Antipersonnel landmines in the Colombian internal conflict: Implications for technology development

Abstract

The contribution of universities, companies, and the state in Colombia to confront home-made antipersonnel (AP) landmines has generated solutions and useful studies for many projects developed in the last 15 years, including for demining processes in Colombia. The construction of AP landmines has changed in the last 15 years, due to the intermittent nature of the internal conflict in Colombia. The office of the High Commissioner for Peace, Decontamina Colombia, shows that non-state armed groups have the strategy to cut the detonator of the home-made AP landmine to reduce its amount of metal. This document shows the aspects of the conflict that have affected humanitarian demining, which help the design and construction of technological devices. This article does not attempt to describe each technology used in humanitarian demining processes, but rather to show the characteristics considered in the design of two detection devices aimed at detecting home-made AP landmines.