3rd Global Mine Action Conference concludes in Baku

The 3rd International Conference on Mine Action themed “Mitigating Environmental Impact of Landmines: Resource Mobilization for Safe and Green Future” wrapped up Friday in Baku, Azernews reports.

In his closing remarks, Representative of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan on special assignments Elchin Amirbayov said: “The good news is that today we are more than ever before close to finalizing a peace deal. We fully restored our territorial integrity and sovereignty, and today we have already started to make steady progress on delimitation of our state border with Armenia. The bad news is that all this huge reconstruction and rehabilitation effort as well as our plans to bring hundreds of thousands of displaced people back to their homes are seriously hampered by enormous mine challenge our country is facing.”

“Azerbaijan is sadly among the top 5 most heavily mine-contaminated countries in the world with 1.5 million landmines planted across 12% of national territory. Landmines pose severe human security risk even after war,” Elchin Amirbayov noted.

“Unfortunately, even after the ceasefire was reached in November 2020, Armenia has created new mined zones of a total length of 500 km. Only in the course of these last three and a half years, 361 Azerbaijanis, among them children and women, have become mine victims as a result of more than 200 incidents. Sadly, these figures are on the rise almost every week and continuous refusal by Armenia to provide us with accurate information on locations with planted mines is exacerbating the challenge,” the Representative of the Azerbaijani President emphasized.

“The scope of the mine problem is so huge that it is estimated to take decades to complete the process. We are proud to have a professional and efficient national mine action agency, ANAMA, which is today better equipped and staffed than some years ago and it is doing a great job. We are also proud to have the first group of female deminers, who recently joined our common effort. But unfortunately, current level of foreign assistance in mine action is highly insufficient constituting less than 10% of the total allocated amount. We hope that this conference will contribute to increased participation of our international partners in sharing the burden of the mine challenge in Azerbaijan,” he added.

Alexander Zuev, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Rule of Law and Security Institutions in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations expressed his gratitude to the Azerbaijani government for the decision to set the humanitarian demining as the 18th National Sustainable Development Goal as he addressed the event in a video format.

The conference also featured the panel discussions themed “Building National Capacities for Sustainable Environmental Rehabilitation”, “Resource Mobilization for a Safe and Green Future and Inclusive Transformation through Mine Action”, and “Policy integration and Advocacy for a Green Sustainable Development”.

Then, the participants adopted the Declaration of the conference. The Declaration was read out by Steinar Essen, Global mine action and development advisor, United Nations Development Programme.

The participants then heard the closing remarks by Deputy Head of the Foreign Policy Affairs Department of the Presidential Administration Nusrat Suleymanov as he highlighted Azerbaijan’s rich experience in mine clearance, global landmine threat, calling to raise the issues of climate change and landmine threat at the upcoming COP29 Conference.

Co-organized by the Azerbaijan National Agency for Mine Action (ANAMA) and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the 3rd International Conference on Mine Action aims to draw the world’s attention to the landmine problem facing Azerbaijan, strengthen the international partnership in the field of humanitarian demining, and discuss ways of mobilizing financial resources for mitigating environmental impact of landmines and other explosive remnants of war.

The function drew together more than 300 representatives from 75 countries – senior officials of a number of countries, the leadership of the UN headquarters, representatives of influential international organizations, institutions operating in the field of demining, as well as representatives of the diplomatic corps accredited in Azerbaijan.