In Another World, You Are An Illegal Refugee With Nothing To Your Name

The Mae Toa Clinic on the Thai-Burma border is founded and run by refugees. The prosthetics department manager is an astounding and committed man. He does not make money and will never be able to buy his family a truck, or a home, or a vacation. His workshop lacks government funding and only survives by donation and outside funds.

Rice Mill Project Fires Up in Rural Cambodia!

Its not often that I actually get giddy by someone firing up a big 'ol diesel powered generator, but that's the emotion I settled upon as the most appropriate description, when they cranked up the rice mill the first time for me. Its not often, come to think of it, that I would even recognize a diesel powered generator or any of the multitude of tools and metal appliances which go into making a rice mill. And, yet, throughout the last few months, I've become more familiar with all things rice related than I ever thought possible.

Clear Path International to Assist Afghan Landmine Survivors As Part of U.S. Department of State Contract

KABUL, Afghanistan – Clear Path International (CPI), a U.S.-based humanitarian mine action nonprofit organization, has received a multi-year contract from DynCorp International to start a landmine survivor assistance program in Afghanistan on behalf of the U.S. Department of State.

U.S. reverses position and is now willing to negotiate a cluster bomb treaty

U.S. officials said they are willing to start negotiating a treaty on the use of cluster bombs, reversing their previous position that no new agreement on the weapon was necessary. But the United States still rejects a proposed global ban on the weapon, which 46 countries began negotiating in Oslo in February. Instead, Washington wants to negotiate another treaty, which goes less far, within the framework of the 1980 United Nations Convention on Conventional Weapons.

Clear Path International Issues Micro Loans in Rural Cambodia

Last Friday, Clear Path International and our Cambodian partner, Cambodian Volunteers for Community Development, issued micro loans, for the second time, to our farmer cooperative members, many of them landmine / UXO survivors, all of them desperately impoverished rice farmers.

Associated Press and YouTube: Agent Orange Still Haunts Vietnam, US

More than 30 years after the Vietnam War ended, the poisonous legacy of Agent Orange has emerged anew with a scientific study that has found extraordinarily high levels of health-threatening contamination at the former U.S. air base at Danang.

United States Campaign to Ban Landmines Expands Its Mandate to Include Cluster Munitions Advocacy

From the USCBL: We are pleased to inform you that the Steering Committee of the US Campaign to Ban Landmines recently agreed to expand the mission of the coalition to include advocacy toward a prohibition on the use, production, and transfer of cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians.

Traveling to the Clear Path International Vocational Skills Training Site for Landmine Survivors in Battambang Cambodia

I don't know that I will ever get tired of staring at the distinct shade of green specific to a crop of rice. If I worked for Crayola, I would make a crayon and call it "rice". It would be the best green ever.

Duane Nelson on the Thai Burma Border

The war, if you want to call it that, is deep-rooted, its got history, and it involves entire people groups and nations. How can I change anything?

Two New Volunteers Reach the Thai Burma Border

Duane Nelson is volunteering at the Mae Tao clinic in Mae Sot on the Thai-Burma border. Here is the first, of what I am hoping will be many, of his blog posts from the border!

Dutch Rehab Hospital Signs Agreement To Support Landmine Survivors on the Thai-Burma Border

Under a two-year agreement, the Dutch hospital will provide $30,000 in funding and facilitate the involvement of its professional rehabilitation specialists as volunteers in eastern Thailand where CPI has an active program fabricating prosthetics, offering physical therapy and providing full-time care for landmine accident survivors from Burma.