1999–2009 Overview

Since the entry into force of the Mine Ban Treaty in 1999, at least 1,100km² of mined areas and a further 2,100km² of battle areas have been cleared in more than 90 countries and other areas.^[1] Operations have resulted in the destruction of more than 2.2 million emplaced antipersonnel mines, 250,000 antivehicle mines, and 17 million explosive remnants of war (ERW).

In 2008 alone, mine action programs cleared almost 160km² of mined areas, the highest total ever recorded by Landmine Monitor. In May 2009, Tunisia formally declared that it had completed its clearance obligations under the treaty, the eleventh State Party to do so. The 10 others are Bulgaria, Costa Rica, El Salvador, France, Guatemala, Honduras, FYR Macedonia, Malawi, Suriname, and Swaziland.^[2]

Key Mine Action Terminology

A mined area contains antipersonnel or antivehicle mines or a mix of the two; such areas often also include items of unexploded ordnance (UXO).

A battle area is an area of combat affected by ERW but which does not contain mines. ERW includes both UXO and abandoned explosive ordnance.

Battle area clearance may involve only a visual inspection of a suspected hazardous area by professional clearance personnel, but is more often an instrument-assisted search of ground, i.e. using UXO detectors.

Clearance of mined areas refers to physical coverage of an area to a specified depth using manual deminers, mine detection dogs, and/or machines to detect and destroy (or remove for later destruction) all explosive devices found.

Land release means release of contaminated land through survey or clearance.

Survey in mine action means a formal process to identify areas containing mines or ERW.

Suspected hazardous area means an area suspected—but not confirmed—to contain mines and/or ERW.

Yet significant challenges remain in the ongoing struggle against landmines. Mine-affected states are required to clear all antipersonnel mines from mined areas under their jurisdiction or control within 10 years of becoming party to the Mine Ban Treaty.^[3] The first deadlines expired on 1 March 2009, but 15 States Parties with 2009 deadlines failed to meet them and were granted extensions.^[4] In 2009, four more States Parties (three with 2010 deadlines and one, Uganda, whose deadline expired on 1 August 2009) formally requested extensions for periods ranging from three to 10 years.^[5] By contrast, at the First Review Conference of the Mine Ban Treaty in 2004, States Parties pledged that by the Second Review Conference in 2009 “few, if any, States Parties” would require an extension to their treaty deadlines.^[6]

Scope of the Problem

With the Mine Ban Treaty already in force for 10 years, a reliable determination of the size of the global landmine problem still does not exist. Early estimates of the numbers of mines laid were merely speculative and often proved to be wildly inaccurate. Similarly, surveys, particularly some Landmine Impact Surveys (LIS), have overestimated the size of contaminated areas. Nonetheless, a more accurate understanding of the extent of contamination in both mined areas and battle areas does now exist, with many earlier estimates reduced significantly, largely as a result of more widespread land release procedures.^[7]

Mine contamination

As of August 2009, more than 70 states were believed to be mine-affected, as well as seven areas not internationally recognized (see table below). In the past year Landmine Monitor has removed two states from the list: the Gambia and Tunisia.^[8] Although any estimate should be treated with caution, Landmine Monitor believes that less than 3,000km² of land worldwide^[9] was mine contaminated as of August 2009. Increasingly, data gathering efforts are—rightly—seeking to define more accurately the perimeters of suspected hazardous areas (SHAs)^[10] and to ensure there is sufficient evidence of contamination for these SHAs to be entered into national mine action databases.

Mine-affected states and other areas as of August 2009^[11]

Africa	Americas	Asia-Pacific	Europe	Commonwealth of Independent States	Middle East and North Africa
Angola	Argentina	Afghanistan	Albania	Armenia	Algeria
Burundi	Chile	Cambodia	Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH)	Azerbaijan	Egypt
Chad	Colombia	China	Croatia	Georgia	Iran
Congo, Democratic Republic of the (DRC)	Cuba	India	Cyprus	Kyrgyzstan	Iraq
Congo, Republic of	Ecuador	Lao PDR	Denmark	Moldova	Israel
Djibouti	Nicaragua	Myanmar	Greece	Russia	Jordan
Eritrea	Peru	Nepal	Montenegro	Tajikistan	Lebanon
Ethiopia	Venezuela	Korea, North	Serbia	Uzbekistan	Libya
Guinea-Bissau		Korea, South	Turkey	Abkhazia	Morocco
Mauritania		Pakistan	United Kingdom	Nagorno-Karabakh	Oman
Mali		Philippines	Kosovo		Syria
Mozambique		Sri Lanka			Yemen
Namibia		Thailand			Palestine
Niger		Vietnam			Western Sahara
Rwanda		Taiwan
Senegal
Somalia
Sudan
Uganda
Zambia
Zimbabwe
Somaliland
21 states, 1 area	8 states	14 states, 1 area	10 states, 1 area	8 states, 2 areas	12 states, 2 areas

Mine Clearance

Advances are being made in demining efficiency^[12] with standard mine clearance tools that are rudimentary but practical. The primary clearance technique remains the manual deminer equipped with a metal detector proceeding slowly along one-meter-wide lanes. When a signal is heard, the deminer must stop and either the deminer or a colleague must carefully excavate the object to determine if it is an item of explosive ordnance or a harmless piece of metal. The overwhelming majority of signals lead to innocuous metal fragments being discovered (e.g. nails, barbed wire, and tin cans).^[13] This painstaking process—repeated thousands of times a day around the world—is why mine clearance is expensive and time consuming.^[14] The key to cost efficiency is minimizing the overall area to be cleared through good initial survey and ongoing refinement of the clearance plan for a minefield.^[15]

Other demining tools—especially mine detection dogs (MDDs)^[16] and machines—are widely used in mine action programs, particularly to contribute to more efficient land release rather than as a sole clearance tool.^[17] In Rwanda, for example, Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA) redeployed a MineWolf machine from its Sudan program in August 2008 to prepare approximately half a square kilometer of mine-suspected land for manual clearance by National Demining Office demining teams. At the end of the project in December 2008, the use of the machine meant that only 15,303m² (3% of the SHA, equivalent to about three football fields in size) needed to be physically cleared.^[18]

Clearance in 2008

Despite continuing problems in distinguishing true mine clearance from release by survey, Landmine Monitor believes at least 158km² of suspected mined areas were cleared in 2008,^[19] resulting in the destruction of 476,875 antipersonnel mines and 99,466 antivehicle mines.^[20] Greater precision is not possible due to the poor quality of reporting in a number of cases.^[21] The largest areas of land were cleared by mine action programs in eight countries—Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Croatia, Ethiopia, Iraq, Sudan, and Yemen—which accounted for more than three-quarters of the total recorded clearance (see table below).^[22] Mine clearance in 2008 increased compared to 2007, when programs cleared at least 122km² of mined areas.

Compliance with Article 5 obligations

Article 5 of the Mine Ban Treaty requires that each State Party destroy all antipersonnel mines in mined areas under its jurisdiction or control as soon as possible, but not later than 10 years after becoming party to the treaty. Ensuring full compliance with these mine clearance obligations is arguably the greatest challenge facing States Parties.

Since the last edition of Landmine Monitor and as of August 2009, one State Party declared fulfillment of its Article 5 obligations: Tunisia. This makes a total of only 11 States Parties that have declared fulfillment of their Article 5 obligations (see table below). At least three other States Parties could also be in a position to report formally they had fully complied with those obligations at the Second Review Conference in November 2009: Albania and Rwanda (both with 2010 deadlines) and Zambia (2011 deadline). Furthermore, Montenegro (deadline of 1 April 2017) is believed to have completed mine clearance operations, but no formal declaration has so far been made as suspected area still needs to be surveyed. The situation in Djibouti, whose deadline expired on 1 March 2009, remains unclear, ostensibly due to an unresolved border conflict with Eritrea.^[23]

There has also been significant progress in demining over the past 10 years in areas and states not party to the Mine Ban Treaty, notably in China, Iran, Lebanon, Morocco, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, as well as in Taiwan. Georgia and Libya have recently expressed a willingness to engage in further mine clearance operations on their territory.

Against this, 19 mine-affected States Parties have either missed their deadlines or have formally declared that they are not in a position to complete clearance operations before the Treaty’s 10-year deadline. One State Party, Uganda, declared at the Standing Committee meetings in May 2009 that it would meet its 1 August 2009 deadline, only to submit a three-year extension request on 19 August.^[24] Until States Parties decide on its request, Uganda will be in violation of the provisions of Article 5. Of particular concern, two of the four States Parties that formally requested an extension to their Article 5 deadlines in 2009 were unable to provide reliable figures for the extent of contamination (see table below).

In the case of Cambodia, a state that has had a mine action program since 1992, its initial extension request stated that available data did not permit a reliable estimate to be made and noted that a new survey would begin to determine the remaining contamination.^[25] The ICBL suggested that Cambodia follow the approach taken by Chad, Denmark, and Zimbabwe: to request a shorter period to conduct the relevant survey and data analysis, and then make a second request properly informed by a reliable assessment of mined areas. For Tajikistan, survey of SHAs is ongoing and the mine action center has noted that its final estimate of contaminated area may increase.

Several States Parties granted extensions in 2008 have since made disappointing progress.^[26] BiH failed to meet the first target set by its extension request, namely that by 2009 it was to have reduced the estimated area of contamination to 1,573km². To achieve this, BiH should have released 165km² of SHAs in 2008, but it achieved only a little over half of this amount (85km²) of which only just over 3km² was through clearance.^[27] Moreover, the extent of the remaining task remains unclear and the assumptions on which completion within 10 years are based appear unrealistic when compared with past performance.^[28]

By mid-2009, Thailand was already having difficulty meeting the goals it had set out in its extension request. The rate of demining by the national mine action center in the first half of 2009 (1.3km²) was well behind what was needed to achieve the projected annual rate (43km²), while the estimated area of contamination had actually increased as a result of survey (from 528km² to 562km²).

The request by Croatia estimated that at the beginning of its extension period in March 2009 it would have 944km² of suspect land, meaning that it would reduce its total SHA through clearance and technical survey by 53km² in 2008.^[29] Yet Croatia missed the target by 10.5km², releasing a total of 42.5km² in 2008 and bringing the total SHA down to 954.5km², still far in excess of probable contaminated area.^[30]

Ecuador and Peru have continued to make slow progress in clearing SHAs along their common border (both were granted eight-year extensions by the Ninth Meeting of States Parties).^[31] Both the United Kingdom and Venezuela, which were granted a 10-year and a five-year extension, respectively, have still to initiate formal clearance operations.

Future compliance with Article 5 deadlines is likely to be similarly disappointing. Based on progress to date, Landmine Monitor believes that the following States Parties are not on track to comply with the treaty by their respective deadlines: Mauritania (2011); Algeria (2012); Chile (2012); DRC (2012); and Eritrea (2012). In some cases, the problem is inadequate funding; more often, delays in initiating a program, poor management, and insufficient political will are the root causes. Colombia (with a 2011 deadline) will almost certainly remain contaminated with mines laid by non-state armed groups (NSAGs) as security concerns have prevented the safe clearance of some areas. Among States Parties with later deadlines, Iraq is a particular concern. Less than a year after it became party to the treaty as one of the world’s worst affected countries, Iraq not only had done nothing to mobilize resources needed to address its contamination but had even suspended all clearance outside Kurdish areas, raising serious concerns about the extent to which political leaders understood the severity of the problem or their treaty obligations.

In certain cases, there has been a lack of progress in demining contested borders (particularly in the case of Thailand/Cambodia, and Tajikistan and its neighbors): this is partly a result of a lack of clear delineation or demarcation of borders. Jordan, on the other hand, informed the Standing Committee meetings in May 2009 that, although a dispute over the border with Syria had not been fully resolved, the two countries had agreed demining could proceed unhindered.^[32]

Some States Parties have not yet acknowledged that they are legally obliged by the treaty to clear areas they control outside their sovereign territory.^[33] As of August 2009, neither Turkey nor Cyprus had formally accepted responsibility for clearance in northern Cyprus, which is occupied by Turkish forces. A statement in June 2008 from Moldova, which had raised hopes that it had acknowledged its responsibility for clearance of any mined areas in the breakaway republic of Transnistria, where it continues to assert its jurisdiction, was later disavowed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.^[34]

Finally, the extent of any mined areas containing antipersonnel mines in four states with Article 5 deadlines in 2009 and 2010 remained unclear (see table below); none has so far formally reported mined areas containing antipersonnel mines or requested an extension.

States Parties with Article 5 deadlines in 2009 and 2010 whose compliance is uncertain^[35]

State	Compliance issue
Djibouti	Clearance of known mined areas complete but no formal declaration of compliance; possible new contamination from combat with neighboring Eritrea
Niger	Antipersonnel mine contamination not confirmed
Namibia	Antipersonnel mine contamination not confirmed
Philippines	Antipersonnel mine contamination not confirmed

Explosive remnants of war contamination

With firm action having been taken to address the global threat from mines, today ERW still represents a huge challenge, with tens of millions of items of UXO and abandoned explosive ordnance (AXO) contaminating countries affected by armed conflict.^[36] For example, Lao PDR and Vietnam are still massively contaminated as a result of US bombing campaigns four decades ago, although no credible estimates of the full extent of contamination currently exist.

The adoption of the Convention on Cluster Munitions in May 2008 highlighted a specific threat that Landmine Monitor has reported on for many years—that of cluster munition remnants, especially unexploded submunitions.^[37] Although the full extent of contamination is still to be determined, survey and clearance operations in 2008 and 2009 revealed at least 27 states and three areas with some degree of unexploded submunition contamination on their territory, as set out in the table below. It is hoped that reporting under the new convention once it enters into force will clarify the global extent of contamination from cluster munition remnants.^[38]

States and other areas affected by cluster munition remnants as of August 2009^[39]

Africa	Americas	Asia-Pacific	Europe	Commonwealth of Independent States	Middle East and North Africa
Angola	Argentina	Afghanistan	Albania	Azerbaijan	Iraq
Chad		Cambodia	BiH	Georgia	Kuwait
Congo, Republic of the		Lao PDR	Croatia	Russia	Lebanon
DRC		Vietnam	Montenegro	Tajikistan	Syria
Mauritania			Serbia	Nagorno-Karabakh	Western Sahara
Sudan			UK
Uganda			Kosovo
Zambia
8 states	1 state	4 states	6 states, 1 area	4 states, 1 area	4 states, 1 area

Battle Area Clearance

Battle area clearance (BAC) seeks to clean former combat areas of ERW.^[40] BAC tends to be far quicker than mine clearance for two main reasons. First, in certain circumstances visual inspection of an area may be sufficient, sometimes without the need to conduct instrument-assisted search of the surface. Second, even when sub-surface clearance is deemed necessary, it does not need such sensitive detectors as are used for mine clearance: BAC seeks to detect far greater quantities of metal than occur in common antipersonnel mines and it does not normally have to leave an area metal free. Accordingly, operations endure far fewer false positive signals from harmless metal fragments and coverage of SHAs tends to be far quicker than mine clearance as a result.

Battle area clearance in 2008

Despite problems in ensuring that BAC is not double reported (i.e. sub-surface clearance is repeated in surface clearance figures), Landmine Monitor believes at least 270km² of battle areas were cleared in 2008, resulting in the destruction of more than 48,000 unexploded submunitions^[41] and some 2.3 million other items of ERW. The largest areas cleared by mine action programs in Afghanistan, Georgia, Iraq, and Lao PDR, which together accounted for 80% of the total recorded BAC (see table below).^[42] BAC in 2008 decreased compared to 2007, when programs reported clearance of at least 412km² of battle areas.

Clearance obligations under the Convention on Cluster Munitions

Under Article 4 of the Convention on Cluster Munitions, each State Party “undertakes to clear and destroy, or ensure the clearance and destruction of, cluster munition remnants located in cluster munition contaminated areas under its jurisdiction or control” as soon as possible but not later than 10 years after becoming party. Should cluster munitions be used after the treaty enters into force for a particular state, that state is required to fulfill the same clearance obligations “as soon as possible but not later than ten years after the end of the active hostilities during which such cluster munitions became cluster munition remnants.” Upon fulfilling either of these obligations, the relevant State Party is required to make a declaration of compliance to the next Meeting of States Parties.^[43]

Negotiations for the convention benefited from the experiences in implementation of Article 5 of the Mine Ban Treaty. The text is far more detailed as to reporting obligations in its Article 7 reporting on transparency measures, which will assist the future oversight of cluster munition clearance efforts. In particular, States Parties will be required to report on the size of areas both estimated to be contaminated and subsequently cleared, not just on the location of areas and the number of items cleared, as with the Mine Ban Treaty.

Clearance obligations under Convention on Conventional Weapons Protocol V

Under Article 3 of Protocol V on Explosive Remnants of War of the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW), after the “cessation of active hostilities and as soon as feasible,” each State Party and party to an armed conflict^[44] is required to “mark and clear, remove or destroy explosive remnants of war in affected territories under its control.”^[45] In addition, the users of explosive ordnance are placed under a special responsibility to record their use of these weapons, and to provide data and assistance for the clearance of any resulting UXO in territory that they do not control.

Land Release

If the mine and ERW problem^[46] is to be addressed efficiently, national authorities will have to develop transparent systems to reduce SHAs to confirmed mined areas. As the International Mine Action Standards (IMAS) on land release state: “on some occasions, land has been subjected to full clearance unnecessarily.”^[47] Any land that is not contaminated but is physically cleared represents inefficiency and a potentially huge waste of resources for a national demining program.^[48]

In part, land release is a recognition that some surveys have led to excessive estimates of the size and number of SHAs.^[49] Due to the efforts of many, particularly the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining (GICHD), which has spearheaded the development of land release processes along with the government of Norway and others, there is now a better understanding that an array of techniques in addition to full clearance can enable SHAs to be addressed efficiently and with a high degree of safety for both program personnel and the intended beneficiaries.^[50] These techniques include better information gathering and verification, and greater use of high-quality non-technical^[51] and technical survey.^[52]

Care must be taken, however, when applying land release to ensure that certain basic principles are followed.^[53] In particular, any land confirmed to be contaminated must be fully cleared to humanitarian standards to meet the requirements of the Mine Ban Treaty, and the process of land release by both technical and non-technical means must be accountable and follow applicable mine action standards.^[54]

Techniques

The IMAS on land release describes the approach as “an evidence-based information assessment process that can help determine with confidence which land needs to be cleared and which does not.”^[55] It adds new terms—and potentially new interventions—to the mine action lexicon (and therefore also to the mine action database). The term “Confirmed Hazardous Area” (CHA) refers to “an area identified by a non-technical survey in which the necessity for further intervention through either technical survey or clearance has been confirmed.” The term “Defined Hazardous Area” (DHA) refers to “an area, generally within a CHA, that requires full clearance. A DHA is normally identified through thorough survey.”^[56] Thus, a SHA should be subjected to non-technical survey to either confirm or discredit suspicions of the presence of mines. If no—or possibly scant^[57]—evidence is found, the land is cancelled. If, on the other hand, evidence of contamination is found, the area is normally defined as a CHA^[58] and is then subjected to technical survey. Technical survey then reduces the CHA to a DHA, which is then subjected to full clearance.^[59] All stages of the land release process must be carefully documented.

Achievements

A paper by Norway in July 2008 concluded that: “States Parties [to the Mine Ban Treaty] should acknowledge that land reassessment and release through non-technical means, when undertaken in accordance with high quality national policies and standards that incorporate key principles highlighted in this paper, is not a short-cut to implementing Article 5.1 but rather is a means to more expediently release, with confidence, areas at one time deemed to be ‘mined areas’.”^[60] The concept of land release was formally endorsed by the Ninth Meeting of State Parties,^[61] and an increasing number of States Parties have been employing land release principles to improve program performance.

Information Management

Reliable land release (and efficient demining overall) benefits from effective information management.^[62] This begins with systematic, high-quality data gathering, a fundamental pre-requisite that has too often been lacking in mine action, despite the huge sums of money donors have contributed to the sector. It also befits a sector receiving more than half a billion dollars annually to report accurately and promptly on its achievements.^[63] In Angola, for instance, the National Demining Institute, despite having 2,000 operational staff across the country, was unable to provide detailed reporting on its demining activities in 2008, as in 2007, because its data management system was said to be not functioning properly.

The primary mine action information management software remains the Information Management System for Mine Action (IMSMA), managed by GICHD. This is the standard database software for mine action, used by some 50 demining programs around the world, but it remains the subject of criticism. Some blame the software while others suggest the operators are at fault. Certainly, the old adage of “poor data in, poor data out” will always apply.^[64] In a number of instances, however, notably in Cambodia and Lao PDR, accessing data from the latest version of IMSMA has proved challenging.^[65]

Mine Action by Non-State Armed Groups

During the last 10 years NSAGs have sometimes carried out limited mine clearance or explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) operations. NSAG mine clearance or EOD has taken place in Colombia, Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan, and Sri Lanka, as well as in Western Sahara.

In Kurdish areas of northern Iraq, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan undertook mine clearance through the Northern Iraq Mine Action Program, supported by UNOPS, from 1997 until the 2004 integration of the Kurdish groups into the Iraqi Interim Government. Also in northern Iraq, the Hawpar organization, linked to the Turkish Kurdistan Workers Party has carried out limited clearance in 2007 and 2008 with support from NPA. In Lebanon, Hezbollah volunteers cleared a possibly large number of submunitions after the armed conflict in 2006. In Southern Sudan, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army undertook mine clearance through the Operation Save Innocent Lives initiative supported by UNICEF from 1997 until the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement and the formation of the Government of National Unity. In northern Sri Lanka, the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization Humanitarian Demining Unit, which was linked to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), undertook clearance activities in cooperation with international clearance organizations between 2002 and 2006.

In 2008 in Myanmar/Burma, the Karen National Union, which controls small amounts of territory in the east of the country, was provided with metal detectors for mine clearance and trained in their use. Also in Myanmar, the Chin National Front/Army stated to the NGO Geneva Call that it had cleared mines from three sites along Myanmar’s border with India during 2008.^[66]

Deminer Security

In recent years, armed violence has inflicted losses on demining operators, who have also lost staff as well as vehicles and equipment worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in attacks or raids by insurgent or criminal groups.

In Afghanistan, deminers and support staff have been kidnapped and killed since 2007. In May 2008, three security guards and a logistics clerk were killed and a driver wounded in an attack by insurgents. In July, gunmen kidnapped 16 deminers working for the Mine Detection and Dog Centre in eastern Paktia province but released them after the intervention of local community leaders. The same month, separate attacks took place on the Danish Demining Group compound in Balkh province and on deminers returning from clearance, fatally wounding one supervisor. In May 2009, a HALO Trust vehicle was damaged in a vehicle-activated improvised explosive device explosion, slightly injuring several staff.

In Iraq, political instability and insecurity have periodically halted clearance. In June 2007 the National Mine Action Authority was shut down after the kidnap and subsequent murder of its director general. Work resumed from April until December 2008, when the Ministry of Defense suspended clearance in all parts of Iraq, except the north, on grounds of security and the need to vet personnel engaged by demining operators (due to their access to mines and/or explosive ordnance).

In Sri Lanka, demining launched in 2002 became more difficult after 2007 and largely came to a halt due to increased armed conflict, including mine use, until May 2009. In 2008, operators experienced abductions of deminers in areas controlled by security forces or pro-government militias, while some deminers working in LTTE-controlled territory were forcibly recruited into local militias.

In Senegal, the Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC) attacked an army mine clearance unit killing three and injuring seven in 2005. In 2006, an army demining unit accompanied by Moroccan soldiers was attacked by the MFDC resulting in the death of two soldiers and leaving 14 injured. In 2008, Senegal requested an extension of its Article 5 deadline citing, among other things, deminer security as a reason for its inability to clear the mines in time.

In Sudan, several operators and UN agencies reported increased insecurity since 2006 when the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army ambushed a team from the Swiss Foundation for Mine Action near Juba, killing two deminers. Several other demining organizations halted operations due to movements of NSAGs or armed conflict in their areas. In January 2007, an Indian peacekeeper in Southern Sudan was killed and two others wounded while escorting a mine clearance team. In 2008, insecurity prevented survey activities taking place in Western Darfur.

The Future of Mine Action

The next few years may come to be seen as the high water mark of demining. In most countries, the mine threat is being reduced significantly and better demining approaches and procedures have widely—though not always—increased both productivity and effectiveness. Redoubled efforts to complete mine clearance in all affected states, whether party to the treaty or not, remains a priority. Significant resources—from both national and international sources—will continue to be needed for many years. And the implementation of the Convention on Cluster Munitions will surely see major inroads into global contamination from unexploded submunitions.

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