UNMAS Director Warns Global Demining Funding Has Fallen as 90 Per Cent of Gaza Explosive-Hazard Casualties Are Civilian

Technical Summary

On 2 May 2026 the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) Director, Kazumi Ogawa, addressed the Mine Action National Directors and UN Advisers (NDM-UN) meeting in Geneva and stated that humanitarian demining is now entering a structural funding contraction even as the conflict-driven Explosive Remnants of War (ERW) caseload reaches a level she described as unprecedented in her career. The statement, reported by UN News, the European Sting and Global Security in the 48 hours that followed, frames a quantified mismatch between contamination and clearance capacity that is most acute in Gaza, Syria, Ukraine and Afghanistan.

Director Ogawa identified three quantified data points. In Gaza, 90 per cent of the casualties caused by explosive hazards from the Hamas–Israel war are civilian, and the majority of those civilian casualties are children. UNMAS estimates that between 5 and 10 per cent of munitions fired during the Gaza conflict failed to function as designed and now constitute UXO. In the Syrian Arab Republic, the historical baseline of approximately 300 ERW fatalities per year for a typical mine-affected country has been displaced by an observed rate of approximately 200 fatalities per week, a step change of two orders of magnitude. In Afghanistan, UNMAS records one child killed by ERW every day.

Between five and ten per cent of all munitions fired in Gaza failed to function and remain as UXO; ninety per cent of resulting explosive-hazard casualties are civilian, and the majority of those civilians are children. In Syria, fatalities have moved from approximately 300 per year to approximately 200 per week. UNMAS Director Kazumi Ogawa, Geneva NDM-UN meeting, 2 May 2026

Analysis of Effects

The 5–10 per cent dud rate cited for Gaza is consistent with the published failure-to-function envelope for air-delivered High-Explosive (HE) ordnance over an urban environment. Documented post-conflict UXO densities in dense urban environments are dominated by HE-FRAG (high-explosive fragmentation) air-dropped bombs in the 250 kg (Mk-82-class), 500 kg (Mk-83-class) and 1,000 kg (Mk-84-class) bands, by precision-guided variants (Joint Direct Attack Munition, GBU-31/32/38 series, GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb), by 155 mm and 122 mm artillery HE rounds with Comp B or TNT fillers, and by 81 mm and 120 mm mortar HE rounds. Net Explosive Quantity (NEQ) per item ranges from 0.4 kg TNT-equivalent for an 81 mm mortar to ~430 kg TNT-equivalent for a Mk-84-class general-purpose bomb. All such items fall under Hazard Division 1.1 / Compatibility Group D under STANAG 4123.

The 200-per-week Syria figure reflects a contamination profile dominated by submunition duds, abandoned stockpiles, Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and Victim-Operated IEDs (VOIEDs) inherited from the 2011–2024 civil war and the post-2024 transition. Submunitions characteristically present a 5–25 per cent failure-to-function rate, with the BL-755 cluster, ZAB-2.5 incendiary, and PFM-1 family historically dominating reported casualty mechanisms in regional clearance datasets. The doctrinal lethal radius (LR) of an unprotected casualty against a typical 155 mm HE-FRAG submunition or sub-bomblet is in the order of 5–15 m, with casualty radius (CR) extending to 50 m, which is consistent with the high incidence of multiple-casualty events in observed Syrian return-to-village UXO encounters.

Personnel and Safety Considerations

Operational planning for clearance teams in all four named theatres is governed by the International Mine Action Standards (IMAS) family published by UNMAS. The applicable instruments are IMAS 07.10 (Guide for the Management of Demining Operations), IMAS 09.10 (Clearance Requirements), IMAS 09.30 (Explosive Ordnance Disposal), IMAS 09.31 (EOD Clearance of Cluster Munition Strikes) and IMAS 10.20 (Safety and Occupational Health). For deminer teams operating in urban Gaza and Syria, the dominant residual safety risks are: secondary munitions encountered during rubble removal; fuze condition unknown for ordnance subjected to thermal pulse, kinetic shock and burial; chemical contamination of fillers from white phosphorus (M825-series) and depleted uranium penetrators; and uncontrolled tertiary fragmentation from unrelated structural collapse during render-safe procedures.

Funding contraction is not a tactical risk in itself but a strategic-level capacity gap. With humanitarian budgets diverted to defence procurement — a transfer signalled across NATO ministerial communiqués in Q1 and Q2 2026 — the deminer headcount available to operate to IMAS standard cannot be sustained at the current pace. The mathematical implication is that the residual UXO inventory in Gaza, Syria and Ukraine will compound year-on-year through the late 2020s, regardless of any subsequent ceasefire posture. Allied EOD and ATO professionals should expect a reach-back demand from civilian deminers for 1980s and 1990s vintage technical libraries (Soviet munitions, Warsaw Pact submunitions, US AGM/CBU-series), reference imagery and render-safe procedure (RSP) consultation across the next 36–60 months.

Data Gaps

DATA GAP: Aggregate Gaza UXO tonnage — UNMAS has not published a consolidated tonnage estimate for total Gaza UXO contamination, only the per-cent dud rate.

DATA GAP: Donor list and funding shortfall — the absolute funding-shortfall figure (USD millions, multi-year) is not stated in the Director’s remarks as reported, and no donor pull-out has been individually attributed.

DATA GAP: Submunition vs unitary munition split — the Syria 200-per-week figure is not decomposed by ordnance type or by VOIED versus legacy ERW.

DATA GAP: Anti-Personnel Landmines Convention status — the Director referred to several European nations initiating or completing withdrawal from the 1997 Convention in 2025–early 2026, but the consolidated list of withdrawing parties was not stated in the remarks as reported.

AI-assisted technical assessment based on open-source material. Not a formal intelligence product. Image attribution noted where applicable.