The Role of Innovation

8 Over the last three decades, the sector has come to realize the paramount importance of national ownership. National mine action programs in countries such as Afghanistan, Cambodia, and Lebanon have evolved from being heavily supported or led by international technical advisors to assuming complete responsibility for programmatic decision-making, with only limited support from the United Nations or other international stakeholders. National ownership has been decisive in ensuring that mine action be increasingly mainstreamed into governmental structures and programs, allowing synergies with ministries dealing with issues such as economic development, disability, and education. Thanks to the hard work of committed local actors and support from international technical advisors, local expertise and technical capacity have developed over the years. The process of strategic planning has played a significant role in supporting this evolution towards increased national ownership. Developing comprehensive national strategies, under the leadership of the national authorities, is instrumental to ensuring that all actors involved pull in the same direction and mobilize the resources needed for operational activities. In the same vein, the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention (APMBC) and the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CMM have promoted in recent years multistakeholder approaches that foster better planning, cooperation, and coordination at national levels: the so-called individualized and country-coalition approaches. At a technical level, the sector has managed to agree on, establish, and codify all of the key areas of mine action operations through the International Mine Action Standards (IMAS). The development of these global guidelines that outline good practice for mine action is unique within conventional disarmament—both in terms of the sophistication of their governance and in their uptake at the operational level within the sector. The IMAS have evolved to integrate learning; new policies, structures, and methodologies are adopted within a common, transparent, and accountable framework. The IMAS are integral to the high level of confidence enjoyed by the sector, an aspect of great significance given its particular role in helping to render communities safe from explosive hazards. The evolution of land release within the IMAS stands out as an example of the role that standards have played in moving mine action forward within a humanitarian framework. Land release represents the evolution of the pillar formerly called demining and an initial focus on removing (and counting) mines to a new approach that focuses on contaminated land and the socioeconomic consequences resulting from it. Land release also recognizes that removing contamination relies on both analytical and technical processes: non-technical survey (NTS), technical survey (TS), and clearance were developed as a system based on sound and transparent risk management and enhanced efficiency over an approach that required all land suspected of contamination to be demined or fully cleared. Millions of square meters of contaminated land have been cancelled from national databases as a result of better analysis and information gathering during NTS. This has saved millions of dollars in mine action resources, allowing for more meaningful investments and ultimately helping to save countless lives. The mainstreaming of gender and diversity (G&D) considerations at the strategic and operational levels has gained considerable traction in recent years, out of the imperative to ensure that mine action interventions include and benefit all. The sector has improved its ability to integrate G&D in its work and to ensure that the issue is addressed from both the ethical and technical dimensions. Today, operational teams routinely collect data on how different target groups are affected by explosive contamination and tailor resources to address these needs so that more people benefit from mine action. In addition, the transformative role of mine action toward empowering women is by now fully acknowledged. Mine Action in Motion