Landmines, UXO and de-mining

Over 500 people have been affected by UXO-related accidents in Laos since 2009, according to a report from the National Regulatory Authority (NRA) for UXO/Mine Action in Laos. The NRA reported that from 2009 until the present there had been 319 incidents involving unexploded ordnance, claiming ...

Secretary of State John Kerry said on 25 January that the United States is considering increasing financial aid to help Laos clear the countryside of unexploded ordnance left over from the Vietnam War more than four decades ago. Speaking at the end of a one-day stop in ...

Secretary of State John Kerry said on 25 January that the United States is considering increasing financial aid to help Laos clear the countryside of unexploded ordnance left over from the Vietnam War more than four decades ago. Speaking with reporters at the end of a one-day ...

China said on 5 January it had lodged a protest with Myanmar after one of its border officials was blown up by a landmine after going to investigate an earlier explosion close to the frontier with the Kokang region of Shan State. A spokesperson for the Chinese ...

Lao Prime Minister Mr Thongsing Thammavong met US President Barack Obama in Kuala Lumpur on 21 November to discuss the expanding relationship between the two nations. During the meeting PM Thongsing Thammavong highlighted the growing partnership between the US and Laos in the health and UXO clearance ...

Two young girls, aged 13 and 8, have died after accidentally detonating a landmine near a small village in central Shan State. The victims died at the bank of the Tein Creek, on the outskirts of Mat Lan village in Laihka Township. According to a third child, ...

Laos’ National Regulatory Authority (NRA) for the UXO/Mine Action sector in Laos has set a target to reduce the number of UXO casualties to less than 40 per year and provide assistance to at least 1,500 UXO victims in the period from 2016-2020. The target was set ...

An expert working group’s third conference on humanitarian mine action within the framework of the ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting Plus (ADMM+) was held in the central province of Thua Thien-Hue on 29 October. The event, organised by the Institute for International Relations under the Vietnamese Ministry ...

“After the war, we live afraid of unexploded bombs, and we’re very careful when we go and do anything,” says Somechit Phouangsavat, an artisan from Ban Naphia, also known as War Spoon Village, in Laos. The 32-year-old works alongside 30 other artisans at Article 22, a company ...

The confrontation is immediate — a hundred cluster bombs suspended from the ceiling on fishing wire. This is the display that greets visitors to the Cooperative Orthotic and Prosthetic Enterprise (COPE) centre in Vientiane. Between 1964 and 1973, more than 580,000 US bombing missions made the once-tranquil ...