Anyone working in 'humanitarian demining' (HD) should understand how it differs from 'Humanitarian Mine Action' (HMA) - but many people who should know better use the terms as if they were synonyms.
I was recently asked what HMA is, how it differs from HD, and how humanitarian demining differs from military demining.
If I could have found this explained on the web, I would have simply provided a link to it. I could not, so I wrote my own answers. The resulting paper should be of interest to anyone involved in Humanitarian Mine Action.
This paper sets out to explain:
1) the difference between Humanitarian Mine Action and humanitarian demining; and
2) why humanitarian demining cannot be done in the same way as military demining.
It is also intended to explain why humanitarian demining cannot be conducted in isolation from the broader goals of Humanitarian Mine Action as a whole.
Click here to read the paper as a PDF file.