$70 million, demining equipment and support for innovative projects — results of the first day of UMAC 2024

During the annual Ukraine Mine Action Conference 2024 (UMAC-2024), partner countries announced additional commitments in support of humanitarian demining amounting to almost 70 million in dollar equivalent. The additional allocated funds were announced by Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, and Canada. The total contribution of partners to humanitarian demining since 2022 has amounts to 1 billion 70 million US dollars.

"We deeply appreciate the contribution our partners make to humanitarian demining in Ukraine. This is not just machinery, equipment, or money for project implementation — these are saved lives in Ukraine and the restoration of global food security. Thanks to this systematic support, we already have significant progress in demining. A year ago, together with partners, we met at the demining forum in Zagreb, Croatia. At that time, we had 18 operators, approximately 3 thousand sappers, and 32 demining machines. To date, 58 operators have been certified, the number of sappers has grown to over 4 thousand, and 98 demining machines are working in the fields," said First Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine — Minister of Economy of Ukraine Yuliia Svyrydenko.

Luxembourg allocated 13 million US dollars for humanitarian demining projects in Ukraine. These funds will go to projects to be implemented by the UN Development Programme (10.8 million dollars), the international organization HALO Trust (1.08 million dollars), and through the EU Civil Protection Mechanism (1.08 million dollars).

Norway announced additional funding for humanitarian demining in Ukraine. The country is allocating 20 million dollars for 2025, increasing its contribution to 70 million dollars. Norway has focused its humanitarian demining funding on fieldwork, supporting affected communities, and strengthening mine action capacity.

The Netherlands, which has already allocated over 40 million US dollars for humanitarian demining in Ukraine, announced an additional 10.8 million dollars for projects in 2025.

Canada is providing 24.5 million US dollars for the needs of humanitarian demining in Ukraine. Its total contribution to financing the sector has reached over 50 million dollars.

Over 270 thousand euros for humanitarian demining in Ukraine were allocated by the Government of Latvia. This money will be received by the international organization HALO Trust, whose specialists are working on land demining in several regions of Ukraine affected by hostilities.

Switzerland, which is hosting UMAC-2024 this year, announced plans to transfer three heavy GCS-200 demining machines to Ukraine for the pyrotechnic units of the State Emergency Service. The symbolic transfer of the first of them took place directly during the Conference. Switzerland also decided to allocate 30 million Swiss francs to one of the projects of the Swiss Foundation for Mine Action (FSD) operating in Ukraine. The funding will be provided as part of the previously announced assistance of 100 million Swiss francs.

The governments of Switzerland and the United Kingdom are ready to allocate funds for a pilot project on prioritization in humanitarian demining. The system, built on the platform of the technology giant Palantir, will allow determining priority areas for demining based on a large dataset. The pilot project in the Kharkiv region will last three months.

The US, which in September announced 102 million in assistance for humanitarian demining, during the Conference announced an initiative aimed at increasing the capacity of private humanitarian demining operators. They plan to assess the needs of Ukrainian operators and strengthen their knowledge of how international donor organizations work. This will allow operators to attract international support in the future. And the first step in this direction could be strengthening the cooperation of Ukrainian and international operators.

The final document with a commitment to support humanitarian demining in Ukraine was signed by 42 countries. One of its key points — mine action must remain on the international agenda. And the signatories must make efforts to minimize the impact of mines and explosive remnants of war on people's lives, particularly through territory demining and the development of innovative technologies.