Myanmar reported over 1,000 casualties from landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXO) in 2023, making it the deadliest country globally for such injuries, according to UN reporting from November 2024. The global toll tells a similar story: nearly 6,300 people were killed or injured by mines and explosive remnants of war in 2024, the highest count since 2020.

The injury pattern cuts across generations. Bu Ri lost a leg to a landmine years ago. Six members of his family have since suffered comparable or more severe injuries. This is not an isolated case — it reflects the reality across much of a country locked in active armed conflict for over 75 years.

Layers of Contamination Built Over Decades

Myanmar's mine problem is not the result of a single conflict. The HALO Trust, active in the country since 2007, documents territory heavily contaminated by ordnance accumulated across multiple decades of fighting. The Landmine Monitor tracks injuries from clashes between the Myanmar Armed Forces (MAF), various ethnic armed organizations (EAOs), and People's Defence Forces (PDFs)—a shifting network of conflict zones that expanded significantly following the February 2021 military coup.

What has shifted is the speed. Human Rights Watch reported in November 2024 that junta forces have increased deployment of antipersonnel landmines—weapons prohibited under the Ottawa Treaty, which Myanmar has not signed—often harming civilians indiscriminately. Over 100,000 homes have been destroyed in the broader conflict, and mine-laying has accelerated alongside the military's counterinsurgency operations. Antipersonnel mines, by design, do not distinguish between a soldier and a farmer or a child on the way to school.

How Mines Block Return and Aid

Contamination does more than injure: it makes entire areas inaccessible. Decades of mine-laying have rendered large zones of farmland and residential space unsafe, and the ICRC has documented since at least 2017 how minefields prevent displaced people from returning home. With internal displacement now numbering in the millions following the coup and civil war, this barrier has become far more acute.

Humanitarian operations face parallel constraints. UXO contamination limits where aid workers can move safely, narrows routes for food and medical supplies, and increases the cost and danger of every relief effort. The EU Emergency Response unit noted in April 2025 that UXO poses direct hazard to both populations and workers—a factor humanitarian planners now treat as a permanent consideration in Myanmar operations.

Response Efforts Meet a Growing Problem

Clearing and support programs exist. The ICRC runs a landmine risk education initiative and a Physical Rehabilitation Programme offering prosthetics, physiotherapy, and mental health support for survivors. Its mine awareness training, expanded through April 2025, teaches communities to recognize and avoid contaminated zones while conflict and natural disasters continue. HALO Trust carries out demining operations. These initiatives matter. Yet they are operating against contamination that accumulates faster than it is being removed, in an environment where active fighting limits access.

Globally, landmine contamination affects nearly 70 countries, per UN data. Myanmar's position at the top of the casualty list reflects not solely geography but an active strategy by armed actors to use indiscriminate weapons in populated rural areas.

The Ottawa Treaty, adopted in 1997, binds 164 nations and has reduced global stockpiles and casualties over time. Myanmar has never joined. Neither have the United States, Russia, or China—a reality that weakens the diplomatic pressure treaty members can bring to bear on armed forces in the field.

Until the conflict itself slows or stops, demining teams will clear less ground than armed groups lay new mines. Bu Ri's family history illustrates the trap: one injury does not settle the matter across a generation. It compounds it.