Thirty years ago, someone buried a landmine in a Croatian forest, a field, or a village edge — and walked away. What followed was one of the longest and most painstaking humanitarian clean-up operations in modern European history.
In March 2026, that operation is complete.
**The War and the Mines**
Croatia's War of Independence (1991–1995), fought as the country broke away from Yugoslavia, left a devastating legacy in its land. An estimated **two million landmines** were laid across Croatian territory during the conflict — in forests, farmland, roadside verges, and the outskirts of towns and villages.
The mines were placed by multiple parties, often without records of their locations. After the war ended, large swathes of Croatia were marked with danger signs: **one in five Croatians** lived in areas under landmine threat.
In the decades that followed, the human cost was agonising. **41 de-miners** lost their lives in the clearance effort. **208 civilians** were killed or injured by mines after the war ended — by then, the conflict they were planted for was long over.
**A 30-Year Mission**
Croatia's de-mining operation began in the mid-1990s and proceeded field by field, forest by forest, over the following three decades.
The work required extraordinary precision and patience. Metal detectors, mine-clearance dogs, specialist machinery, and hundreds of trained de-miners worked systematically through terrain that was sometimes heavily overgrown, where a single error could be fatal.
Years of work, then more years of work.
**The Declaration**
In March 2026, Croatian Minister of the Interior **Davor Božinović** announced what his country had spent thirty years working towards: Croatia is now officially **mine-free**.
Every square metre of formerly contaminated land has been cleared or verified as safe. Fields that had been abandoned for a generation can be farmed again. Forests that carried warning signs are open again. The borders have been walked and checked.
'This is not only a technical achievement,' Minister Božinović said, 'but also a fulfilled moral obligation to the victims and their families.'
**Giving It Forward**
The declaration came with a gesture that speaks to what mine-clearance means to those who have lived through it.
Croatia has donated **dozens of de-mining robots** to Ukraine — to help clear the Russian landmines that are now contaminating Ukrainian territory, in a war that in some ways echoes Croatia's own 1990s experience.
A country that spent thirty years digging mines out of its own soil is now helping another country start the same work.
**The Bigger Picture**
Approximately **55 countries** worldwide still have significant landmine contamination. The Ottawa Treaty — the international agreement to ban anti-personnel mines — has been signed by 164 states, but mines planted before the treaty, or by non-signatories, continue to kill and maim civilians decades after conflicts end.
Croatia's completion adds to a gradual global progress. Countries including Mozambique, Rwanda, Jordan, and Sri Lanka have achieved mine-free status in recent years. Each one represents not just a technical milestone but the return of land — and safety — to communities that had lived for years under the threat of what someone buried in the ground before they were born.
Croatia's forests are walkable again. Its fields are safe. Thirty years of patient, dangerous, essential work is done. 🕊️🌿
*Sources: Positive.news (Week 11, March 2026) · Croatian Ministry of the Interior · UN Mine Action Service · International Campaign to Ban Landmines*
