Quote Originally Posted by redbullets View Post
Besides, why does more money go into Humanitarian Mine Action efforts in some places than into preventable disease?
Oh, I have no presumptions about the macro-rationality of donor assistance!

It does seem to me there are some aspects in which demining may have a certain "strategic" significance. Given the frequency with which transport routes, abandoned housing, economic infrastructure, etc. is mined, demining becomes essential for a range of related imperatives (refugee return, agricultural production, economic growth). Moreover, mines and UXO can be a major source of explosives, and so there is a military/counterterrorism implication here too.

None of which invalidates looking at IEDs as posing different sorts of challenges, as you propose to do.