International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action
Next: April 4, 2027
Make the ground safe again.
The story
Where it comes from
On 8 December 2005 the UN General Assembly declared that 4 April each year would be the International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action. Landmines and other explosives can stay hidden in the ground long after fighting ends, threatening the people who live there and keeping land from being farmed or built on. The day asks countries, with the help of the UN, to build their own skills in clearing them, and to care for survivors, so that dangerous land becomes safe and productive again.
How it's celebrated
The UN Mine Action Service and its partners share the stories of deminers, survivors and the communities whose land has been cleared, and campaigners urge more countries to join and keep the treaties that ban these weapons. Anyone can mark it by learning about the patient work of making land safe, done by people and, in some places, by animals.
Did you know
- The Mine Ban Convention, which bans anti-personnel landmines, opened for signature in 1997 and makes caring for mine survivors, including helping them back into work and community life, a duty of the countries that join it.
- In Cambodia, an African giant pouched rat called Magawa, trained by the charity APOPO, found 39 landmines and 28 other explosive items, and in 2020 he became the first rat to win the PDSA Gold Medal for animal bravery.
- A trained mine-detection rat can search an area the size of a tennis court in about 30 minutes, a job that can take a person with a metal detector up to four days.
Coming up next
- Qingming Festival · April 5, 2027
- International Day of Conscience · April 5, 2027
- International Day of Sport for Development and Peace · April 6, 2027
- World Health Day · April 7, 2027
- International Roma Day · April 8, 2027
- The Earliest Recorded Voice · April 9, 2027