Landmines Keep Killing Long After the Shooting Stops

Landmines, cluster munition remnants and other unexploded ordnance do not stop working when soldiers leave. They wait in fields, roadsides, school grounds and abandoned homes. The United Nations has repeatedly described explosive remnants of war as one of the main barriers to safe return, farming, reconstruction and basic daily life after conflict. In plain terms, peace can arrive on paper while the ground itself remains at war.

The scale of the problem is well documented. Landmine Monitor, the long-running research project that tracks global mine action, has reported year after year that civilians make up the vast majority of landmine and unexploded ordnance casualties. Children are especially at risk. In many annual counts, they account for a large share of civilian deaths and injuries, often because they mistake small explosives for scrap metal or toys. The International Committee of the Red Cross and humanitarian clearance agencies have seen the same pattern across very different conflicts. The weapon is cheap to place, hard to detect, and devastatingly persistent.

Ukraine has become one of the clearest modern examples. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, officials, aid groups and international agencies have warned that vast areas of farmland, villages and transport routes may be contaminated. The World Bank estimated in 2024 that the cost of reconstruction and recovery in Ukraine had soared into the hundreds of billions of dollars, and demining is a major part of that burden. This is not just a military issue. It is an economic and human one. Ukraine is a major agricultural producer, and when fields cannot be planted safely, the impact reaches from village incomes to global food markets.

The same story has played out before. In Cambodia, decades after conflict and mass bombing, mines and unexploded ordnance continued to injure people trying to farm, walk to school or gather firewood. In Laos, which remains heavily affected by unexploded cluster munitions from the Vietnam War era, clearance teams are still removing devices dropped more than half a century ago. According to international aid groups and government-linked demining programs, contamination has slowed road building, housing, irrigation and local business for years. In Angola, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iraq and Afghanistan, the pattern has also been painfully familiar: a formal end to major conflict does not mean civilians can move freely or rebuild safely.

What makes this danger so stubborn is not only the explosives themselves. It is the way war reshapes space. Front lines move. Maps are lost or never made. Heavy rain shifts soil. People fleeing violence return to land that looks unchanged but is not. In some cases, improvised explosive devices are left behind in homes, doorways or everyday objects. In others, artillery shells fail to explode on impact and remain buried. Clearance work then becomes slow, technical and expensive. It requires trained specialists, protective equipment, dogs, machines, reliable records and above all time.

There is also a brutal gap between where the problem is worst and where resources are available. Mine clearance is not politically glamorous. It rarely commands the urgent attention that new offensives or summit diplomacy do. Yet the humanitarian and financial costs of delay are enormous. The UN Development Programme, along with specialized agencies working in contaminated countries, has repeatedly shown that explosive hazards block resettlement, delay aid delivery and keep local economies frozen. A road that cannot be cleared limits trade. A field that cannot be planted deepens poverty. A school route that feels unsafe can keep children at home.

The medical consequences are severe and long-lasting. Blast injuries often mean amputations, vision loss, burns and complex trauma. In lower-income or war-damaged countries, prosthetics and rehabilitation services are often scarce. Survivors may need years of care, but funding usually falls far short of need. The economic toll on families can be crushing. A farmer who loses a leg may also lose a household’s main income. A child injured by a mine may face both disability and interrupted education. These are not isolated tragedies. They become a slow-moving social crisis.

The wider security effects matter too. Land contamination can harden displacement and political instability. If people cannot return home safely, temporary camps become semi-permanent. If border zones remain mined, local tensions stay high and smuggling routes can grow. If reconstruction stalls, public trust in postwar authorities erodes. In places trying to move from war to peace, that matters a great deal. A government may claim control, but if it cannot make roads, farms and water points safe, the promise of peace feels hollow.

None of this means the problem is unsolvable. It does mean governments and donors must treat demining as core postwar infrastructure, not as a secondary humanitarian task. The evidence from countries that reduced casualties is clear. Sustained clearance, public risk education, survivor support and accurate survey work save lives. In places such as Mozambique, large-scale demining efforts backed by years of international support helped reduce contamination enough for the country to declare itself mine-free in 2015, even though officials still had to remain alert for isolated discoveries later. That success was not quick or cheap, but it showed that long-term commitment works.

Policy choices also matter before wars end. Stronger adherence to international rules on landmines and cluster munitions can reduce future contamination. Better battlefield recordkeeping can help later clearance. More support for local demining teams can speed recovery because they know the land, the language and the community. Public information campaigns are also essential. In contaminated areas, simple warnings delivered through schools, radio and village networks can prevent fatal mistakes.

The deeper lesson is easy to miss because buried explosives are, by nature, out of sight. War’s damage is not limited to ruined buildings or televised battles. It is also planted in orchards, pastures, playgrounds and paths to market. Long after headlines move on, a child still bends down to pick up a strange object. A farmer still hesitates before taking the first step into an old field. A family still weighs whether home is worth the risk.

That is why landmines and unexploded ordnance deserve far more public attention than they get. They turn peace into a gamble. They make ordinary acts feel like acts of courage. And they remind us that in war, the last shot fired is often not the last life changed.