The U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines – U.S. Cluster Munition Coalition is deeply concerned about the global impact of President Trump’s 90 day stop work order for U.S. foreign assistance programming that suspends U.S.-funded mine clearance programs. 

Mine clearance serves humanitarian, national security, and economic aims. Clearing land of landmines and unexploded ordnance such as cluster munition remnants allows displaced people to safely return home, enables delivery of humanitarian aid, revitalizes economic activity, and facilitates the transition from conflict to self-sufficiency. These programs survey and clear land contaminated by landmines and unexploded ordnance, and provide risk education to communities. 

Mine clearance operators work at great personal risk to carefully and painstakingly survey, clear and destroy landmines and unexploded ordnance and release cleared land back to communities for farming, industry, infrastructure and other uses. With an average of 15 casualties a day worldwide from the explosive remnants of war – about half of which are children – these clearance efforts are critical to saving lives. In 2022 alone, U.S. funded programs cleared over 43,000 acres of land and provided medical and rehabilitative care to over 53,000 survivors of landmines and explosive remnants of war.

These programs also benefit U.S. national security by reducing the risk of proliferation of small arms, light weapons and explosive materials to armed groups such as narco-trafficking gangs in Latin America and the Caribbean. Left uncleared, landmines and unexploded ordnance also threatens the lives of U.S. troops, contractors, and aid workers operating in conflict zones.

In January, President Trump issued an executive order on “Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid,” and Pete Marocco, Director of the State Department’s Office of Foreign Assistance, released a memo that together suspended U.S. foreign assistance for 90 days. The potential impact of the suspension of funds to mine clearance operators was detailed in The New York Times on January 26 and January 28.

The U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines and the U.S. Cluster Munition Coalition urges the Trump administration to act quickly to end the stop-work order for clearance operations and victim assistance programs. A waiver or quick and affirmative review for mine clearance and victim assistance programs is urgently needed to allow clearance professionals to get back to work making the world a safer place.