Myanmar: Victims of Victims

Insight Myanmar

“The weapon itself cannot just tell the difference between a soldier stepping on it, or a kid on the way to school, or your grandma on her way to the place of worship.”

For Erin Hunt, Executive Director of Mines Action Canada (MAC) – speaking to the Insight Myanmar Podcast – the harms inflicted on civilians by anti-personnel landmine have motivated her organization’s humanitarian work for three decades. MAC was founded in the 1990s “to end the suffering caused by indiscriminate and inhumane weapons such as landmines, cluster munitions, autonomous weapons, explosive weapons in populated areas and nuclear weapons.”

In 1997, the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction, which is more commonly known as the Ottawa Treaty or Mine Ban Treaty, was ratified. The campaign behind the treaty won the Nobel Peace Prize the same year and it has since become a model of humanitarian disarmament.

That model today faces serious challenges, including its relevance to war-torn Myanmar, which has recorded the world’s worst casualties from landmines and unexploded ordnance for two years in a row, according to the Landmine Monitor.

In a recent interview, part of the Navigating a Minefield series, Hunt shares that international policy spaces often overlook “the people who have lived with these weapons, and who are the experts.” She explains that these local actors bring a form of expertise grounded in lived experience—navigating risk as part of everyday life—rather than in formal qualifications or academic training. This perspective has informed MAC’s work with young people and women as leaders in mine action and disarmament, recognizing their knowledge not as secondary, but as essential to shaping effective responses.

While men and boys are statistically more likely to be landmine casualties, women and girls are disproportionately affected in less visible ways. Gender-based violence and trafficking risks are heightened in conflict and communities under attack. And in families that suffer a death or injury, “increased caregiving responsibilities are going to fall on the women and girls,” Hunt says, forcing women and girls to take on additional work or withdraw from school, reinforcing cycles and intersectionality of inequality.

It is for this reason that Hunt emphasizes women are not only affected by landmines, but central to addressing them. “Women can have a massive impact on communities,” she says, referring to clearance efforts, risk education, and gathering insights and research. In many contexts, women mine actors are the only ones who can speak with other women, making them essential to understanding risks that might otherwise remain hidden.