“They tell me, ‘I’ve never seen so many conflicts in my career,’” said Kazumi Ogawa, speaking at the end of a meeting of national mine action directors and U.N. advisers in Geneva.
Despite the clear need to continue demining work in the world’s conflict zones and those that are now at peace, “for various reasons, the level of funding in terms of humanitarian assistance has decreased,” Ms Ogawa noted.
Time bomb in Gaza
In Gaza, for example, a staggering 90 percent of people injured by the explosive dangers of the war between Hamas and Israel are civilians – “and of them, the majority are children,” he emphasized.
UNMAS has warned that between five and 10 percent of all munitions fired in Gaza have not detonated. The result is that potentially lethal unexploded ordnance is now “entrenched” in the devastated enclave, the head of the mine action service said.
“We can round up the explosive hazards and cordon them off in Gaza so they’re blocked off, but we can’t destroy them… And so they sit there in piles that children are expected to walk on.”
And he added: “There are parents who go through the rubble to try to get home and they find explosive devices and they don’t know what to do with them; they will find children who are playing, right, and they come across these dangers.”
More landmines were laid in Syria during the nearly 14-year conflict. (archive)
Lack of support
Despite such a massive threat, there is never enough support for demining and risk education, particularly today, amid a crisis of support for international agencies and bodies, including the UN, and an increase in the number of conflicts.
“The problem is that as budgets, national budgets, shift toward defense, for example, and away from humanitarian assistance, what we’re seeing is the effect of that on the ground,” Ms. Ogawa said. “So in Afghanistan, for example,A child dies every day.”
The problem is no less striking in Syria.
“Where normally there would be around 300 people killed by explosive hazards in a year in a given mine-ridden country, in Syria 200 people are dying every week,” the UNMAS director said.
“It’s unimaginable. And these are the kinds of things where donor funding would help us enormously: education about the risk of explosive ordnance, assistance to victims, the actual cleanup, advocacy to broader sectors of the humanitarian community… to ensure that these people remain safe.”
In addition to the human cost of landmines and other unexploded remnants of war, the economic impact is also a major brake on development.
A Demining Agency for Afghanistan (DAFA) Explosive Ordnance Risk Education trainer equips children with vital explosive hazard knowledge, Kunar province, Afghanistan.
Long term care
“If a child is maimed, you’re asking the family to care for that child into adulthood, the community to make allowances for that child as he or she becomes a participant in the community. I mean, it’s not just one person that dies, right?” Mrs. Ogawa explained.
The UNMAS Director highlighted the positive work supported by the UN around the world to combat landmines and other unexploded weapons, which is helping communities and nations to rebuild.
In Colombia, where there is a legacy of landmines and other explosive devices contaminated by decades of civil war, a national transitional justice mechanism initiative engages former combatants “to assist with the recovery and restoration of those communities, including through demining and mine action, victim assistance and risk education,” Ms. Ogawa said.
“It’s a way to incorporate: instead of penalizing ex-combatants by imprisoning them, it’s actually incorporating them into being part of the community.”
If you talk to the Special Jurisdiction for Peace in Colombia, what they are doing is super exciting.”
The Convention increases “safety and security”
The 1997 international treaty to eradicate landmines – officially known as the Convention on Anti-Personnel Landmines – has proven effective in banning antipersonnel landmines, but in 2025 and early 2026, several European nations began or completed the process of removing them.
The new Director of UNMAS highlighted the value of the Treaty and its relevance for everyone, everywhere:
“Let’s remember that we are not here just to adhere to international conventions for the sake of being able to say, ‘Oh, here’s one more country.’ It’s so that it can then filter down and create the conditions for people to live safely.”
