On Tuesday, May 28, Mr. Dennis Barlow, director of the MAIC, made a short presentation to the Standing Committee about the workshop and the recommendations that were agreed by its participants. He announced that a special side meeting would be held the next day to further discuss these recommendations and invited all persons interested in the project to attend.

On Wednesday, May 29, Mr. Barlow met with a small group of people affiliated with the Organization of American States (Mr. Bill McDonough and Mr. Jaime Toso), Landmine Survivors Network (Ms. Becky Jordan), POWER: The International Limb Project (Mr. Michael Boddington), and the Geneva International Center for Humanitarian Demining (Mr. Alan Arnold and Mr. Eric Filippino). Ms. Mélanie Régimbal, co-chair of the Standing Committee on Victim Assistance and Socio-Economic Reintegration, also was in attendance.

Comments from the group indicated overall satisfaction with the length and level of detail contained in IMSMA's victim data forms. However, they agreed with the recommendations that some items could be clearer in their wording. Mr. McDonough stated that he viewed IMSMA as the proper tool for collecting and managing mine action information, and no one indicated any disagreement with this statement. Mr. Filippino and Ms. Jordan concurred that it would be good to take the different items to the operators who would use the particular data for their purposes in order to validate them for relevancy, as recommended by sub-group 1. Ms. Jordan also agreed with the criticisms of item 4.7; it was counterproductive to ask a victim if he or she knew that the area was dangerous.

Ms. Jordan was emphatic that the recommendation about the Ministry of Health's (MoH) responsibility for data collection is important, but the group recognized the need for the mine action center (MAC) or national demining office (NDO) to assist the Ministry of Health in achieving this mandate. Further discussion on this point raised questions about how much the MACs can invest in assisting the MoHs in doing this. Ms. Régimbal suggested that the MACs main function in helping the MoH was to facilitate the collection of data at the local or micro level and then leave the MoH to aggregate it for national use. Others agreed that the MACs can help collect data but the MoH should retain its role as supervisor of the data and its use. It was noted that MACs are the most energetic way of getting the data and sometimes the only way. However, concern was raised that the data must be made available in a timely manner to those who need to use it. It can often be hard for an NGO to get the data it needs from a MAC or the MoH.

Mr. Arnold, project manager for IMSMA at the GICHD, made clear that he was open to all comments and suggestions for improvements in IMSMA.