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A Dangerous Step Back: The Renewed Threat of Landmines and Cluster Munitions
Ninety percent of the more than 6,000 killed by landmines last year were civilians, and half of them were children. There can be no justification for weapons such as these.
Dec 01, 2025
One step can be the difference between life and death in many communities around the world. Srey Neang, a young girl living in rural Cambodia, ran outside to play in her uncle’s backyard, and her life was upended in a moment when she stepped on a landmine. She was rushed to the hospital, where her leg was amputated at only four years of age. Her story—like so many others—shows that even decades after conflict ends, the threat of these weapons never does.
Every year, thousands of civilians, particularly children, are injured or killed by landmines and cluster munitions. The use of landmines and cluster munitions had been on the decline since the signing of the Mine Ban Treaty in 1997 and the Convention on Cluster Munitions in 2010.
But despite progress, we are seeing more countries return to the use of landmines and cluster munitions as security concerns rise globally. Some will argue that these weapons make countries safer, but that’s faulty thinking. Security can’t come at the expense of innocent lives. Nor do these weapons actually provide meaningful military advantage; they leave behind contamination that destabilizes communities, limits economic recovery, and threatens peacekeeping forces long after conflicts end. You can’t be safe from a weapon that can’t distinguish between a soldier and a child.
The 2025 Landmine Monitor, out today, reports that more than 6,000 people were killed or injured by landmines and explosive remnants of war in 2024—the highest annual figure since 2020, and a 9% increase from the previous year. Ninety percent of those victims were civilians, and half of them were children. The 2025 Cluster Munition Monitor, published on September 15, also revealed that all reported casualties from this weapon in 2024 were civilians. New uses by countries like Russia, Myanmar, and Syria challenge the treaty. Lithuania’s withdrawal from the Convention, effective March 2025, sends a dangerous message to other countries in the region.
As these findings are released, there is a growing need for clear analysis and public understanding. On December 3, I’ll be joining fellow experts for a virtual briefing hosted by the US Campaign to Ban Landmines—Cluster Munition Coalition to discuss the latest Monitor reports, the human cost of these weapons, and the role US leadership must play at this pivotal moment. Bringing these insights directly to policymakers and advocates is essential to strengthening global norms and advancing effective solutions.
Despite never joining either treaty, the United States has long been one of the world’s largest supporters of mine clearance and victim assistance, helping make former battlefields safe for farming, economic investment, and community life. These investments are among the most cost-effective and high-impact uses of US international assistance, directly saving lives and restoring livelihoods.
The case for action is both moral and pragmatic. Every mine removed or cluster bomb destroyed reopens land for cultivation, enables displaced families to return home, and prevents future casualties. These are tangible, measurable outcomes that support U.S. foreign policy priorities: stability, economic recovery, and the protection of civilians in conflict.
Humanity & Inclusion, which has worked in mine action for more than 40 years, witnesses the human toll daily, as seen in the case of Srey and her family in Cambodia. The organization where I work, Humanity & Inclusion, supported Srey, now 13, in receiving a new prosthetic leg, which allows her to ride her bike to school, help take care of her family, and play soccer, one of her favorite hobbies.
Srey’s story and those of many others are reminders that behind every statistic is a person whose future depends on the choices policymakers make today. US leadership has always mattered. When the United States aligns its policies, funding, and diplomacy toward a humanitarian goal, the world follows. The US has made progress in recent years. In 2022, the Biden administration restricted US landmine use to the Korean Peninsula and reaffirmed the goal of ultimately joining the Mine Ban Treaty. But the transfer of US cluster munitions to Ukraine in 2023 and landmines in 2024, undercut those commitments and send mixed signals to the world.
US leadership in aligning policy with the Mine Ban Treaty and the Convention on Cluster Munitions, and in sustaining robust funding for mine action, comes at a critical time. Washington can once again set the global standard for protecting civilians and strengthening international law.
In a time of never-ending partisan fights, this is a place where both sides can come together and agree on the right steps forward. This is not an abstract debate. It’s about whether children can walk to school safely. Whether farmers can plant crops without fear. Whether communities emerging from war can build futures on land that no longer hides deadly remnants of the past. Eliminating landmines and cluster munitions aligns with American values, advances security, and reflects our nation’s enduring commitment to human dignity.
The world doesn’t need new reasons to fear these weapons. Instead, we must take the kind of step that brings hope rather than harm. If we lead with courage now, our next steps can help ensure that every step, everywhere, is safe.
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Times Report on IDF's Lack of Civilian Protections in Gaza 'Confirms What We All Knew'
"Israel has adopted an understanding of the laws of war that cancels the category of civilian to serve its war of annihilation," said one observer.
Dec 26, 2024
Human rights advocates and journalists in the Middle East have warned since Israel began its assault on Gaza 14 months ago that the Israel Defense Forces, which heralds itself as "the most moral army in the world," has actually been operating far outside the bounds of international humanitarian law—targeting not just Hamas commanders and other armed militants in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack in October 2023, but accepting and encouraging the killing of thousands of civilians of all ages.
On Thursday, The New York Times published an extensive report on how the IDF operated in the earliest weeks of Israel's current escalation, during which more than 15,000 Palestinians—a third of the overall total so far—were killed in Israeli airstrikes and other attacks.
The report details an order that was given by IDF leaders on October 7, 2023, hours after the Hamas-led attack, that the Times said was not previously reported—and builds on extensive reporting by human rights groups like Amnesty International and news outlets such as +972 Magazine and Haaretz about the military's widespread killing of civilians, in many cases with U.S.-made weapons.
The order described in the Times report directed mid-ranking Israeli officers to strike thousands of junior Hamas fighters and minor military sites that had not been the focus of earlier campaigns, and gave them the authority to risk killing up to 20 civilians with each strike.
For some strikes that targeted senior Hamas leaders, the IDF was given the authority to kill more than 100 civilians, and in an order given on October 8, 2023, strikes on military targets in Gaza "were permitted to cumulatively endanger up to 500 civilians each day"—removing a previous limit.
Allowing the killing of more than 100 civilians for one commander crossed "an extraordinary threshold for a contemporary Western military," reported the Times, which has faced accusations of pro-Israel bias in its coverage over the past 14 months.
The newly reported orders reflect comments made by top Israeli government leaders in the early days of the IDF's bombardment, which were reported on at the time by Common Dreams and other outlets. Then-Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on October 10 that he had "released all the restraints" on Israeli troops, and President Israel Herzog asserted days later that there were no civilians in Gaza who were "not involved" in the Hamas attack.
The investigation, said University of Edinburgh political scientist Nicola Perugini, "confirms what we all knew."
The Times reported that the family members of Shaldan al-Najjar, a senior commander in Palestinian Islamic Jihad, were some of the first casualties of Israel's new operating procedures in Gaza. A two-month-old baby was among 20 of al-Najjar's family members who were killed in an airstrike in October 2023, and the severed hand of one of his niece's was found in the rubble of the family home.
Mid-level Israeli officers were required to get approval for strikes from senior commanders if a target was close to a site like a school or healthcare facility, but those targets were "regularly approved."
The Times based its reporting on dozens of military records and interviews with more than 100 soldiers and officials, including 25 IDF members who helped approve or vet targets.
The report details how the Israeli air force "raced through" a database of hundreds of militants and military sites that had been compiled from extensive vetting, and put pressure on the military to quickly find thousands of new targets.
The IDF also largely stopped its use of warning shots to give civilians time to flee an area before a large-scale strike, and significantly increased risks to civilians by using 1,000- and 2,000-pound bombs.
The military told the Times in a statement that its soldiers have "consistently been employing means and methods that adhere to the rules of law."
The Times' reporting comes less than two weeks after the death toll in Gaza was reported to have passed 45,000. A United Nations analysis in November found that women and children made up 70% of the people killed in the enclave between October 2023 and April 2024.
On December 18, Haaretz reported that the IDF has adopted a point of view that "everyone's a terrorist" in Gaza—a report, policy expert Assal Rad said, that was unlikely to be covered by Western news outlets.
At +972 Magazine, journalist Yuval Abraham has written at least twice since October 2023 about the IDF's use of artificial intelligence systems to generate large numbers of targets in Gaza. As Common Dreams reported in December 2023, an AI-driven system called the Gospel was used to produce 100 targets in a single day, leading IDF sources to compare Gaza to a "factory" where the maximum number of casualties—whether of militants or civilians—was accepted and encouraged.
About 37,000 Palestinians and their homes—potentially with family members inside—were marked by another AI system called Lavender in the first weeks of the war, Abraham reported in another article in April.
In that article Abraham emphasized, similarly to the Times, that up to 100 civilian deaths were allowed for every killing of a senior Hamas commander.
"Glad the Times is covering the IDF's total lack of safeguards to prevent civilian casualties in Gaza," said podcast host and former Obama White House staffer Tommy Vietor, "but outlets like Haartez and +972... had these stories months ago."
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No Israeli Civilian Deaths Reported as Iran Confined Missile Barrage to Military Targets
Some supporters of Israel, said one observer, "are so enamored by war crimes they seem to think the entire purpose of retaliatory action is to kill civilians rather than target military infrastructure."
Oct 02, 2024
Iran's armed forces on Tuesday night said it had hit its intended military targets with its ballistic missile strikes in Israel, and dismissed Israeli and U.S. claims that the operation was a failure—claims that critics said displayed the view of Israel and its biggest military funder that civilian casualties are an acceptable part of warfare.
Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, chief of staff of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said that Israel's three main airbases, radar sites, armored Israel Defense Forces (IDF) vehicles around the Gaza Strip, and the headquarters of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, were among the targets.
"Only military sites were targeted. If Israel is not contained by U.S. and Europe, and takes action against our sovereignty and territorial integrity, tonight's operation will be repeated in much greater size," said Bagheri.
Sameh al-Asali, a Palestinian laborer from Gaza who was in the West Bank city of Jericho, was hit by a missile fragment and killed.
The missile strikes were carried out in retaliation for Israel's killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and as a warning to Israel not to escalate against Iran. They followed the IDF's invasion of Lebanon in a widening conflict that began last year after Israel retaliated for a Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023 by launching a full-scale assault on Gaza as well as numerous attacks on the West Bank.
While downplaying the effectiveness of Iran's missile barrage, the U.S. and Israel also classified the attack as a "significant escalation," with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying Iran had "made a big mistake... and it will pay for it."
Israel vowed to respond to the attack, with IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Peter Lerner saying, "There will be consequences."
Iranian government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani said Iran's military actions had been taken in self-defense and were carried out "within national interests and in line with international regulations."
Israel has been accused of blatantly violating international humanitarian law in Gaza by targeting civilian infrastructure and collectively punishing the population of 2.3 million people with what United Nations experts have called a "targeted starvation campaign." Netanyahu's government faces a genocide case brought by South Africa and other countries at the International Court of Justice, and has been ordered by the court to protect civilians in Gaza.
Philip Proudfoot, an anthropologist and researcher at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, said supporters of Israel seemed to see the lack of Israeli civilian casualties from Iran's attack on Tuesday as worthy of mockery rather than evidence of a targeted and strategic military strike.
"These are people are so enamored by war crimes they seem to think the entire purpose of retaliatory action is to kill civilians rather than target military infrastructure," said Proudfoot. "Iran warned of the impending response, targeted military infrastructure, didn't kill a single Israeli civilian, and demonstrated that the Iron Dome is not impervious, restoring a sense of regional deterrence. I don't see why Tehran would see this as a failure."
In the 24 hours after Iran's missile strikes, Gaza's Health Ministry reported on Wednesday that 51 people in the enclave were killed in Israeli attacks, including at least nine at the Muscat School and the Al-Amal Orphanage in Gaza City. Israel said the school and orphanage were being used as Hamas command centers—a frequent claim the IDF has used to rationalize its attacks on civilian infrastructure and residential areas while blaming Hamas for civilian casualties that result.
CNN reporter Jim Sciutto noted Tuesday that Mossad's headquarters is in a "densely populated area" of Tel Aviv, and said the targeting of the building added "one more layer of escalation."
"This really brings rampant, shameless Western media racism to the fore," said U.K. journalist Owen Jones. "If that was a Hamas or Hezbollah target, 'human shields' is exactly what we'd hear."
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