Long after the guns of war have gone silent, people around the world are killed or maimed every day by the "silent killers" of warfare -- the tens of millions of landmines, cluster bombs and other unexploded ordnance that litter abandoned battlefields, farmland and urban areas. Most of the victims are civilians, and many are children. Besides claiming more than 5,000 victims each year, dangerous war debris also prevents war refugees from returning to their homelands, stifles fragile economies and prevents farmers from planting crops or developers from investing in a nation's future. Many nations and organizations help the victims and work to ban, remove and disarm landmines and other "explosive remnants of war" (ERW). But questions are being asked about how best to help victims and whether enough is being done to destroy ERWs and stockpiles of banned chemical weapons.

Robert Kiener is an award-winning writer whose work has appeared in the London Sunday Times, The Cristian Science Monitor, The Washington Post, Reader's Digest, Time Life Books, Asia Inc. and other publications. For more than two decades he lived and worked as an editor and correspondent in Guam, Hong Kong, England and Canada and is now based in the United States. He frequently travels to Asia to report on international issues. He holds a M.A. in Asian Studies from Hong Kong University and an M.Phil. in international relations from Cambridge University.