Because of the conflict there in the 1990s, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) has been plagued by landmines, unexploded ordnance, explosive remnants of war and all of the problems associated with them. With so many victims, the need for an organized system to help these people was imperative. In this article, the author describes how the Bosnia and Herzegovina Mine Action Center and other organisations helped establish an information system in BiH to help inform landmine victims about what they can do to help themselves and their families

Grujic, Zoran

English

James Madison University

Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction Volume 11 Issue 2 The Journal of Mine Action Article 26 April 2008 The VA Information System in BiH Zoran Grujic Bosnia and Herzegovina Mine Action Centre (BHMAC) Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/cisr-journal  Part of the Defense and Security Studies Commons, Emergency and Disaster Management Commons, Other Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration Commons, and the Peace and Conflict Studies Commons Recommended Citation Grujic, Zoran (2008) "The VA Information System in BiH," Journal of Mine Action : Vol. 11 : Iss. 2 , Article 26. Available at: https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/cisr-journal/vol11/iss2/26 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Center for International Stabilization and Recovery at JMU Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction by an authorized editor of JMU Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact dc_admin@jmu.edu. 2 | notes from the field | journal of mine action | spring 2008 | 11.2 11.2 | spring 2008 | journal of mine action | notes from the field | 3  in the meantime. National programmes often state higher numbers of middle managers than the estimate used in the TNA. The need for MMCs should be determined at the level of the respective national programme, through a more specific national TNA developed within the framework of a strategic assessment of the capacity development requirements of the national programme. Coordinators should design future training efforts within a strategic framework, comple-menting them with other actions to enhance the performance of the national mine-action programme. Among these facilitating actions should be guidance to international Technical Advisors to effectively support capacity devel-opment of national staff.Need for more frequent evaluation. More than six years elapsed between the first of the SMCs and MMCs and the initial overall review of such courses. The delivery partners wrote completion reports with each course or contract and the UNDP submitted completion reports to donors. However, while the desirability of assessing impact was recognised, an inappropriately long period transpired without evaluation, given that the UNDP spent some US$1.5 to $2 million, and others spent double that amount on this UNDP-initiated training programme. The impact of the manager training should be assessed more regularly at both the global and, more importantly, the national level. This review should include:• Follow-up on each course to assess its impact and the use of materials (at roughly three and 12 month intervals following the course) to recommend steps within the national programme to make better use of the learning, and to provide feedback regarding possible adjustments to the training.• Assessment of the impact of training on the performance of the national mine-action programme, especially from the perspective of the stakehold-ers who are dependent on the services of the mine-action programme. See Endnotes, page 112Charles Downs has worked in mine action since 1999 when he became the Chief of the Mine Action Unit of the United Nations Office for Project Services, a position he held until 2004. Current assignments include Survey Action Center Technical Advisor of the Angola Landmine Impact Survey, improvement of UNDP efforts to strengthen government capacity to manage projects of the Global Fund against AIDS, TB and malaria, advisor to UNDP/Colombia in design of its mine-action strategy and professor of international project management at New York University’s Wagner School.Charles Downs Principal, Downs Consulting Adjunct Professor  NYU Wagner Graduate School ofPublic ServiceBrooklyn, NY  / USA Tel: 1+ 646 763 2410  E-mail: charles.downs@gmail.comOslo Process Meeting Makes Progress in Banning Cluster MunitionsRepresentatives from 138 nations and 140 civil societies concluded the third major international conference on cluster munitions in early December 2007, noting that a cluster ban treaty will likely be signed in 2008. The conferees, meeting in Vienna, Austria, reported that important progress was made on issues like victim assistance, clearance, stockpile destruction and inter-national cooperation and assistance.Members of the civil societies came from more than 50 countries and praised the progress made at the conference. The need for standardized and monitored victim assistance was particularly important to these organizations, which sought consensus on assistance to victims and their families and communities, as well as on obligations to clear contaminated areas and stockpiles. Survivors of cluster munitions accidents also participated in the conference. The most contentious part of the conference concerned the prohibition and definition of a clus-ter munition. While some representatives wanted to seek a total ban on all cluster munitions, some countries called for exemptions to certain weapons with self-destruct capabilities and failure rates of a certain percentage. Other countries called for a transition period in which banned weapons still could be used. Despite disagreements over certain parts of a possible treaty, the conference ended optimistically.The Vienna meeting was preceded by a similar meeting at the end of May 2007, with more than 60 countries meeting in Lima, Peru. The Oslo Process continued in February 2008, and will conclude in Dublin, Ireland, in May. African countries met in March in Uganda to consolidate their posi-tion as a region. A treaty signing ceremony in Oslo, Norway, is expected for later in 2008. According to the Landmine Impact Survey, conducted in 2002 and 2003, mine- and UXO-contaminated locations directly impact the security of an estimated 1,376,000 people, 100,000 of whom live in highly-impacted communities in Bosnia and Herzegovina. From the beginning of the conflict until the end of 2006, there were 4,922 mine/UXO casualties in BiH. In the period from 1996 until the end of 2006, there were 1,577 mine casualties, out of which 463 persons were killed. For the period 2005–2007, there was an increase compared to the period of 1998–2003 of mine acci-dents with 35 victims, including 18 deaths.Demining has been taking place in Bosnia and Herzegovina for 12 years. Landmine victim assistance in BiH is even older—the first landmine victim-assistance activities started in early 1994. Naturally, the state had institutions that were expected to take care of the task, but it was unreasonable to expect them to contribute signifi-cantly in the middle of the war, which lasted from 1992 to 1995. Thus far, a number of different organisations have worked to pro-vide aid to landmine victims, either through stand-alone projects or by working with other organisations to support their activities. The com-mon denominator for all of them has been that they were gathering data and creating databases for their target groups and locations. Nevertheless, there was no coordination of any kind; at the end of the day, the landmine victim-assistance issue is all about cooperation, and this is difficult, given the complicated governmental structure of the country. Bosnia1 and Herzegovina has a rather unique governmen-tal structure encompassing one state, two different entities, 10 cantons within one of the entities and finally an independent district that is internationally supervised. In total, there are 14 different governments within the country. While mine action was under the authority of the United Nations Mine Action Centre, it was not possible to think about meaningful coordination between a nongovernmental organisation (U.N. Mine Action Centre) and a government organisation, so neither paid much attention to the landmine victim-assistance issue. In 1998 when the Bosnia and Herzegovina governments took over demining activities, landmine victim-assistance was not a point of concern. The Bosnia and Herzegovina Mine Action Center is recognized as a state coordinating agency for landmine victim-assistance activities and over the years has decided to conduct coordination through data sharing. After 2002, when the mine-action strategy was accepted and the need The VA Information System in BiHby Zoran V. Grujić [ Bosnia and Herzegovina Mine Action Center ]Because of the conflict there in the 1990s, Bosnia and Herzegovina has been plagued by landmines, unexploded ordnance, explosive remnants of war and all of the problems associated with them. With so many victims, the need for an organized system to help these people was imperative. In this article, the author describes how the Bosnia and Herzegovina Mine Action Center and other organisations helped establish an information system in BiH to help inform landmine victims about what they can do to help themselves and their families. to approach landmine victim assistance in a more serious, planned and systematic way became obvious, the Landmine Victim Assistance Sub-strategy was developed and incorporated into the Bosnia and Herzegovina Mine Action Strategy.2 In light of the existence of programmes that partly overlap services to targeted groups, which in turn leads to unnec-essary duplication of activities and inappropriate spending of available resources, stronger coordination of landmine victim-assistance projects and activities is necessary among state governments, regional governments and organisations. There is a need to have an information system available to all interested parties and to provide appropriate information to those who need it. Specifically, the new information system is designed to address the following:• Mine victims will get a reference database needed to define their status, present their needs and inform them of good and bad practices related to landmine victim-assistance activities.• BHMAC will obtain all the mine-incident locations for all victims (previously this information was available only for BHMAC-gathered data).• The donor community will have full oversight of all the projects, budgets required, final results of their donations, etc.• Organisations will have access to the victim data (locations, gen-eral info, needs, etc.) required to plan projects and will be pro-vided with the conduit to present brief forms of their projects to the donor community in real time.This system will ensure timeliness and consistency of programs and projects, coverage of all impacted areas, efficiency in the use of resources and an exchange of lessons learnt. Thus far, all stakeholders have been in constant agreement with regard to all the issues, so we think this integrated database will prove to be a positive endeavour for Bosnia. This process demands the creation of coordination tools. The results that BiH has achieved in the field of mine-risk education activities through an informational system make it clear that the main landmine victim-assistance coordination tool should also be an information system. This system will be available to victims, organisations and donors, and its existence will provide full transparency of all activities and needs in the landmine victim-assistance field. Complete information on landmine victim rights will also be easily available through database and Web presentation. Incident Victim Projects OrganizationsHelp neededTherapy dataAid givenInjury dataEducationConceptual SolutionGRAPHIC COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR1Grujic: The VA Information System in BiHPublished by JMU Scholarly Commons, 2008 | notes from the field | journal of mine action | spring 2008 | 11.2 11.2 | spring 2008 | journal of mine action | notes from the field |   victim-assistance activities coordination. Once signed, this statement will become the base point for further building of coordinated activ-ities for Bosnia and Herzegovina. In order to assure that all the data gath-ered is processed in timely manner, BHMAC, together with HOPE’87, an Austrian  non-governmental organisation, will open a data entry office that will employ four landmine victims as data-entry personnel. ConclusionEffective landmine victim assistance is a difficult task under the best of conditions and depends greatly on the efficient flow of infor-mation. To achieve coordination through data exchange, BHMAC undertook the tre-mendous task of compiling and organizing information on mine victims to better assess their needs. Getting numerous agencies and governments to cooperate and contribute was not easy, but the results of BHMAC’s efforts will have positive effects on all parts of the mine victim-assistance chain—from victim to donor to care providers, the new information system works to assure effective coordination of assistance. See Endnotes, page 112 Of course, the information system will be fully integrated into the Bosnia and Herzegovina Mine Action Information System and organised in a way to offer information to all interested par-ties. BHMAC will coordinate delivering and updating the data.The SolutionThe BHMAC information system was created to inform and start the information gathering and retrieval process needed by BiH rather than to pass judgment on previous systems. Taking all of the above into consideration, the guidelines for the system’s creation were to:• Cover all data gathered by all organizations• Avoid gathering medical treatment and other data that may be considered a privacy violation by the victims• Provide a system with enough information to make it a valid target-group assessment tool• Provide initial information on mine-incident locations to improve mine-action planning.• Provide landmine victim-assistance projects a planning tool with full transparency and traceability for landmine victim-assistance projects • Create a basic LMV questionnaire form• Create reporting forms in order to assure regular information flow from all stakehold-ers into the systemThe Central Database Elaboration Project for the support and coordination of landmine victim-assistance activities in Bosnia and Herzegovina was created and had all of its data verified in 2006. As a part of these activities, memoranda of cooperation were signed and data was acquired from various organizations.As shown in Table 1, the combined system includes 12,226 records; the oldest one lists an injury from WWII dated 1941 and there are approximately 350 records without a date. Qualitatively, there are 133 fields describing a mine victim. Using all applied information systems, only 28 entries were included more than 75 percent of the fields completed. During the process of data clarification, we determined the existence of a large number of records with the same name, but with other information described in a way that does not confirm that the records refer to the same person. These records were considered as unique. Consequently, the database contains 8,023 of these unique records as shown in Table 2.The Way ForwardHaving the information system software in place, the next task is to create and ensure the infor-mation-flow channels. In order to achieve this objective, BHMAC will create a working group with all the relevant ministries represented with the aim to produce a joint statement related to landmine JRC INT Jesuit Refugee Service 451HOPE ‘87 AT Hundreds of Original Project for Employment 1193Stop Mine BA 2386LSN INT Landmine Survivors Network 1711ICRC INT International committee of the Red Cross 4880BHMAC BA 1474LIS UN/SAC For BA 131Total 12,226Table 1Number of Appearance Number of Victims Remark1 52242 21783 4754 1155 236 57 1595 1 UnknownTotal 8023Table 2Zoran Grujić is currently the Chief of Information Technology at BHMAC. He first became involved with mine action in 1996 as Data Management Officer of the United Nations Mine Action Centre for Bosnia and Herzegovina. He is the originator and head program designer of the BHMAIS (Bosnia and Herzegovina Mine Action Information System). From 1998 to 2002 he held the position as the Assistant Director of Information for BHMAC. He holds a Master of Science in mechanical engineering and is currently finishing his master’s thesis for postgraduate studies in strategic management at the European Centre for Peace and Development. He possesses in-depth field experience in UXO removal and mine-action capacity building.Zoran GrujićChief of Information TechnologyBosnia and Herzegovina Mine Action Center Tvorni�ka 3 71000 Sarajevo / Bosnia and HerzegovinaTel: +387 33 253 858Cell: + 387 65 404 314Fax: + 387 33 464 565E-mail: Zoran_G@bhmac.orgWeb site: http://www.bhmac.orgThe efforts of the government of Azerbaijan and NATO to elimi-nate the country’s UXO problem resulted in an agreement between the NATO Maintenance and Supply Agency and the Azerbaijan National Agency for Mine Action. The agreement launched a joint project on clearing UXO and explosive hazards in the former military base at Saloglu in the Agstafa district of Azerbaijan in January 2006. The Saloglu Project was the first result of cooperation between Azerbaijan and NATO within the Partnership for Peace program. The role of Turkey as a lead nation on the Saloglu Project should be particu-larly emphasized—its experts have largely contributed to the project’s implementation through monitoring and technical supervision.The military ammunition warehouse located in Agstafa region, con-sisting of 138 bunkers, was the largest of the Soviet warehouses in the South Caucasus region. In 1991, when Azerbaijan regained its indepen-dence, the Soviet Army destroyed the warehouse before departing. As the result of the explosion, thousands of pieces of UXO, including those Operating with UXO Containing White Phosphorus by Ilham Azizov [ Azerbaijan National Agency for Mine Action ]This article provides a brief account of the unexploded ordnance problem in Azerbaijan and describes the particular hazards of dealing with UXO containing white phosphorus. Drawing from the experience of the Azerbaijan National Agency for Mine Action’s work at Saloglu, guidelines for handling WP UXO are discussed.Destruction of WP UXO with explosives underneath.ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF ANAMA EOD TEAMcontaining white phosphorous, were scattered over 4,400 hectares (17 square miles), posing a serious humanitarian, socioeconomic and envi-ronmental threat to the local population. Since the explosion, 152 UXO-related accidents have been reported, with 32 people killed. The project covers checking, clearance and removal of stock-piled UXO located at the towns Agstafa and Poylu of Agstafa district. After the implementation of the project, it has become clear that the problem is more serious and more difficult to solve than was initially thought by the international experts during their assessment missions to Azerbaijan. Obtaining some experience from the on-site operations conducted in the frame of the project, the ANAMA UXO operations team implemented a few new techniques for handling fuze-free UXO and devices containing explosives of various types, including those with WP. The following paragraphs present ANAMA’s experience garnered from operating with WP-containing devices. Operating With UXO Containing WP (White Phosphorous)There are few countries in the world affected by WP UXO stockpile contamination similar to what Azerbajan encountered during operations; Dedicated PPE for WP operations.2Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction, Vol. 11, Iss. 2 [2008], Art. 26https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/cisr-journal/vol11/iss2/26

The VA Information System in BiH

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The VA Information System in BiH

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