Earlier this year, five European states — Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Finland — announced plans to  withdraw from an international landmine ban treaty, citing Russia's threat and the need to restore anti-personnel mines to their defensive toolkits.

Around the same time, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy issued a decree to quit the treaty because of his country's ongoing war with Russia, which has never joined the convention.

The six countries are likely to officially leave the international treaty at the end of the year.

For Southeast Asia, a region still heavily scarred by landmines, the signal from Europe is deeply unsettling.

The Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Treaty, also known as the Ottawa Convention, came into force in 1999. It bans the use, stockpiling, production and transfer of anti-personnel mines and commits members to clear contaminated land and assist victims.

A total of 166 countries have ratified the anti-landmine treaty, and no state has ever withdrawn since it was first signed in 1997.

For decades, the EU has been the world's second-largest donor to mine action, after the United States. Last year alone, the bloc contributed €110 million (approx. $130 million) to clearance operations.

Yet the humanitarian picture is worsening. Civilian deaths and injuries from landmines and explosive remnants of war have risen to their highest level in four years, according to the Landmine Monitor 2025 report produced by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, a non-government coalition. 

The report, published this month, recorded over 6,000 incidents last year, including 1,945 deaths and 4,325 injuries.

Myanmar, now in its fourth year of a nationwide civil war, accounted for around a third of global landmine victims as the army and non-state armed groups laid new mines. 

Southeast Asia's fragile gains

Southeast Asia remains one of the world's most heavily affected regions, a legacy of Cold War–era conflicts and internal wars.

Cambodia was once considered among the most heavily mined countries, with millions of mines laid over several decades, although recent progress has raised the prospect of the country being declared mine-free within the next few years.

European withdrawals from the Mine Ban Treaty risk eroding the political consensus behind mine action and weakening donors' moral authority when urging Asian governments to end anti-personnel mine use.

The Ukraine war has shown European governments that landmines can play an important role in national defense, but they will need to convey to their Southeast Asian partners that the current threat from Russia necessitates deploying landmines, Alfred Gerstl, an expert on Indo-Pacific international relations at the University of Vienna, told DW.

European exit undermines humanitarian norms

However, Alma Taslidzan, chair of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines' Governance Board, told DW that this reversal by European countries "undermines a humanitarian norm" designed to protect civilians and will jeopardize Europe's credibility in regions like Southeast Asia.

"When European states walk away from the Ottawa Convention, they are sending the wrong message to the entire world: that the global consensus against landmines is weakening, that humanitarian norms are negotiable, and that political pressures justify abandoning obligations that have saved tens of thousands of lives," Taslidzan said.

"Withdrawing states are also misleading their own citizens with the false promise that landmines provide security," she added. "Landmines do not deter invasions — they endanger civilians for generations."

In June, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was "gravely concerned" by the Mine Ban Treaty withdrawals, describing the action as "particularly troubling."

A group of 101 Nobel laureates, including Timor-Leste's President Jose Ramos-Horta, have signed a public letter opposing the withdrawals.

Analysts who spoke to DW noted that the near-unanimity of countries having signed up to the Ottawa Convention — despite key military powers such as China, Russia and the United States staying out — has given it weight.

But a wave of withdrawals by European democracies, Joshua Kurlantzick, senior fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, told DW, "completely undermines the meaning of the convention in Asia, and everywhere," especially at a time when mines are again being used in active conflicts in Myanmar and along the Thai-Cambodian border. 

Border tensions and calls for accountability

While the political signaling from European countries leaving the convention appears problematic, the immediate practical impact on regional demining is likely to be limited, Barbora Valockova, a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre on Asia and Globalization at the National University of Singapore, told DW.

It is unclear whether the withdrawals will have any direct funding implications for Southeast Asia. 

In January, just days after Donald Trump re-entered the White House, the United States announced an order to immediately halt global mine-clearing programs. 

Laos, one of the worst-affected countries in the world for landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXO) was particularly hit by US funding cuts, with anecdotal evidence suggesting that many clearance operations have ceased. 

US cuts also impacted demining efforts in Cambodia, although Washington provided $675,000 (€575,000) for Phnom Penh's demining programs in September.

Phil Robertson, director of Asia Human Rights and Labor Advocates, told DW that none of the European countries leaving the Ottawa Convention were major funders of demining operations in the region, nor were they likely to push to reduce EU demining funding.

However, European countries ditching the Ottawa Convention "will be a shameful example that I fear many Southeast Asian countries will use as an argument to say that it's not so bad if they restock these weapons," he said.

This year's border crisis between Thailand and Cambodia has left at least 40 people dead and hundreds of thousands displaced since fighting flared up in July after a Thai soldier was wounded by landmines that Bangkok alleges were newly laid by Phnom Penh in apparent violation of the convention.

Cambodia denies the charges and says the mines dated back to the 1970s or 1980s.

This month, the Thai government called for the establishment of an independent fact-finding mission under the Ottawa Convention to determine whether new mines have been planted and, if so, by whom.

For communities across Southeast Asia still living with the daily risk of landmines, the fear is that if certain European states feel able to walk away from a treaty they once championed, others might follow. 

Edited by: Keith Walker