Landmine Contamination and Clearance – Policy and The Way Forward

On April 9^th 2019, the Wheeler Institute for Business and Development hosted a conference on Landmine Contamination and Clearance – Policy and the Way Forward. The event, held at London Business School, brought together a range of distinguished speakers from the United Nations Mine Action Service, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining, leading NGO’s involved in humanitarian demining, and academic institutions.

The speakers and the audience that included policy makers, students, journalists, and business leaders discussed problems, successes, challenges and proposals to better deal with an issue that blights the lives of millions of people in scores of countries. Industrially-produced mines, improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and unexploded ordnance continue to kill and maim.

IEDs are currently used en masse in Syria, Libya, and Yemen. Previously valuable land and transport links are rendered useless when they have been contaminated by mines or communities fear that they may be contaminated: that hampers efforts to restore livelihoods and spur development.