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The Center for International Stabilization and Recovery (CISR), formerly the Mine Action Information Center (MAIC), is a public policy center at James Madison University that manages information, conducts training, holds conferences and workshops, and performs research relevant to humanitarian mine clearance, victim assistance, mine risk reduction and other explosive remnants of war (ERW).
The CISR has a full-time staff that organizes faculty, students and other subject-matter experts into teams to address specific post-conflict issues.
The program began in 1996 under a directive by the U.S. Under Secretary of Defense for Policy to serve as a humanitarian demining information clearinghouse. In 1997, it was chartered as a Department of Defense Center of Excellence. Starting in 1998, it received support from the Department of State's Vietnam Initiative, and by 2001, the Department of State was the primary supporting agency. The center works internationally; its support network includes United Nations, Canada, Switzerland, and the Slovenia International Trust Fund. In 2008 the name was changed to the present title, and the scope expanded to include all explosive remnants of war and post-conflict recovery issues. Since February 2010 the center has been directed by Dr. Kenneth Rutherford.
The Journal of ERW and Mine Action is a print and online magazine for the global landmine, ERW and post-conflict community. It is published three times a year; the print magazine has a circulation of 1,500, two-thirds outside the US, and the online site receives 135,000 views annually.[ citation needed ] The journal contains editorials, articles, reports, reviews, profiles dealing with current practices, new equipment and techniques, procedures, lessons learned and newsworthy information. The Journal is written by field experts along with in-house contributions, and is funded by contracts from the United States Department of State's Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, and the United States Department of Defense's Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate.
“Pathways to Resilience” (P2R) is a regional leadership and training program for survivors of landmines and explosive ordnance injuries. The program's purpose is to develop self-confidence, emotional and physical health and life direction for landmine survivors while empowering them to help other survivors in their country of origin. The first P2R program hosted 29 landmine survivors for a week-long peer-support program in Hamama, Lebanon from May 8–15, 2011.
CISR, working in close collaboration with faculty from JMU’s College of Business (COB), specializes in management training for leaders in mine action around the world. The Senior Managers’ Course in ERW and Mine Action seeks to integrate the latest thinking in the field of business management with the practical experience of ERW/mine action operators. The goal is to hone the skills of senior managers of national ERW and mine action programs so that countries can more effectively and efficiently clear their lands of landmines and other explosive remnants of war that adversely affect their citizens' well-being and impinge upon economic development. From 2004 - 2013 CISR hosted 9 courses on the campus of JMU with 172 participants from 40 countries.
CISR has also conducted regional training courses in Jordan, Colombia, Peru and in May 2014 will conduct a training in Tajikistan.
The Global Mine Action Registry is a resource database of contact information on hundreds of mine-action organizations.
The International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) is a coalition of non-governmental organizations whose stated objective is a world free of anti-personnel mines and cluster munitions, where mine and cluster munitions survivors see their rights respected and can lead fulfilling lives.
The HALO Trust is a humanitarian non-government organisation which primarily works to clear landmines and other explosive devices left behind by conflicts. With over 10,000 staff worldwide, HALO has operations in 28 countries. Its largest operation is in Afghanistan, where the organization continues to operate under the Taliban regime that took power in August 2021.
Unexploded ordnance, unexploded bombs (UXBs), and explosive remnants of war are explosive weapons that did not explode when they were employed and still pose a risk of detonation, sometimes many decades after they were used or discarded. When unwanted munitions are found, they are sometimes destroyed in controlled explosions, but accidental detonation of even very old explosives also occurs, sometimes with fatal results. A dud is an unexploded projectile fired in anger against an enemy, but which has failed to explode. A projectile not fired in anger but which has failed to explode is called a 'blind'.
Survivor Corps, formerly known as the Landmine Survivors Network, was a global network of survivors helping survivors to recover from war, rebuild their communities, and break cycles of violence. The organization operated programs in Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Burundi, Colombia, Croatia, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Georgia, Jordan, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Uganda, Rwanda, the United States and Vietnam.
The Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) is an international civil society movement, which campaigns against the use, production, stockpiling, and transfer of cluster munitions. Cluster munitions, a type of munition stockpiled by more than 80 states, are documented to have caused significant civilian deaths and injuries and have frequently caused indiscriminate effects in both conflict and peace times. Their use is prohibited under the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions, a convention formally endorsed on May 30, 2008, in Dublin, Ireland, and was signed by 94 countries in Oslo on December 3-4, 2008. The Convention entered into force, becoming a binding international law on August 1, 2010, after 30 countries formally ratified it. As of January 4, 2012, it had been signed by 111 countries, of which 77 have ratified.
Peer support occurs when people provide knowledge, experience, emotional, social or practical help to each other. It commonly refers to an initiative consisting of trained supporters, and can take a number of forms such as peer mentoring, reflective listening, or counseling. Peer support is also used to refer to initiatives where colleagues, members of self-help organizations and others meet, in person or online, as equals to give each other connection and support on a reciprocal basis.
Fondation suisse de déminage (FSD) is a Swiss non-governmental organisation specialising in mine action. Since its creation in 1997, FSD has carried out operations in some 30 countries on four continents. Its programmes include the following four components: humanitarian demining, explosive ordnance risk education, victim assistance, and stockpile destruction and management. In 25 years, more than 1.4 million items of explosive ordnance have been neutralised by FSD.
A mine clearance organization, or demining organization, is an organization involved in the removal of landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXO) for military, humanitarian, or commercial reasons. Demining includes mine clearance, as well as surveying, mapping and marking of hazardous areas.
Aki Ra is a former Khmer Rouge conscripted child soldier who works as a deminer and museum curator in Siem Reap, Cambodia. He has devoted his life to removing landmines in Cambodia and to caring for young landmine victims. Aki Ra states that since 1992 he has personally removed and destroyed as many as 50,000 landmines, and is the founder of the Cambodian Landmine Museum.
ORDATA is a United States government database of landmines and other unexploded ordnance, developed to assist humanitarian demining work. The original version of ORDATA released in 1997 was CD-ROM based, and incorporated material from the earlier Minefacts program. ORDATA 2.0 was distributed on a CD-ROM and on the Internet. The database is hosted on the Center for International Stabilization and Recovery website, a part of James Madison University. In 2014-15 the interface underwent a revision and the data partially updated. The new site is known as the Collaborative ORDnance Data Repository (CORD) and is available online at https://www.jmu.edu/cisr/research/cord.shtml. An offline version is in development.
Kenneth R. Rutherford is the co-founder of the Survivor Corps, a group that helps the victims of war, and an American researcher in the field of political science. He is also a member of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which was the recipient of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize. Rutherford has served as the Director of the James Madison University Center for International Stabilization and Recovery, a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mauritania (1987-1989), a UNHCR Emergency Refugee Coordinator in Senegal (1989), and a humanitarian emergency relief officer in northern Kenya and Somalia (1993).
Mine action is a combination of humanitarian aid and development studies that aims to remove landmines and reduce the social, economic and environmental impact of them and the explosive remnants of war (ERW).
In the United States Department of Defense, Humanitarian Civic Assistance (HCA) is relief and development activities that take place in the context of an overseas military exercise, training or operation. Under the HCA program, U.S. military personnel participating in overseas deployments carry out humanitarian activities such as road and school construction, vaccination of children and animals, and well-digging. HCA programs are often executed with the involvement of host-country civilian and military personnel. U.S. National Guard or reserve units are involved in many HCA activities.
The Mines Advisory Group (MAG) is a non-governmental organization that assists people affected by landmines, unexploded ordnance, and small arms and light weapons.
The Uganda Landmine Survivors Association (ULSA) is a non-governmental organization, focused primarily on advocacy and victim assistance throughout Uganda. The organization was founded in April 2005 in order to campaign against the use, production and transfer of landmines, cluster munitions and explosive remnants of war (ERWs). ULSA also serves as a peer to peer support network for survivors, providing them with training in vocational, leadership and advocacy skills in partnership with other organizations throughout Northern and Western Uganda.
The United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) is a service located within the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations that specializes in coordinating and implementing activities to limit the threat posed by mines, explosive remnants of war and improvised explosive devices.
Golden West Humanitarian Foundation is an American Non-profit (501C3) organisation that develops technology to address the technical limitations of humanitarian mine clearance. The Golden West Humanitarian Foundation is based in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California.
Gender mainstreaming in mine action is the application of gender mainstreaming to mine action. It is increasingly being adopted by international and state mine action organizations.
ITF Enhancing Human Security is a humanitarian, non-profit organization founded by the Republic of Slovenia., which specializes in land mine clearance and post-conflict reconstruction. It was established on 12 March 1998 with the purpose of helping Bosnia and Herzegovina in its post-conflict rehabilitation, specifically with mine clearance and assistance to mine victims.
Project Masam is a multilateral humanitarian land mine clearance project in Yemen launched by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in June 2018.