Background
Landmines are a very big problem in Colombia. During the last two decades, 9584 land mine accidents were registered in the country; i.e. more than one person getting injured or killed every single day by a landmine during the last 20 year period. That number unfortunately brings Colombia up amongst the countries in the world that has the highest number of landmine accidents.

The reason behind the high number of landmines in Colombia is the ongoing conflict between the state and the armed revolutionary groups in the country. The conflict is mostly about politics, land rights and drugs and it is still very much present in large parts of Colombia.

Another consequence of the Colombian conflict is the high number of internally displaced people and refugees. Colombia continues to take the world lead in numbers of internally displaced people. In 2011,more than 5.200.000 people were registered as internally displaced – people that saw no other way than to leave their homes and go search for a safer place for them and their family. More than 500.000 Colombians are refugees or live in refugee-like situations in Ecuador or Venezuela. They have been forced to cross the border in order to avoid being killed or have their children forcefully recruited into the armed revolutionary groups.

DDG in Colombia
Danish Demining Group (DDG) came to Colombia in late 2010 when the country approved a new law allowing international NGO’s to take part in mine action in Colombia. Important progress has been made by the Colombian Government in 2011 and we expect 2012 to be the year where civil humanitarian demining operations will take place in large scale in Colombia.