Landmine clearance in Colombia aims to let Indigenous communities protect 18,000 hectares of forest

Deminers from The HALO Trust have started clearing explosives from almost 18,000 hectares (about 45,000 acres) of forested land in Colombia's Meta region, so that two Indigenous communities can safely return to and protect their territory, according to a joint release from Rainforest Trust and HALO dated 1 October. The three-year project costs about $1 million.

The land belongs to the Sol Naciente community in the municipality of Mesetas and the Nuevo Milenio community in Uribe, 81 families in total. It lies about 1,000 meters above sea level on the edge of protected rainforest and is home to rare and endangered species. Work has begun in Sol Naciente.

Mine-free land can become an official Indigenous reserve

Clearing the mines is the first step in a longer legal process. Once the land is declared free of explosives, the Colombian government can designate both areas as Indigenous reserves, which gives the communities more control over how the forest is used and conserved. Rainforest Trust and the Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) lead that conservation and legal work, while HALO handles the clearance.

After the explosives are gone, HALO and ACT will give the Indigenous Guard, the communities' own patrol, environmental monitoring equipment and motorbikes. The guard will watch for illegal logging, one of the extractive activities the release names as a threat to the area. Rainforest Trust calls this its first partnership of this kind.

“Clearing landmines means that these communities can safely access and protect their ancestral lands.” — Oliver Ford, HALO Colombia Programme Manager

Colombia still records more than 100 mine casualties a year

Decades of armed conflict left Colombia with one of the worst landmine problems in the world. Nearly 12,700 people have been killed or injured by landmines or unexploded ordnance in the country since 1990, the second-highest rate after Afghanistan, according to HALO's country page. The charity has worked in Colombia since 2013 and says its survey teams have recorded 1,433 villages as free of explosive contamination.

Annual casualties fell sharply after the 2016 peace agreement with the FARC-EP guerrillas, but they have not stopped. The Landmine Monitor recorded 109 casualties from mines and explosive remnants of war in Colombia in 2024, including four deaths. Most victims were civilians, and the Monitor attributes all of the 2024 casualties to improvised mines.

James Deutsch, chief executive of Rainforest Trust, said that "conservation starts with people being able to safely live on, care for and defend their land." Removing the mines, he added, should create "the conditions for nearly 45,000 acres of critical rainforest habitat to be protected for the long term."

What the project has and has not done yet

The figures in the release are targets. No area has yet been declared mine-free, and the Indigenous reserve status depends on a later government decision. The release does not say how many mines are suspected in the two territories or when the first section is expected to be finished.

Rainforest Trust also backed a new 715,000-acre wildlife reserve in Bolivia for jaguars, river dolphins and giant otters. ACT, founded in the mid-1990s, says it has helped create or expand 72 Indigenous reserves covering more than 7.2 million acres.

HALO, founded in Afghanistan in 1988, works in more than 30 countries and hires about 95% of its roughly 9,000 staff locally. The Colombia project is scheduled to run for three years.