Landmine Free South Caucasus

Representatives of governments and international organisations reiterated their willingness to work for a landmine free South Caucasus by 2030, during an event held in Geneva on Monday (19 June 2023) on the margins of this year’s Intersessional Meetings of the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention, popularly known as “The Ottawa Convention”. The meeting was also attended by representatives of civil society organisations from Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. It was organised by LINKS Europe in its capacity as convenor of the regional campaign Landmine Free South Caucasus. In the opening report to the meeting, LINKS Europe Director, Dr Dennis Sammut called on Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia to join the Ottawa Convention, but said that on its part the international community needed also to step up its efforts. He proposed that the first steps should be taken before the end of the year for the convening of an international donors conference where a plan for a landmine free South Caucasus by 2030 could be agreed. He proposed that the European Union, as the biggest donor for humanitarian demining  in the South Caucasus, should take the initiative by hosting in the Autumn bilateral Round Tables with the three countries, focused on the issue of landmines and their consequences, to prepare for such an International Conference.

The dust of war from the decades-long conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan has started to settle, and although peace remains elusive, there is hope across the region for a better future. No-one has waited for this moment more than the hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis who were displaced by the First Karabakh War in the early 1990s.

The Azerbaijani NGO "Azerbaijan Campaign to Ban Landmines" has held an event in Baku State University to mark International Landmines Awareness Day. The focus of the event was the impact of landmines on victims and their communities - which is also the current theme of the regional campaign Landmine Free South Caucasus. During the event, attended by over a hundred students from Baku State University presentations were made by Hafiz Safikhanov, Director of "Azerbaijan Campaign to Ban Landmines" (picture below) and a representative of ANAMA, the national state demining agency of Azerbaijan.

4 April is marked each year as the International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action by the United Nations and countries, organisations and communities across the world. This year, the theme is “Mine action cannot wait”. This is a particularly poignant theme in the South Caucasus where the problem of landmines is acute and the region is now identified as being amongst the ones with the highest contamination of landmines in the world. The campaign Landmine Free South Caucasus joins the international community to mark this year’s International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action. In particular, we raise our voice with that of the rest of the international community in saying that “Mine action cannot wait”. Since 2018, the campaign Landmine Free South Caucasus has worked with partners in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia to raise awareness on the issue of landmines across the region, to highlight the good work being done by deminers at considerable personal risk, and to focus on the impact of landmines on victims and their communities.