After the second world war, one assisted the proliferation of antipersonnel landmines, easy to put into place and cheap, but which remain active during many years. Millions of landmines in countries, often poor and destroyed by war, wait patiently for their victim, mostly innocent. This " weapon of the cowards " revolted all the same finally the world public opinion. The media widely relieved the NGO grouped in a collective (ICBL: international campaign to ban landmines) and a large movement of opinion yielded the protocol of OTTAWA (end of 1997 ), ratified by numerous countries.

The mine clearance widely began and is more or less advanced according to countries (see the annual report of the Look-out post of landmines, on www.icbl.org INTERNET). The operations of mine clearance are entrusted to national mine clearance centres, which use deminers: military, private companies, NGO.

The mine clearance is performed according to procedures established by the UNO