BAKU, Azerbaijan, April 4. Armenia must be held accountable for refusing to cooperate on mine clearance [with Azerbaijan], Trend reports via the tweet of Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry.
"Today marks the International Day for Mine Awareness. 'Mine Action Cannot Wait' and entails holding those, including Armenia, who plant mines indiscriminately and refuse to cooperate in dismantling them, accountable. We must end the enormous human cost they create," said ministry.
On 8 December 2005, the UN General Assembly declared that 4 April of each year shall be observed as the International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action. It called for continued efforts by States, with the assistance of the United Nations and relevant organizations, to foster the establishment and development of national mine-action capacities in countries where mines and explosive remnants of war constitute a serious threat to the safety, health and lives of the civilian population, or an impediment to social and economic development at the national and local levels.
In 2023 the United Nations Mine Action Service will acknowledge the day under the campaign “Mine Action Cannot Wait”, highlighting decades of contamination in Cambodia, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic and Viet Nam, as well as draw attention to recent explosive ordnance contamination.
Meanwhile, Azerbaijan has for years been victim to Armenia's mining its territories. Following the end of the second Karabakh war in 2020, Azerbaijan started large scale work on de-mining its liberated territories, yet the mine threat still remains.
In March 2023, 270 anti-personnel and 656 anti-tank landmines, as well as 1,465 units of unexploded ordnance, were discovered and removed in Tartar, Aghdam, Khojavand, Fuzuli, Lachin, Khojaly, Shusha, Gubadli, Jabrayil, and Zangilan districts as part of the de-mining process. A total area of 5,983.6 hectares has been cleared of mines and unexploded ordnance.