Tigray, located in northern Ethiopia and bordering Eritrea, was at the center of the armed conflict between the Ethiopian Federal Government and the Tigray Regional Government from 2020 to 2022. The conflict left a significant legacy of explosive ordnance contamination across northern Ethiopia. While the war affected Tigray, Afar, and Amhara regions, some of the most intense and prolonged fighting took place in Tigray, resulting in widespread contamination by landmines, UXO a

In a region somewhere in South East Asia, I once did a field trip to a remote area that had stunning scenery, yet felt cursed to me. There was an entire area that had been mined for over 30 years, yet nothing had been done to clear it. So, villagers had come together and created their own community support system to tackle this issue. They did their own recognition and education, did their own kind of clearance and even developed their own tools (quite an inventive way to use

Libya has cleared millions of explosive remnants – yet released land often remains unused. When political fragmentation undermines trust in who certifies safety, operational success means little. What does it take for clearance to truly translate into recovery?