Open Market
The humanitarian demining market in Ukraine is a new segment that can play an important role in clearing contaminated areas of explosive ordnance for their safe and productive use.
Humanitarian demining involves certified activities to gradually clear large areas of land outside the combat zone (more than 20 km from the contact line), including agricultural land, with quality control and handover of the cleared area.
The main goal of humanitarian demining is the safety of the people, ensuring the return to their homes and resumption of their normal lives.
As in any other service sector, the humanitarian demining market is built on consumer demand for a specific product – land demining services – and the supply of a service provider – an operator capable of providing such services. The government plays an important role at the market launch stage by ensuring transparent rules of the game and providing support to market participants.
As of June, 144,000 km2 were considered to be affected by the hostilities. Most of this area is agricultural land. They are returned to productive use after a non-technical survey, if mines and explosive remnants of war were not found, or after clearance. Since the beginning of the invasion, 30,000 km2 of land has been returned to productive use through the work of government agencies and humanitarian mine action operators. However, even more land is still potentially mined.
As of June 2024, there are more than 40 mine action operators on the Ukrainian market that can provide relevant paid services and significantly contribute to the clearance of Ukrainian land from explosive ordnance. Demining is a costly service, therefore to stimulate the market, the state budget of Ukraine for 2024 allocates UAH 3 billion to compensate farmers for humanitarian demining of agricultural land. This, in turn, will contribute to the development of the mine action market in Ukraine.
The humanitarian demining market implies that any individual or legal entity can request land demining services from private operators. To accelerate the demining of Ukrainian land and stimulate the development of the mine action market, the Government adopted the Procedure for the use of funds provided for in the state budget to compensate the costs of humanitarian demining of agricultural land.
As part of the implementation of this Procedure, demining services will be procured through the electronic public procurement system Prozorro. Any certified commercial operator will be able to submit its proposal as part of an open tender for a particular site demining The government will compensate 80% of the cost of demining from the budget, 20% of the amount must be covered by an agricultural producer working on the land to be demined.
Key tasks for the development of the humanitarian demining market in Ukraine include:
Reducing the cost of land clearance: creating mechanisms to speed up and reduce the cost of contaminated land clearance.
Creating and scaling up the production of demining equipment and machinery: development of domestic manufacturers of specialised equipment.
Engaging international support: cooperation with foreign partners to share experience and receive financial support.
The procedure for compensation of the cost of agricultural land demining services:
An agricultural producer (farmer) submits an application to the State Agrarian Register, where an initial screening is conducted to determine whether the land belongs to the farmer, whether it has undergone a non-technical survey, and whether contamination has been confirmed.
The Centre for Humanitarian Demining (hereinafter referred to as the Centre) carries out additional verification of the submitted documents.
The Centre determines the expected cost of demining of the agricultural land and procures such services.
The Centre informs the farmer of the completed bidding and the winning operator.
The farmer transfers 20% of the cost of the service to a special account in a state bank of their choice.
The Centre transfers 80% of the cost of the work to the special account.
The mine action operator starts demining the site after the entire amount has been secured.
The operator completes the demining of land plot and submits to the Centre the documents confirming clearance: a certificate of completion, an inspection report of the cleared land.
The Centre for Humanitarian Demining verifies the documents and forwards them to the bank.
The bank transfers the money for demining to the operator.
Farmers whose land has already been cleared by certified mine action operators between 24 February 2022 and 15 April 2024 can also apply for compensation.
To receive compensation, the following should be done:
fill out an application form for compensation;
send the completed application to the email address of the Centre for Humanitarian Demining ([email protected]).
It is important to attach to the email copies of documents that confirm demining activities:
a contract for demining services;
an act of services provided;
a document confirming payment for the services rendered.
The Centre for Humanitarian Demining examines the documents, compiles a list of eligible farmers and sends the documents to the Commission for consideration of issues related to the provision of compensation for the costs of humanitarian demining of agricultural land under the Ministry of Economy, which makes the final decision.
Compensation will be provided only once per contaminated plot of land.
The programme is valid throughout the entire territory of Ukraine, where suspected or confirmed hazardous areas are present.
*External links may direct you to sources in Ukrainian Language