Who controls landmines and drones?

On Inside Geneva, we look at weapons contamination and the harm it causes.

“We have at least one casualty every single day in Afghanistan – someone killed or injured –and it is most likely a child,” says Nick Pond, from the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan. 

From old conflicts to new.

“Ukraine is the breadbasket of Europe and billions of square metres of land are suspected to be contaminated, which means they can’t be farmed,” says Paul Heslop, from the UN Mine Action, Ukraine. 

And from old weapons to new.

“This is proliferating well beyond Ukraine. Ukraine and Russia are the two leaders in drone technology, but the level of proliferation is scary,” says Sean Moorhouse, from Mine Action, UN Development Programme. 

In response to Russian aggression, the Baltic states are pulling out of the landmine convention.

“We did not say yes to landmines; we said no to unilateral disarmament constructs,” says Jonatan Vseviov, Secretary General, Estonian Foreign Ministry. 

But others are joining.

“We heard that Lebanon will be joining the convention. This is a massive achievement and a massive push for the convention itself,” says Rana Elias, from the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining. 

As warfare changes, weapons contamination becomes more complicated. Who is responsible when a weapon fails to hit its target and harms someone years later? Who should pay for the clean‑up? And are we turning away from our opposition to indiscriminate weapons?

Join host Imogen Foulkes on Inside Geneva to listen to the full episode. 

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Host: Imogen Foulkes
Production assitant: Claire-Marie Germain
Distribution: Sara Pasino
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Transcript

A Treaty That Changed War

SPEAKER_07 0:52

SwissInfo podcasts.

SPEAKER_05 1:01

This is Inside Geneva. I'm your host, Imogen Folkes, and this is a production from SwissInfo, the international public media company of Switzerland. In today's program.

SPEAKER_11 1:17

And this is what they're finding here. We have at least one casualty every single day in Afghanistan that's killed or injured. And that casualty is most likely to be a child.

SPEAKER_10 1:27

Since Russia's full-scale invasion began, Ukraine has become one of the most mined countries in the world.

SPEAKER_14 1:34

Ukraine is the breadbasket of Europe, and the fact that at the moment there are billions of square meters of land that are suspected of being contaminated means that land can't be farmed.

SPEAKER_15 1:47

This is proliferating well beyond Ukraine. Ukraine and Russia are the two leaders in drone technology, but the level of proliferation is scary.

SPEAKER_02 2:20

This is a massive achievement, and this is a massive push to the convention itself.

SPEAKER_05 2:28

Hello and welcome again to Inside Geneva. Now, regular listeners will know that from time to time we devote a whole podcast to treaties that changed the world. We've talked about the Convention Against Torture, the Convention on Enforced Disappearances, and in our very first podcast like this, we looked at the Ottawa Convention on Landmines. Adopted in 1997, it is credited with saving tens of thousands of lives. More than two decades later, here's a little reminder of what people told me about it.

SPEAKER_01 3:08

We've had uh two weeks of very intense negotiations. We were never sure if uh if we were going to get to a successful conclusion or not, and when they brought down that gavel in Oslo in September of 1997, that was the most special moment of my life.

SPEAKER_07 3:22

We were sitting in our little old dining room in Hanompin, and suddenly the news came on the BBC, and we started shrieking and yelling, and everybody was hopping around or riding around in their wheelchairs, just shouting for joy.

SPEAKER_08 3:36

Personally, I was so happy. The word had decided that their landmines were to be bad. They had to be banned. So that was an incredible moment. So I mean I was so so happy.

SPEAKER_05 3:59

More than 160 countries have signed up, though not the big powers like the US, Russia, and China. And in the last couple of years, countries such as Poland, Estonia, or Finland, especially exposed to possible Russian aggression, have said they will leave the treaty. What might that mean for warfare and for those working to clean up mines and other weapons once a conflict has ended? Here at the UN in Geneva, the International Conference on Mine Action has been taking place. I went along to talk to the experts there.

SPEAKER_11 4:37

My name's Nick Pond. I'm the chief of the mine action section in UNAMA, which is the UN assistance mission in Afghanistan.

SPEAKER_15 4:43

I'm Sean Moorhouse. I work for the United Nations Development Programme as a technical advisor in the mine action team.

SPEAKER_02 4:50

I'm Rana. I'm working at the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarianity Mining, supporting states that are affected by the explosive ordinance, which includes a wide range of items.

SPEAKER_14 5:02

My name's Paul Heslop, and I am the senior advisor to the head of the UN in Ukraine on mine action, so everything to do with landmines and bomb disposal.

SPEAKER_03 5:13

We are on a mission following a demining squad in southern Ukraine.

SPEAKER_05 5:18

Paul Heslop has decades of experience in mine clearance. Now he's working in Ukraine. Some of the weapons may be new, but those most at risk have stayed the same.

SPEAKER_14 5:30

Probably the most at-risk group, other than certain the military, are teenage boys who have a tendency to fiddle. They've heard the messaging before again and again. We've just had a project where we've helped the state emergency services by donating virtual reality goggles. And so those virtual reality goggles, they go to schools, high schools, and you know, the kids put them on and they're put through a variety of scenarios in a virtual world to show them how to avoid risk. Now, a teenage boy being shown a short video or a poster, perhaps not so interested, get the virtual reality goggles on and suddenly you've got a degree of excitement.

SPEAKER_05 6:09

And Paul adds, while he's trying to stop Ukrainian children being killed by landmines, just the fact the mines are there at all impacts the entire planet.

Afghanistan’s Daily Toll On Children

SPEAKER_14 6:21

Ukraine is the is the breadbasket of Europe, and the fact that at the moment there are billions of square meters of land that are suspected of being contaminated, that means that land can't be farmed. That absence of productivity is affecting global food prices. So it's not just affecting Ukraine's economy, it's affecting every person in the world. You know, you're paying more for your bread, more for your pasta, more for your fuel because of the actual and the perceived mine contamination problem in Ukraine.

SPEAKER_00 6:50

Afghanistan has one of the highest concentrations of landmines in the world.

SPEAKER_04 6:55

Three months ago, 13-year-old Norse stepped on a landmine while collecting firewood. Today she's walking on new artificial legs.

SPEAKER_05 7:03

And while Paul is working in a relatively new conflict, Nick Pond is working in Afghanistan. Once called the Forever War, those who fought for decades over the country have left a lethal legacy that will take years to clear.

SPEAKER_11 7:33

Over 70% of the casualties are children. So with this old program that we've had, an experienced program that we have, you know, we've got a great opportunity to clear Afghanistan of contamination. So, yes, trying to prevent these casualties, mostly kids, mostly boys, playing with things they find while they're tending sheep or their goats in the hills. They'll pick something up and either play with it or put it in the fire or take it home, even worse. Last year in Farah, somebody took something into a house and killed seven members of the family. So, yeah, that's my focus, really, is we've got an incredibly high casualty rate, and we've got an opportunity to lower that casualty rate. So that's what it feels like more than clearance.

SPEAKER_12 8:15

There's no peace in Lebanon. A ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel came into effect in November, but the remnants of war keep killing.

SPEAKER_16 8:22

Lebanon has around 17.5 million square meters of land covered in landmines.

SPEAKER_05 8:28

Like Nick, Rana Ellias of the Geneva Centre for Humanitarian Demining is working in a region where weapons contamination has been a problem for decades.

SPEAKER_02 8:50

Take Lebanon again. I mean, 2006, the conflict, there were massive efforts to into clearance, clearing cluster munitions, and now it's all over again in terms of destruction, in terms of uh recovery. But I think we have to maintain hope and we have to persist in our work as a whole community, as a whole mine action community per se. It may seem impossible. The challenges are so immense, not only in terms of the scale, in terms of the lack of funding, but also in terms of the civilian uh harm that has been inflicted, in terms of children being uh killed or maimed. Take Syria, as you say. Um Syria just from the fall of the previous regime, from December 2024 up until recently, these are, I would say, more than 2,000 uh injuries civilian, uh including a high number of children, mostly uh in rural and agricultural areas. Just to give an idea about the scale also in Syria.

SPEAKER_03 10:01

This is one of tens of thousands of potential time bombs lying in Ukraine.

SPEAKER_13 10:09

That is the view from the Russian drain.

Weaponized Drones Create New UXO

SPEAKER_05 10:13

As I said at the start, this conference is about mines, and let's remember the Ottawa Convention deals with only one kind of mine, the anti-personnel land mine. But in fact, the experts here are discussing all sorts of weapons. Warfare is changing, weapons are becoming more autonomous, but some things all weapons have in common, they're not always reliable, and they can lie around unexploded for years after a conflict has ended. Sean Moorehouse is a mind specialist with the UN development program. He told me what he'd seen in Ukraine.

SPEAKER_15 10:54

We have weaponized drones. There's a massive variety of different types of drones. Everyone thinks about drones as flying unmanned aerial vehicles, but we have ground drones, we have unmanned surface vessels, ships, we have underwater, and all of them can be used to deliver explosives.

SPEAKER_05 11:11

So what is it then that concerns you in relation to these weapons that brings you to this particular conference?

SPEAKER_15 11:22

Well, I think particularly when we take into account the UAVs, what we're seeing is a democratization of the skies in a way. Previously only states had access to sort of aircraft and and that sort of thing, and now anybody can pick up a hobby drone, put a warheader on it, an explosive warhead on it, and fly it into a target. So anybody can attack almost any target.

SPEAKER_05 11:45

So it's the if we talk about international law and one of the reasons, say the landmine convention was brought in was the concept of no discrimination, lack of discrimination. Is that is that your concern with drones as well?

SPEAKER_15 12:03

Yes. Ukraine produced two and a half million FPV first-person view drones last year, and 70% of them failed to go off, which means we now have 1.75 million unexploded drones just from the Ukrainian side. So they they are a hazard in themselves, just like any other form of explosive ordinances.

SPEAKER_05 12:24

So that's going to be a massive cleanup operation as well, as with landmines. And they are, I suppose, then the skills become similar, the teams become similar.

SPEAKER_15 12:34

They do, but the improvised nature of drones means that each one is assembles slightly differently, and that requires a higher level of training to deal with. So it takes longer to train people to deal with this threat. It's a new threat, and we actually need to develop the training that's appropriate.

SPEAKER_05 12:53

Meanwhile, these things are being used, failing, landing. The cleanup job, I mean, you must have seen quite a few what it takes to decontaminate land. That's going to be huge in Ukraine.

SPEAKER_15 13:06

It's an absolutely massive problem. And in addition, because so many drones were being jammed, they started using fiber optic cables to control them, which stops them being jammed. But that leaves just an absolutely horrific number of fiber optic cables, which go for 60 kilometers now, littering the landscape, so much so people can't walk across fields. Farmers can't farm their fields. We can't do the demining because we can't get through these cables. It's incredible.

SPEAKER_05 13:38

At the same time, funding for demining is being reduced.

SPEAKER_15 13:44

Yes, we are struggling to get anything near the resources we need. And I'm talking about drones. I'm not talking necessarily about drones in Ukraine. And between January and March this year, 38 countries actually had a weaponized drone attack. So this is proliferating well beyond Ukraine. Ukraine and Russia are the two leaders in drone technology, driven by war, as you know is somewhat inevitable in human history. But the level of proliferation is scary.

Estonia Explains Leaving The Treaty

SPEAKER_05 14:16

But while those like Sean, Nick, Paul, or Rana, who specialize in weapons decontamination, worry about proliferation and yet more decades of cleanup, some countries, as we said at the beginning, are leaving the Ottawa Convention. And it's only right to hear their reasons.

SPEAKER_09 14:36

My name is Jonathan Seviov. I'm the Secretary General of the Estonian Foreign Ministry.

SPEAKER_05 14:40

Jonathan Seviov is number two with Estonian's foreign ministry, and he wants the world to understand why his country has taken the difficult decision to leave the Ottawa Convention.

SPEAKER_09 14:52

We did not say yes to landmines. We said no to unilateral disarmament constructs. In the context of Russia's ongoing war of aggression in Ukraine, the goal of which has not changed, and is not limited to Eastern Ukraine or even all of Ukraine, which Putin wants to subjugate, to recreate his empire. It's not just Ukraine's fate that will be decided in Ukraine. It's also Europe's. Because this idea of empire that Putin pursues, this uh root cause to this war, which is his inability to accept that the Soviet Union collapsed, is going to shape Europe, not just in the eastern part of the continent, but the idea of Europe. Because the uh idea of empire and the idea of Europe that we've been pursuing just simply don't fit in the same space and time. So this is the reality that's out there. We are as opposed to landmines as anybody else. We know the cost of these weapon systems. We also know that, God forbid, if military force were to be used against us, those weapon systems would be used against us because the Russians don't adhere to these limitations. So we are confident in uh our ability to defend Estonia. We are confident in assessing that currently there is no acute military danger on our borders, partly because frankly the Russians are all stuck in Ukraine. But then again, we are fully awake to the enormous challenge that Russia presents, not to us but to all of Europe, and are not going to entertain unilateral limits to our ability to defend freedom in Australia.

SPEAKER_05 16:46

Okay, so you said that unilateral disarmament is a strategy you you don't really subscribe to. But on a practical level, would landmines actually help your security? Because some people dispute that.

SPEAKER_09 17:00

So um the last time I checked with our defense specialist, with my colleagues uh over at the Ministry of Defense or the Defense Forces, they had no plans for acquiring landmines, no plans for uh using landmines for the defense of Estonia. So I trust the military experts, the expertise that's housed within our defense structures. And as of right now, there is the answer to your question is uh affirmative. We we agree there uh is no utility at this stage for those weapon systems. It might change tomorrow or or in a week's time, and then we'll let the world know. But as of now, there are no plans on actually using the weapons.

SPEAKER_05 17:39

Just broadening, also maybe a little bit outside of Estonia. One of the things that the people who work in demining, and it it's it's far broader now than anti-personnel landmines, is the massive, massive cleanup operation that's going to be needed in Ukraine because of unexploded ordnance, these tales from drones who are trying to avoid the radar, that there's thousands and thousands and thousands of acres of land that can't be cultivated.

SPEAKER_09 18:11

Indeed. So when we think about this war, we oftentimes seem to make the mistake of assuming that once the war ends, the problems disappear. It's not going to be the case. You're absolutely right. So even in the best case scenario of us succeeding, let's say today, in um pushing Russia to reassess their strategy vis-a-vis Ukraine and vis-a-vis Europe, and pull itself back to within its international recognized borders, which is the ultimate goal of our policy, nothing more but nothing less, then uh Ukraine will require enormous assistance from international partners in terms of cleaning up, but also in terms of providing a framework for security, for economic development, reconstruction, and um stabilizing their democracy. In many ways it's going to be similar to what Western Europe faced after the end of the Second World War.

SPEAKER_06 19:05

The United Nations has sounded the alarm as landmine deaths rise amid funding cuts to demining programs.

SPEAKER_05 19:11

But who is ready to fund a Marshall Plan these days? In fact, money for mine clearance, like other humanitarian operations, is being cut back. Nick Pond's experience in Afghanistan is a lesson in how challenging and how long term the work can be.

SPEAKER_11 19:28

It is a bit of a sisophean task at times, um particularly at the moment. There's a conflict ongoing with Pakistan, which has potentially recontaminated 39 districts along the border, and now we're trying to find money and get access for teams to go out to check those districts which have recently been contaminated. So it is frustrating, especially when we see some of the casualties, statistics, and stories coming in on such a regular basis.

SPEAKER_05 19:51

What's your thinking? I mean, I mean you know you're also former military, that warfare is is changing. We've got a lot of new technology, and a lot of the people that I've talked to today have raised the issue of drones posing very similar ethical problems, which led to the ban on anti-personnel land mines. Do you see that maybe you clear the mines, but then there's going to be a whole new I mean, we have the most advanced militaries in the world racing to get this technology.

SPEAKER_11 20:21

Well, what's interesting in Afghanistan and depressing at the same time is 90% of the casualties in Afghanistan are from explosive remnants of war. So the issue we have is stuff that's lying around, either things that have been fired and haven't exploded, stuff people have buried when they closed down barracks, or stuff that's just been discarded and lost. We had an incident in November last year when a family came across the border from Pakistan to an informal transit centre in Kabul. And because they arrived late at night, the transit centre was closed. So they moved across to a patch of ground in Kabul, surrounded by houses, a place where people play cricket all the time, but it happens to be a former Soviet military barracks that was knocked down decades ago. They built a fire to keep warm, it was November, and unbeknown to them, there was a rocket fuse underneath the ground under the bush they were burning. It detonated and seven children ended up in hospital. So it is it's that sort of contamination that we have an issue with at the in Afghanistan at the moment. 90% of the casualties are from incidents like that. So we don't suffer from the technology of drones at the moment and their impact because it's not really there is a little bit involved in the current conflict, but not massively really. We're on traditional artillery shelling. Our contamination is really legacy contamination, but exactly the same problems apply in that munitions don't always detonate, they certainly don't always land where intended, and they are there for years and years and years to come following the conflict.

Who Pays For Failed Weapons

SPEAKER_05 21:45

So although we still have a convention against anti-personnel landmines, and we have a convention on explosive remnants of war, which requires parties to a conflict to clean up leftover weapons, there are still vast quantities of unexploded ordnance, from Afghanistan to Ukraine, Syria, Myanmar, Bosnia, Cambodia, Laos, Lebanon, Iraq, and many other places. Paul Heslop would like us to think differently, not about particular weapons in isolation, but what they and those who use them and produce them actually do.

SPEAKER_14 22:52

I think all of these weapon systems, there are two parts to it. Is the weapon system being deployed in a combat situation against a legitimate target? And if that is the case, then whether you're using artillery, direct fire, cluster munitions, even remotely deployed explosive devices, and they're against a military target within the rules of war, that is one thing. And if their use is properly documented, you know, the weather conditions, the soil conditions, the wind, and the number of munitions used, the target area, all of that is recorded, then making the cleanup afterwards is relatively straightforward. You know, it just becomes a technical exercise. Where the problems come about is none of that data is gathered, but more importantly, is either the weapon system is being used indiscriminately against civilian targets, particularly in urban areas, that is a serious problem. And that is something we're starting to see now as drones in Ukraine have a bigger and bigger payload and a longer and longer range, you know, we're now seeing civilian communities in the west of Ukraine being targeted. Is that a 30 to 50 kilo warhead, or is that as a carrier device carrying submunitions that are then indiscriminately scattered over an area? And then those items that are scattered, do they explode on impact? Is there a time delay, or is there a victim-operated mechanism? You know, all of those fall under treaties, and again, and if they're being used in an indiscriminate way on civilian targets, it's a war crime. So, you know, is the weapon being used correctly? How is it that we can have weapon systems where 10% is considered a good fail rate? And you know, in some cases we're seeing some of the North Korean artillery have a 40% fail rate. So if you're firing a thousand shells a day, that's 400 unexploded bombs. After 1,500 days, that's 6 million unexploded bombs because of the failure just lying around because they were not manufactured to the same tolerances that we expect from a fridge or a Toyota. So, you know, we've got these incredibly complex, incredibly expensive weapon systems that fail to function as designed. Now, if that is fired at a target that is a military target and it functions, it's not a problem because it's gone bang. If it hasn't gone bang, the military target goes off, the conflict comes to an end, kids come to that area, start playing with it, it's suddenly become an indiscriminate weapon. So, you know, why are we not either expecting the weapons manufacturers to build the weapons to a higher quality with better tolerances, or they have to pay a fee for clearing them up? If an oil tanker spills oil-through incompetence, the oil company pays for the cleanup. Why do we not see the weapons manufacturers paying for the cleanup of their weapon systems that were legitimately used against a military target but then failed and then became an indiscriminate tool?

Laws Lag Behind Drones And AI

SPEAKER_05 25:43

And Sean Moorehouse, too, believes our laws are playing catch-up.

SPEAKER_15 25:47

The Ottawa Convention just applies to anti-personnel mines, so it's quite specific. However, drones will drop anti-personnel mines. They drop 3D printed mines or they drop old Soviet stocks of what we call the butterfly mine, and they can now deliver them anywhere. So you can have a cargo drone go and lay a minefield overnight in a place where you would never expect to find a minefield. So there is a there's a technical problem in finding those and clearing them. We have conventions, there's the convention on certain conventional weapons, which would cover items laid by drones that we would classify as sort of improvised explosive devices, or that they function like an anti-personnel mine would. So the conventions are there that covers the drone stuff mostly, but when it comes to AI targeting, we completely lack actually the laws to deal with that. If you have a human in the kill chain, that would be too slow. If you're up against an opponent who does not have the same ethical considerations and does not have a human in the kill chain, so it is a really, really big problem.

SPEAKER_05 27:03

Our government's listening to the concerns of people like yourself?

SPEAKER_15 27:10

To be honest, we have only just started raising these concerns, quite frankly.

SPEAKER_05 27:15

And do you think we're in the right frame of mind globally to deal with it right now?

SPEAKER_15 27:22

Yes, I do. I think it has taken a number of years for the West to wake up to the fact that drones have revolutionized warfare, but also that they need to deal with them in some way. So I do think states are starting to address the issue now and take it much more seriously than just a year or two ago.

SPEAKER_05 27:42

All these concerns add up, for Paul Heslop at least, to a pretty pessimistic take on where we are.

SPEAKER_14 27:50

Honestly, uh if you'd said to me five years ago you'll be working in Ukraine, you know, having never worked in a outside the Balkans in a European country before, if you'd told me that um there would be a war in Iran five years ago, I would not have believed that possible. I mean, I've spent over 30 years in this sector, and for for 25 years we were really winning the battle. We were clearing way more mines and way more explosive devices than were being used. And in the last five years we have seen that reversed catastrophically. You know, and it is going to cost many millions, if not billions of dollars to clean up the mess that has been made in the last five years.

SPEAKER_05 28:28

These are points Estonia's Jonathan Sefio hears loud and clear. His country's departure from the landmine convention may only be temporary, and so far there are no plans to use landmines. Meanwhile, his government remains committed to supporting Ukraine, and that includes a cleanup of weapons.

A Note Of Hope From Lebanon

SPEAKER_09 28:49

The cleanup of ordinance is part of this story. Reconstructing Ukraine is another part of this story, providing for security another part of the story, and most importantly, bearing in mind that in big political strategic developments like the one that we're discussing here, hope is amongst the most valuable of resources. Hope today during war keeps the Ukrainians afloat. Hope once war is over, hope that they can one day live a normal European life is going to be at least as important. If we as Europe want to play a strategic role in shaping our own future, then we need to be the ones who become comfortable again with concepts like providing hope, defining the future, taking a claim in the sort of future our own continent has.

SPEAKER_05 29:43

And here at Inside Geneva, we like to provide some hope too. So we'll leave you with the news that during that mine conference, we heard that while some countries are leaving, Lebanon will be joining the Ottawa Treaty. For Rana, that's a huge and positive step by her home country.

SPEAKER_02 30:03

We heard that Lebanon will be joining the convention. This is a massive achievement and this is a massive push to the to the convention itself. In a way, we should perhaps maybe twist the narrative a bit. Because when we speak a lot that the convention is is under pressure, I think hasn't it always been under pressure? I think also the way we are framing things, you know, we should we should try to work on a more positive narrative, counter-argue in a way why we need IHL, why we need these norms, why we need protection of civilians. And it's actually more costly, you know. Imagine how much money and time, and in addition to, of course, the civilian harm inflicted, how much these conflicts are costing. We should invest in education, we should invest in health, we should invest in other sectors. And exactly we should invest in lobbying, in advocating for more states to join the convention. It is under pressure, but I think, yeah, it's a success story that Lamanon is joining, and these are the narratives that we should build our stories also around and make sure these are celebrated.

SPEAKER_05 31:29

And that brings us to the end of this edition of Inside Geneva. My thanks to everyone who took part, and to you for listening. A reminder you've been listening to Inside Geneva, a Swiss info production. You can subscribe to us and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Check out our previous episodes how the International Red Cross unites prisoners of war with their families, or why survivors of human rights violations turn to the UN in Geneva for justice. I'm Imogen folks. Thanks again for listening.