New Frontlines and an Uncertain Future for Mine Clearance in Colombia

New frontlines and funding cuts deepen risks for ex-combatants working in humanitarian mine clearance.

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Nearly a decade after the landmark 2016 Peace Agreement between the Colombian government and a communist guerilla group known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the prevalence of landmines remains a critical issue in the country. As mine clearance efforts turn toward active conflict zones in Colombia where humanitarian law is disregarded, buried and improvised explosives aren’t the only risks for some Colombian humanitarian workers on the frontlines of neutralizing minefields.

Colombia has historically ranked high among the countries most impacted by landmines as a result of decades-long armed conflict involving the government, drug cartels, and a number of paramilitary and guerilla groups. After more than a decade of unsuccessful campaigns, landmine clearance efforts intensified in 2015 as a result of peace negotiations between the state and FARC. While Colombia now has less than five square kilometers of known contaminated land, it continues to falter in making its territories safe for civilians, as has been the case in similarly affected countries such as Niger, Palestine, Peru, and Somalia.

In September 2000, Colombia ratified the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention (also known as the Ottawa Treaty), which banned the use of landmines, and signaled the country’s commitment to clearing its minefields. Over the following decade, however, Colombia struggled to comply with the terms of the treaty amid some of the most devastating years of its civil war. Just months prior to the signing of the Peace Agreement in August 2016, former Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos committed to completely demining the country within five years as former U.S. President Barack Obama granted $50 million to Colombia’s demining efforts. Following an extension granted in 2021, Colombia is again in the process of extending the deadline for December 2025 and facing long-standing criticism of its slow progress. 

While Colombia destroyed its landmine stockpile in 2004 as part of the Ottawa Treaty, there are still minefields across the country with undetonated explosives. Since the start of this year, foreign governments have paid or committed more than $8 million (receiving $30.8 million USD in 2023) to humanitarian mine projects in Colombia, which are supported by the work of organizations such as the HALO Trust, Danish Refugee Council, Humanity & Inclusion, Campaña Colombiana Contra Minas (Colombian Campaign Against Mines), and a Colombian organization called HUMANICEMOS.

Humanitarian mine clearance is currently underway in eighty-seven out of the 1,121 municipalities suspected to be contaminated. In 119 municipalities, however, continued conflict and the presence of armed groups have prevented clearance operations. InSight Crime, an investigative network focused on organized crime in Latin America, has reported that landmine use across Colombia is resurging in regions already affected by explosives and spreading to new areas as armed groups replant old mines. Nearly 1,000 incidents involving landmines were reported last year, representing a steady upward trend since 2021 that has been attributed to fracturing and fighting between non-state armed groups and criminal organizations.  

Today, armed groups use improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that function as landmines to protect their resources and trafficking corridors. Combatants are able to finagle soda cans, wires, and plastic to create weapons that appear as inconspicuous as roadside litter. While the Ottawa Treaty applies to industrially manufactured anti-personnel mines and does not exclude IEDs, there is still some uncertainty around the legality of improvised explosives. Rather than being explicitly banned, international humanitarian law applies to the use and impacts of improvised devices on civilian populations. 

But the available data, while inconsistent and incomprehensive, shows that the devastation of uncleared landmines becomes apparent after the frontlines vanish and civilians return home. In 2023, there were 380 reported landmine victims in Colombia, sixty-one of whom were killed. Fifty-four percent of victims were civilians and two-fifths of the victims were children. Those who survive live with enduring physical and psychological pain as a result of their injuries.

In December, the United Nations Verification Mission in Colombia, which reports on Colombia’s Peace Agreement implementation progress to the U.N. Security Council, reported a lack of demining progress in Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and campesino communities whose safety and livelihoods are systemically endangered by ongoing armed conflict. 

But armed groups may not see clearance operations in these vulnerable areas as neutral and impartial. In coca-growing regions like Nariño or Putumayo, IEDs have been used by various armed groups to control access to coca plantations and other strategic areas. Though parties involved in conflict have a duty to protect civilians under international humanitarian law, this is routinely violated. 

Camilo Serna of Bogotá-based Campaña Colombiana Contra Minas (Colombian Campaign Against Mines) tells The Progressive that members of armed groups and criminal organizations in Puerto Caicedo have completely refused access to humanitarian mine clearance workers.

“We don’t know if they are protecting coca fields, or because a place is strategic and they need to preserve it for other reasons. We don’t know why we can’t get in there,” he says.

Other times, criminal organizations allow mine clearance because it allows them to operate more easily. Northern Antioquia, a subregion of Colombia’s most historically landmine-affected department, is controlled by the Clan del Golfo, a contemporary of the Medellín drug cartel and the right-wing paramilitary Los Urabeños. While humanitarian reports attribute the majority of landmine use today to FARC dissidents and the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerillas, Clan del Golfo has also manufactured anti-personnel mines in neighbouring Chocó. InSight Crime, has attributed the cartel’s renewed use of explosives in part to the recruitment of former FARC guerillas. Serna explains that the cartel allowed mine clearance in Antioquia in order to make their trafficking corridors safer.

“They don’t want landmines in their field,” he says. “If we don’t interfere with their operations, they don’t mind what we are doing.”

Colombia has encouraged the participation of former combatants in humanitarian demining through the 2016 Peace Agreement, seeing a constructive pathway to prevent recidivism and encourage reconciliation between ex-combatants and affected communities. But as conflict between the ELN, rival guerilla groups, and Clan del Golfo has escalated in recent months, resulting in displacements and violence against civilians across the Catatumbo region of Norte de Santander, Chocó and Sur de Bolívar, humanitarian mine clearance workers are exposed to growing risks.

According to the U.N. Verification Mission in Colombia, more than 11,000 former combatants are registered with the Colombian government’s Agency for Reintegration and Normalization, which aids former guerilla group members reintegrating into civilian life. Ninety-nine percent have enrolled in the agency’s Comprehensive Reintegration Program since its launch in July 2024, and approximately 80 percent of accredited former combatants are engaged with individual or collective projects like coffee plantations, fruit farms, or community sports programs. Similarly, up to 140 demobilized fighters have worked with HUMANICEMOS. 

In the years immediately following the 2016 Peace Agreement, there was considerable optimism about the potential efficacy of these initiatives. “Former combatants were very well received in the communities,” says Pablo Parra Gallego, special advisor on Mine Action at the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and formerly with the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) in Colombia. Civilian community members, he says, found compassion in the harsh realities of survival. “In one family, one son goes to the guerrillas, one son goes to the paramilitary, one son goes to the army. There are no other options.”

“HUMANICEMOS had become a very stable source of employment for people who were illiterate or without formal education,” he adds. “It’s been very successful in keeping this community of people together that didn’t have any other chance of reintegration.”

But until recently, these initiatives—which are subject to supervision and quality control by the Organization of American States (OAS)—were held back due to the FARC’s designation by the United States as a terrorist group, which prevented former FARC members from receiving funding and critical support. 

“There are many layers of risk for combatants doing that [work],” Gallego says, adding that despite the United Nations’ continued engagement in Colombian demining, ex-combatants are receiving less support than the period between 2016 and 2023 because of its divided focus. “The U.N. is still there, but less and less,” he says. “It’s more difficult to stay focused on that. They are more out by themselves in these environments.”

Currently, the U.N. Verification Mission in Colombia is split between verifying the conditions of the peace agreement with FARC and working on new peace deals between the Colombian government and various armed groups. This has left ex-combatants increasingly exposed to coercion and assassination. Because of their familiarity with explosives, Gallego explains, “some of them were harassed and threatened to join new groups.”

Under the Peace Agreement, the Colombian state is committed to protecting those demobilized fighters who signed the agreement. But ex-combatants continue to be seen as traitors and targeted by active members of armed groups. Though 2024 was the least deadly year for former FARC members since 2019, thirty-three ex-combatants were reportedly killed last year. As confrontations between armed groups have escalated across Colombia, former guerillas are considered at heightened risk of targeted violence. The eruption of conflict in the Catatumbo region of Norte de Santander in January resulted in the murder of at least five former FARC members by the ELN. Earlier this month, the Colombian government issued an alert on the safety of former combatants living in several transitional zones in the department of Cesar, where the state runs programs for civilian integration of former guerillas, emphasizing the risks of conflict spilling over from Norte de Santander. 

The coming years will present even greater challenges. The Trump Administration’s recent cuts to the United States Agency for International Development have been devastating for Colombia, where up to 75 percent of all international support for mine action programs has been contributed by the United States.

“Mine action operators have been scrambling to adapt to this sudden decision, but it has already led to the suspension or even termination of many clearance, risk education, and victim assistance programs, with countless communities endangered and thousands of jobs lost,” the International Campaign to Ban Landmines said in a statement on the global impacts earlier this month.

In light of growing gaps in demining support, mine action groups including the Colombian Campaign Against Mines have called for a voluntary trust fund to be created by countries that are party to the Ottawa Treaty by the end of next year. Ruth Bottomley, research advisor at the ASEAN Regional Mine Action Center, tells The Progressive that the fund, which is intended to speed up the mine clearance process, could take two years to set up. In the wake of the Trump Administration’s recent freeze on foreign aid from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the fund would be open to contributions from smaller countries that had not previously provided financial aid to mine clearance. Bottomley says this would be beneficial for party states that have struggled to access sufficient funds in the past. According to the Landmine Monitor, countries with smaller surface areas of contamination like Colombia already experienced cuts in 2023. 

The resurgence of conflict in Colombia has coincided with new cuts in humanitarian aid from major funders such as the United Kingdom, Germany, and Switzerland, in addition to the United States. And as more countries consider withdrawing from the historic Ottawa Treaty, which banned the use of indiscriminate weapons on moral grounds, the humanitarian sector is witnessing an alarming erosion of humanitarian norms. 

For former combatants on the frontlines of humanitarian demining in Colombia, the future remains unclear. Despite recent progress in ex-combatant reintegration programs, Gallego doesn’t see the Colombian state prioritizing the safety of former combatants working in increasingly dangerous environments. 

“The peace implementation has not been the focus of this administration or the previous one,” he says. “It became more like a burden than a challenge, so instead of actively seeking solutions for that, the government just let it happen and HUMANICEMOS has been limping its way into demining.”