Global demining work strained by rising conflicts and shrinking aid

This article is published in association with United Nations.

Demining experts from around the world have been sharing their collective shock at the widespread and growing threat from unexploded ordnance, the new head of the UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS) said this week. 

“They’re telling me, ‘Never in my career have I ever seen so many conflicts,’” said Kazumi Ogawa, speaking at the close of a Mine Action National Directors and UN advisers meeting in Geneva. 

Despite the clear need to continue demining work in the world’s conflict zones and those now at peace, “for various reasons, the level of funding has gone down in terms of humanitarian assistance”, Ms. Ogawa noted. 

Gaza timebomb 

In Gaza, for instance, a staggering 90 per cent of the people that are injured by explosive hazards from the Hamas-Israel war are civilians – “and of those, the majority of them are children”, she stressed. 

UNMAS has warned that between five and 10 per cent of all munitions fired in Gaza have not detonated. The result is that potentially lethal unexploded ordnance is now “ingrained” in the devastated enclave, the mine action service chief said. 

“We can gather the explosive hazards and we cordon them off in Gaza so they’re blocked off, but we’re not able to destroy them…And so, they sit there in piles that children are expected to walk around.” 

She added: “You have fathers that will go through the rubble to try to get home and find explosive devices and won’t know what to do with it; you’ll find children that are playing, right, and coming across these hazards.” 

Lacking support 

Despite such a massive threat, there’s never enough support for demining and risk education, particularly today, amid a crisis in support for international agencies and bodies including the UN, and a spike in the number of conflicts. 

“The problem is, as budgets – national budgets – are diverted towards, defence, for example, and away from humanitarian assistance, what we’re seeing is the effect of that on the ground,” said Ms. Ogawa. “So, in Afghanistan, for example, one child is killed every day.” 

The problem is no less shocking in Syria. 

“Where normally you would have maybe 300 people killed, through explosive hazards in one year in a particular mine-ridden country, in Syria, you have 200 people killed a week,” the UNMAS Director said.  

“It’s unimaginable. And these are the kinds of things that that donor funding would greatly help us with: explosive ordnance risk education, victim assistance, the actual clearance, advocacy to larger parts of the humanitarian community…to ensure that these people stay safe.” 

In addition to the human cost of landmines and other unexploded remnants of war, the economic impact is a significant brake on development too. 

Long-term care 

“If a child is maimed, you’re asking the family to take care of that child through adulthood, the community to make concessions for that child as he or she becomes a participant in the community. I mean, it’s just it’s not just one person dying, right?” Ms. Ogawa explained. 

The UNMAS Director highlighted the positive work supported by the UN around the world to counter landmines and other unexploded weapons, which is helping communities and nations to rebuild. 

In Colombia, where there’s a legacy of antipersonnel mines and other explosive ordnance contamination from the decades-long civil war, an initiative from national transitional justice mechanism involves former fighters “to help with the recovery and restoration of those communities, including through demining and mine action, victim assistance, risk education”, Ms. Ogawa said. 

“It’s a way of incorporating – instead of penalizing the ex-combatants by putting them in jail, it’s really incorporating them to be a part of the community.” 

If you talk to the Special Jurisdiction for Peace in Colombia, it’s super exciting what they’re doing.” 

Convention boosts ‘safety and security’ 

The 1997 international treaty to eradicate landmines – known officially as the Anti-Personnel Landmines Convention – has proved effective at prohibiting antipersonnel landmines but in 2025 and early 2026, several European nations initiated or completed the process of withdrawing from it. 

The new UNMAS Director stressed the value of the Treaty and its relevance to everyone, everywhere:  

“Let’s remember that we’re here not just for adherence to international conventions for the sake of adherence for us to be able to say, ‘Oh, here’s one more country.’ It’s so that it then trickles down and creates the conditions for people to live in safety and security.”