Sri Lanka Clears a Million Mines, Moves Closer to a Mine-free Future

Seventeen years after the guns fell silent, Sri Lanka is still clearing the battlefield. The country may have moved far beyond the physical destruction of the 26-year conflict, but beneath some of its northern soil remains a deadly legacy that does not recognise the difference between wartime and peacetime.
Sri Lanka acceded to the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention in June 2018, committing to fulfil its Article 5 obligations by 1 June 2028. To guide this process, the government launched the National Mine Action Completion Strategy 2023-2027, developed in close consultation with the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining (GICHD) and all national and international stakeholders.

Overall, since 2010-2025, Sri Lanka has released more than 254 square kilometres of confirmed hazardous areas, contributing to a total land release of 1,297 square kilometres, enabling the safe return of over 900,000 internally displaced persons and supporting the restoration of public services and economic recovery in post-conflict regions. During survey and clearance operations, Sri Lanka has found and safely destroyed a total of: 928,187 anti-personnel (AP) mines; 2,256 anti-tank (AT) mines; and 380,096 items of unexploded ordnance (UXO).

Landmines do not understand that a war is over. That reality came into sharp focus this week when Golden Globe, Emmy and Olivier Award-winning actress and global humanitarian Rosamund Pike, an ambassador for the Mines Advisory Group (MAG), visited Sri Lanka to highlight the country’s continuing humanitarian demining effort. Her visit comes at a significant moment. Sri Lanka has now cleared one million landmines over the past 17 years, while only around 20.8 square km of contaminated land reportedly remain to be released for safe use in the northern province. The figure is encouraging. But 20.8 square km is not merely a number on a map. Somewhere within that remaining area are fields, pathways, forests, homes and land that communities cannot yet use with complete confidence.

Actress Pike travelled to mine-affected areas in the north of Sri Lanka, including Mannar and Mullaitivu, where she met deminers, survivors and families affected by contamination. She also witnessed mine-risk education aimed at children. “Unexploded ordnance is violent and deadly,” Pike warned, stressing that no one is safe simply because the war ended 17 years ago. That is perhaps the most difficult part of the landmine story. Wars have political endings. Landmines do not. A mine planted decades ago can remain hidden under the soil until a farmer steps on it, a child picks up an unfamiliar object, or a family returns to cultivate land that has been inaccessible for years.

Sri Lanka’s demining programme has, therefore, become much more than a technical exercise. It is part of post-war recovery, resettlement, reconciliation and economic reconstruction. The scale of the original problem was enormous. Estimates in the years following the war placed the number of mines and explosive remnants of war in the hundreds of thousands, with contamination concentrated particularly in the Northern and Eastern provinces. Earlier assessments also identified thousands of square kilometres requiring survey and clearance.

Today, the country is much closer to the finish line. But the final stretch can often be the hardest. Demining is a slow, expensive and painstaking business. It is not simply a matter of identifying a mine and removing it. Areas must be surveyed, mapped, marked, searched and cleared under strict safety procedures. Deminers work metre by metre, often in difficult terrain and under intense heat.

The work is also vulnerable to the realities of Sri Lanka’s environment. Heavy rainfall, flooding, vegetation growth and changes in terrain can complicate access and clearance operations and make already difficult work even more demanding.

And there is another dimension that is sometimes forgotten: the people doing the clearing. Sri Lankan deminers have spent years working in former battlefields, knowing that one mistake can cost a limb or a life. Their work rarely makes headlines. Yet without them, displaced communities could not safely return to their land and farmers could not confidently cultivate areas once considered too dangerous.

The British High Commissioner to Sri Lanka, Andrew Patrick, during actress Pike’s visit noted that annual mine casualties had fallen from approximately 250 to three in 2024. Mine clearance has also helped around one million displaced people return to their homes. Those numbers highlight what humanitarian demining actually means. It is not merely the removal of explosives. It is the restoration of ordinary life.

Japan has been among Sri Lanka’s longest-standing international partners in this effort. Since 2002, Japan has provided more than US$42 million to support mine action, including assistance to the country’s demining operators. However, the value of such assistance cannot be measured only in dollars or square kilometres. When contaminated land is cleared, a family can return. A farmer can cultivate. A road can be opened. A school can become safer. A community can begin to rebuild an economic life interrupted by war.

Sri Lanka’s decision to join the Ottawa Convention, formally the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention, in 2017 was an important commitment to that future. The Convention prohibits the use, stockpiling, production and transfer of anti-personnel mines and requires states parties to destroy existing stockpiles and address contaminated areas. Sri Lanka subsequently destroyed nearly 12,000 stockpiled anti-personnel mines, completing the process ahead of its treaty deadline.

The danger is that once casualty numbers fall and the war becomes history for younger generations, funding and public attention can also disappear. But for a farmer standing at the edge of a contaminated field, or a child walking home from school, the danger remains immediate. Pike’s visit draws international attention to a problem that is gradually disappearing from public consciousness precisely because the demining effort has been successful.

And the final family living with the fear of what lies beneath the ground must still be able to hear the words: this land is safe. Sri Lanka’s post-war story is often told through politics, reconciliation, economic recovery and resettlement. Yet there is another story beneath the surface—literally. It is the story of thousands of men and women who continue to search the earth for the remnants of a war that ended in 2009. Their work is painstaking, dangerous and largely invisible. But every square metre they clear is a small piece of peace made tangible.

Sri Lanka is now close to the end of this long journey, thanks to the international community. Still, the international community, donors and humanitarian organisations must also ensure that the momentum is not lost before the final stretch is completed. Because a country cannot truly declare its war legacy over while its soil still remembers the war.
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The writer is an award-winning journalist and the Deputy Editor of Ceylon Today, Colombo