Supporting the recognition of April 4, 2025, as the International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action, and reaffirming the leadership of the United States in eliminating landmines and unexploded ordnance.

Supporting the recognition of April 4, 2025, as the International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action, and reaffirming the leadership of the United States in eliminating landmines and unexploded ordnance.

Whereas landmines and unexploded ordnance threaten the safety, health, and lives of civilian populations and create humanitarian and development challenges that have serious and lasting social, economic, and security consequences for affected populations;

Whereas demining and clearance of unexploded ordnance enables displaced people to return to their homes and has a direct impact on development outcomes such as food security, school attendance, and economic development;

Whereas people in at least 60 countries and other areas are at risk from mines and unexploded ordnance in their communities;

Whereas more than 135,000 deaths and injuries resulting from antipersonnel or antivehicle mines and other explosive remnants of war have been recorded in the Landmine Monitor database since 2001, and thousands more individuals around the world are killed and injured by such mines and remnants each year;

Whereas, over the past 3 decades, the United States has been the global leader in supporting efforts to clear mine-contaminated areas around the world, dedicating more than $4,600,000,000 for demining and related programs in 120 countries and territories since 1993;

Whereas, since 1989, the United States Agency for International Development has allocated more than $337,000,000 through the Leahy War Victims Fund in more than 50 countries to provide artificial limbs, wheelchairs, rehabilitation, vocational training, and other assistance to survivors of accidents caused by landmines and unexploded ordnance;

Whereas landmines contaminate countries in which the United States Armed Forces have been engaged in combat or stabilization operations, including Iraq, Syria, Kosovo, Somalia, and in the Pacific Islands, posing a significant risk to United States military personnel;

Whereas the United States Government expressed its support for the Maputo +15 declaration of June 27, 2014, which established the goal “to destroy all stockpiled anti-personnel mines and clear all mined areas as soon as possible”;

Whereas there are 164 States Parties to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production, and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction, done at the Oslo Landmine Conference, September 18, 1997, although the United States is not yet among them;

Whereas the recent use of landmines, cluster bombs, and other munitions, particularly in the Middle East, Afghanistan, Burma, and Ukraine, has created new humanitarian priorities and funding requirements for demining, while legacy mine contamination remains an urgent challenge impacting millions of people globally;

Whereas Russia’s aggression in Ukraine has resulted in an estimated one-third of the territory being contaminated with landmines and unexploded ordnance, creating a massive need for clearance operations as a prerequisite for Ukraine’s recovery, but acknowledging that these needs in Ukraine do not diminish the similarly urgent need for humanitarian demining in other parts of the world;

Whereas additional resources for demining will be needed to achieve a world free of the threat of landmines and other explosive hazards;

Whereas, since the end of the Vietnam war, more than 40,000 people in Vietnam have been killed by unexploded ordnance and 60,000 injured, at least 25,000 people have been killed or injured by explosives in Laos, and at least 65,000 people in Cambodia since 1979; and

Whereas, on December 8, 2005, the United Nations General Assembly declared that April 4th of each year shall be observed as the International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives—

(1) reaffirms the commitment of the United States to support international humanitarian efforts to eliminate landmines and unexploded ordnance;

(2) recognizes the communities from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam including the many Hmong, Cham, Cambodian, Iu-Mien, Khmu, Lao, Montagnard, and Vietnamese people who supported and defended the United States Armed Forces during the conflict in Southeast Asia during the 1960s and 1970s;

(3) remembers the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam war and the sacrifices of the members of the United States Armed Forces that served in the conflict;

(4) recognizes those individuals in numerous countries who, at great risk to their personal safety, work to locate and remove antipersonnel landmines and unexploded ordnance;

(5) affirms its support for the goal, as expressed by the Maputo +15 declaration of June 27, 2014, to intensify efforts to clear mined areas to the fullest extent possible by 2025;

(6) calls upon the United States Government—

(A) to continue providing the funding necessary to support international humanitarian demining activities;

(B) to maintain its international leadership role in seeking to rid the world of areas contaminated by landmines and unexploded ordnance; and

(C) to rededicate itself to addressing legacy mine contamination as an urgent humanitarian priority; and

(7) reaffirms the goals of the International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action.