There's an RFI at the end of this post. Moderator, please let me know if I should shift this over to the RFI section.

I have been exploring the humanitarian impact of IEDs upon civlian populations for the last year and a half. The humanitarian community has, by and large, been avoiding this issue. This is primarily a result of the principles of nuetrality that mainstream NGOs opeate under, and the lack of technical intervention capacity possessed by even the more advanced members of the Humanitarian Mine Action community.

I'm dropping a proposal tomorrow with a USG donor to conduct a study of IED victimilzation in three countries and craft an approrirate version of Mine Risk Education (MRE, what used to be called Mine Awareness) aimed at translating behavior modification strategies from the Humanitarian Mine Action community (and others, such as HIV Awareness) to threat reduction for civlian populations with significant IED exposure. Call it IED Risk Education (IEDRE).

My outfit has developed IED Awareness curricula in the past, and will include in this effort an exploration of strategies to protect aid workers in addition to the beneficiaries they serve. Seemed rather tragically timelly to have been writing this proposal when news of the Algiers bombing arrived.

Given our landmine survey work over the years, I started fooling around with some comparisons between our survey data and open source IED attack reports. A small example:

During the two-year period between 2004 and 2006 (our Landmine Impact Surveys examine the 24 month period prior to arrival of the data collectors), there were 12 landmine/UXO victims in Ta’meem (Kirkuk) Governorate. Of these victims, three were killed and nine wounded. On a single day during that same period, 15 June 2005, a suicide bomber struck in the city of Kirkuk. In this attack, 23 civilians were killed and nearly 100 wounded.

I'm raising this disparity within my own community largely because of the substantial amount of resorces directly toward Humanitarian Mine Action during the past 15 years. Not to say that this response shouldn't be happening, but that a similarly vigorous effort should be directed toward reducing the exposure of at-risk populations to IED attack, and toward public health response for victims.

I'm kicking out an OP/ED next week aimed at galvanizing a bit of interest and action within the relief and development arena, donors included, and will introduce four principles of humanitarian response to IEDs.

I'm interested in hearing folks' thoughts on this, and very interested in data sources (unclassified, or able to be declassified) that we might use as we drive this effort forward.

Cheers,