Anti personnel landmines have slipped from front page headlines, yet they remain active participants in conflicts long after ceasefires are signed and diplomats move on. The latest warning from the UN human rights office about adherence to the Mine Ban Treaty is therefore less a routine reminder and more a signal that a hard won humanitarian norm is entering a fragile new phase.
A Humanitarian Norm Under Strain
The 1997 Anti Personnel Mine Ban Convention, often called the Ottawa Convention, was designed to end the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of mines that detonate through a person’s contact or proximity, and to ensure their destruction within set deadlines. Over time it did more than codify rules, it helped create a political and moral expectation that no responsible state would rely on weapons that continue to kill civilians decades after a war ends.
The UN human rights report that triggered the latest appeal stresses that anti personnel mines still kill and injure civilians long after conflicts have ended, and calls on states to uphold existing international law restricting their use. According to data cited by the UN from the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor, at least 945 people were killed and 4,325 injured by landmines and explosive remnants of war in 2024, a reminder that the humanitarian problem remains acute rather than historical.
Withdrawals and Violations: The Treaty’s Most Serious Test
The concern in Geneva is not only about ongoing casualties but also about the political erosion of the treaty framework itself. Recent years have seen what the Landmine Monitor describes as the most serious challenge to the Mine Ban Treaty in decades, with several state parties taking decisions that directly threaten the health of the convention.
This challenge is no longer hypothetical. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania completed their withdrawal from the Mine Ban Treaty in late 2025, with Finland and Poland expected to follow in early 2026, representing the largest group exit from a humanitarian disarmament treaty to date. In parallel, a separate UN report highlighted that at least 58 states and territories remain contaminated by landmines, at the same time that contributions to the UN Voluntary Trust Fund for mine action have fallen sharply from 125 million dollars to 46 million dollars over seven years. Together, these trends point to a regime under financial and political stress just as operational demands persist.
Civilian Impact and Development Setbacks
The humanitarian consequences of this stress are measured in both lives and livelihoods. Anti personnel mines, including self deactivating models, continue to endanger communities for years or even decades after fighting stops, obstructing reconstruction, the safe return of displaced populations, and access to schools, clinics and farmland. This converts a security problem into a broader development trap in which contaminated land cannot generate income and entire villages live with permanent uncertainty.
UN officials have warned that mine clearance is far behind earlier aspirations, such as the widely cited goal of completing clearance by 2025. While large-scale clearance operations have reduced the number of new victims in countries where the treaty is fully implemented, the recent increase in casualties and the persistence of contamination suggest a widening gap between obligations on paper and realities on the ground.
Strategic Calculations Versus Humanitarian Commitments
From a foreign policy perspective, the current wave of withdrawals and renewed interest in mines by some militaries reflects a recalculation of perceived strategic utility. States close to active conflict zones argue that anti personnel mines offer cost effective area denial and bolster deterrence, especially when facing numerically superior or better equipped adversaries.
The UN position, articulated by the Secretary General and the High Commissioner for Human Rights in previous statements, is that such moves risk weakening the norm against mine use and undermining international humanitarian law, thereby increasing the likelihood of renewed deployment and proliferation. Humanitarian actors such as the International Committee of the Red Cross similarly caution that even so-called modern or self-deactivating mines embed long term uncertainty and can expose civilians to harm within the territories of the very states that deploy them.
What the UN Call Signals for Global Governance
The latest appeal from the UN human rights office for all countries to respect international law on anti personnel mines is therefore more than a legal reminder. It is an attempt to shore up a flagship humanitarian disarmament regime at a time when armed conflict has become more fragmented and when multilateral institutions face broader crises of credibility.
The Mine Ban Treaty has long been hailed as proof that civil society coalitions, affected states and international organizations can reshape the conduct of war. If key parties now walk away or undermine their commitments in practice, the signal to other regimes dealing with cluster munitions, explosive remnants of war and autonomous weapons will be that humanitarian constraints are negotiable under pressure. In that sense, the UN warning is about preserving a broader architecture of norms, not just a single treaty.
A Final Note
The UN’s renewed insistence on adherence to the Mine Ban Treaty should be read as an early alert about the health of humanitarian disarmament more broadly, not only as a narrow call to comply with one convention. Whether states treat mines as outdated weapons that belong to the past or as tools that can be re legitimized in the name of security will shape civilian protection, post conflict recovery and the credibility of international law for years to come.
