the use of landmines remains one of …

Developing A Sustainable National Training Capacity: Non-Technical Survey Training In Colombia, Marc Bonnet, Helen Gray, Giulia Matassa

The Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction

In January of 2014, the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining (GICHD) conducted its first non-technical survey (NTS) training course in Colombia with the objective of enabling participants to plan and conduct NTS. At the time, however, Colombia had the second highest number of landmine accidents in the world,[i] with non-state armed groups (NSAGs) producing explosive ordnance (EO) “mostly in the form of victim-activated improvised explosive devices.”[ii]Descontamina,[iii] the National Mine Action Authority (NMAA), planned for fulfilling its Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention (APMBC) commitments, and national dialogue was initiated on a Plan de Choque, “a plan of …

To What Extent Could The Development Of An Airborne Thermal Imaging Detection System Contribute To Enhance Detection?, Martin Jebens, Hideyuki Sawada, Ph.D., Junjie Shen, Erik Tollefsen

The Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction

Over the past two decades, several initiatives that involved research and development on sensor and detection systems have failed to successfully integrate with clearance operations and have not been able to help affected states overcome the humanitarian challenges caused by weapon contamination. Though initial tests were promising, when faced with the reality of the field, the technology often indicates shortcomings.[i] The terrain, dense vegetation, metal clutter, or other obstacles encountered in humanitarian mine action (HMA) pose challenges often greater than reliable target detection. Therefore, understanding the inherent challenges of a task is paramount when discussing the entry of new …

Endnotes, Cisr Journal

The Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction

No abstract provided.

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

Hma In The Gray Zone, Lt. Col. Shawn Kadlec

The Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction

How do the military, other government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and the private sector cooperate with each other when they find themselves conducting mine action tasks typically considered the purview of each other’s sectors?

A Twenty-Minute Walk Through Fallujah: Using Virtual Reality To Raise Awareness About Ieds In Iraq, Sandra Bialystok

The Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction

In January 2018, filmmakers from the studio NowHere Media travelled to Fallujah, Iraq, with the objective of creating a virtual reality (VR) experience to explain how improvised explosive devices (IEDs) are impacting people’s safe return home. In just a few days, they met dozens of people, all of whom had stories to tell. And then they met Ahmaeid—an Iraqi father who had returned home with his family about a year earlier. Ahmaied told them about the tragic accident that had happened just a few months prior when his two older sons entered a neighbor's home to collect wood and set …

The Journal Of Conventional Weapons Destruction Issue 23.3 (2020), Cisr Journal

The Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction

Southeast Asia | Risk Management | Cluster Munitions Remnants Survey | IMAS Training in Vietnam | Mine Risk Education | Victim Assistance | Underwater Clearance | Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality in HMA | HMA in the Gray Zone | IED Clearance Capacity in Afghanistan

Augmented And Virtual Reality For Hma Eod Training, Allen Dodgson Tan

The Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction

At the Golden West Design Lab in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, our team has been working on applying virtual (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies to explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) for approximately three years with the support of the Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement in the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs (PM/WRA). This work grew from our success with the Advanced Ordnance Training Materials (AOTM) program, which produces detailed and functioning training aids of ordnance fuzes using 3D printing technology. The AOTM products were able to provide new capabilities to training in programs across the world, and we …

Long-Term Risk Management Tools For Protocols For Residual Explosive Ordnance Mitigation: A Pretest In Vietnam, Katrin Stauffer, Christelle Mestre

The Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction

The transition from proactive survey and clearance to reactive risk management represents a crucial moment in the life of a mine action program. Relevant frameworks and standards, including the International Mine Action Standard (IMAS) 07.10, usually require that all reasonable effort is applied and a tolerable level of risk with regards to a mine or explosive ordnance (EO) threat is achieved in order to move to a residual state. Such transition requires the application of risk management principles, as stressed in the IMAS 07.14: Risk Management in Mine Action.

Cluster Munition Remnant Survey In Southeast Asia, Kimberly Mccosker, Jan Erik Stoa, Katherine Harrison

The Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction

Efficient and effective land release is a core global priority for MAG (Mines Advisory Group), Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA), and The HALO Trust (HALO), as significant and ongoing investment of resources and expertise continually improve procedures and approaches. Cluster Munitions Remnants Survey: Best Practice in South East Asia is the result of many years of close cooperation between MAG, NPA, and HALO on survey and clearance of cluster munition remnants (CMR) in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. Ahead of the 9th Meeting of States Party (9MSP) to the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM), held in Geneva in September 2019, operational and …

Providing Imas Training To Local Military Forces And Mitigating Long-Term Erw Risks In Vietnam, Allan R. Vosburgh

The Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction

Residual risk from unexploded ordnance (UXO) is a by-product of all modern conflicts. Developed by the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining (GICHD), the Management of Residual Explosive Remnants of War (MORE) program seeks to characterize risk and carefully examine the factors involved in reducing long-term risks from munitions.¹ MORE looks at many factors, including the impacts of time on munitions, explosives, and fuzing systems. Other critical considerations are the resources available to manage residual UXO and best practices from former conflict areas used to successfully overcome the risk reduction challenges. In Vietnam, the Golden West Humanitarian Foundation (Golden …

Game-Based Learning: An Innovative And Scalable Approach To Mine Risk Education, Ta Thi Hai Yen

The Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction

More than 40 years after the war, Vietnam remains highly contaminated with 800,000 tons¹ of landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXO) such as artillery shells, bombs, missiles, and mortars contaminating 6.1 million hectares of land. According to the Landmine & Cluster Munition Monitor, landmines and UXO were the cause of 129 deaths and 241 injuries between 2008 and 2017.² Survey findings show that children are one of the most high-risk groups in many provinces in Vietnam, including in heavily-affected provinces such as Quang Tri, Quang Binh, Binh Dinh, and Quang Nam.³ Since the end of the war, …

Improving The Prioritization Process Of Uxo Lao, Hayashi Ontoku Akihito

The Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction

Prioritization of clearance activities continues to be a central issue in the unexploded ordnance (UXO) sector in Laos. Although the government set a policy on prioritization, it has not functioned well as a guide for operators to prioritize their tasks. The majority of operators tended to prioritize their operations based on their past experiences. This has resulted in uncertainty about how to prioritize clearance operations and has led to a strong demand from stakeholders for greater transparency. UXO Lao, the national clearance operator, has implemented a trial to introduce a clear planning and prioritization process for operations in order to …

Community-Based Inclusive Development: Integrating Survivors Into A Broader Victim Assistance System, Bernard Franck, Donna Koolmees, Sarah French

The Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction

During the Vietnam War, an estimated 580,000 or more bombing missions were carried out over Laos, dropping two million tons of ordnance across the country.¹ This contaminated Laos with approximately 80 million items of unexploded ordnance (UXO),² including ‘big bombs,’ cluster munition and sub-munition bomblets, grenades, rockets, and other types of ammunition.³ There also remain an unknown number of landmines across the country which are further remnants of the war. Today, fifteen out of eighteen provinces and approximately 25 percent of villages are still affected.⁴ Between 1964 and 2017, 50,754 people were killed or injured as …

Explosive Ordnance In The Baltic Sea: New Tools For Decision Makers, Torsten Frey, Jacek Beldowski, Edmund Maser

The Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction

The global ocean economy is predicted to grow by more than 100 percent between 2010 and 2030. By then, more than 40 million people are going to be employed by the maritime industry.¹ Recognizing this potential, the European Union (EU) devised a “Blue Growth” strategy that seeks to reap the anticipated economic benefits.² While technological advancements allow for an increased utilization of marine resources, the newly gained access to untapped opportunities forces coastal nations to simultaneously face the challenge of explosive remnants of war (ERW) and chemical warfare agents (CWAs) in the sea.

A Real-Time Video-Streaming System For Monitoring Demining, Mohammed Al-Husseini Ph.D., Masoud Alipour Ph.D., Hassan Ghaziri Ph.D., Ali El-Hajj Ph.D.

The Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction

The most deployed detection technology for landmine clearance is the metal detector (MD).¹ Other detection technologies exist, such as ground penetrating radar,² chemical sensors,³ biological sensors,⁴ and infrared imaging,⁵ to name a few. However, despite their widespread use, MDs suffer from high false-alarm (FA) rates since they cannot differentiate between the metal components in a landmine and harmless metal clutter. Deminers using MDs usually rely on their personal experience to differentiate between the sounds emitted by the MD when scanning a landmine or an item of clutter. Usually, they continue to excavate on a large …

23.3 Endnotes, Cisr Journal

The Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction

No abstract provided.

The Development Of A Humanitarian Ied Clearance Capacity In Afghanistan, Alexander Tan

The Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction

Improvised explosive devices (IEDs) have been widely used in Afghanistan since the mid-2000s, presenting a significant and life-threatening hazard to the civilian population. As areas become free from conflict and permissible for humanitarian clearance, an effective response is required to protect civilians. With the support of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the German Federal Foreign Office, and in coordination with the Directorate of Mine Action Coordination (DMAC; the Afghan national mine action authority) and other stakeholders, The HALO Trust (HALO) has developed and implemented a successful proof of concept for manual clearance of victim operated IEDs (VOIEDs). While …

Impacts Of Giving Circles On Participants: Giving Style And Civic Engagement, Eric Thomas Busche

Showcase of Graduate Student Scholarship and Creative Activities

Giving circles are an emerging form of philanthropy in which members contribute and pool funding with the intent to distribute said funding to grantees, with such efforts often identified based on group-generated consensus with members voting on both what issues to address and which recipients to fund, in order to generate an increased impact on the grantee. Giving circles present a way in which individuals may exert greater control over the way in which their donations are appropriated without needing to donate relatively large sums of money. In this way giving circles may present an attractive option to individuals who …

From The Director, Ken Rutherford Dr.

The Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction

Having just returned from an educational leave for these past five months, I return energized and even more passionate about the work we have ahead of us in the humanitarian mine action (HMA) field. During this time, I had an opportunity to study the terror that landmine use caused civilians during the 1943-1944 Italian campaign and how many of those mines were cleared. They are stories not dissimilar from today’s conflicts, including in Yemen. On 13 June, the Embassy of the Republic of Yemen held a landmine briefing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., during which I presented on the …

The Challenge Of Managing Mine Action In Jordan, Hrh Prince Mired R.Z. Al-Hussein

The Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction

Over the course of two decades, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan worked diligently to rid itself of landmines despite monumental challenges. In comparison to other mine-affected countries, the difficulties that Jordan faced may have been miniscule, but for a developing country with minimal natural resources in a very volatile region of the world, the task was enormous. The initial estimate of landmines buried in Jordanian territory was over 300,000, the vast majority of which were laid by the Jordanian military along the kingdom’s western border after the 1967 Arab– Israeli War and along its northern border after the Syrian incursion …

Ieds And Urban Clearance Variables In Mosul: Defining Complex Environments, Mark Wilkinson Ph.D.

The Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction

More than any other post-conflict environment in Iraq, the complexity of west Mosul and its improvised explosive device (IED) threat challenges our fundamental perceptions and definitions of mine action. From here, 400 km (248.5 mi) north of Baghdad in the al-Maedan District on the west side of the Tigris River, ISIS ran its caliphate and made its ill-fated last stand against attacking Iraqi Security Forces (ISF).

Ammunition Stockpile Management: A Global Challenge Requiring Global Responses, Nora Allgaier, Samuel Paunila

The Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction

Ageing, unstable, and excess conventional ammunition stockpiles pose the dual risk of accidental explosion at munition sites and diversion to illicit markets, thereby constituting a significant danger to public safety and security. More than half of the world’s countries have experienced an ammunition storage area explosion over the past decades, resulting in severe humanitarian and socioeconomic consequences.¹ Thousands of people have been killed, injured, and displaced, and the livelihoods of entire communities have been disrupted. The humanitarian impact of unintended explosions is amplified when they occur in urban areas, as illustrated by ammunition depot explosions in a crowded area …

Key Performance Indicators And Hma: Time To Standardize?, Roly Evans, David Hewitson

The Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction

Measuring performance is the norm across a range of human activities. But is it a norm in humanitarian mine action (HMA)? Some might suggest that it is. However, if we measure our performance, it is unclear whether we do so in a standardized way so that meaningful comparisons can be made. HMA lacks standardized indicators, whether it is for items of explosive ordnance (EO) found and destroyed, m² of land released, or more general outcomes such as internally displaced persons returning to an area once cleared. Indicators can of course be ignored, misused, misreported, or misunderstood and some fear …