Commitments to action EWIPA

From Commitment to Action

Implementing the humanitarian commitments of the Political Declaration to better protect civilians from explosive weapons in populated areas

This webpage is part of a global initiative led by Handicap International - Humanity & Inclusion (HI) to support the implementation of the Political Declaration on Strengthening the Protection of Civilians from the Humanitarian Consequences Arising from the Use of Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas, signed in Dublin in 2022.

Through research and multi-stakeholder consultations with States, United Nations agencies, donors, civil society organisations and other humanitarian stakeholders, HI highlights the devastating humanitarian consequences of the use of explosive weapons in populated areas and presents practical solutions to reduce harm to civilians, meet their needs and enable the realisation of their rights in conflict-affected areas.

The Political Declaration on Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas

On November 18, 2022, 83 States endorsed the Political Declaration on Strengthening the Protection of Civilians from the Use of Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas. This Declaration marks a historic milestone: it is the first international recognition of the extensive civilian harm caused by explosive weapons in cities, towns, and other populated areas.

Endorsing States committed to actions aimed at strengthening the protection of civilians in affected areas, namely to:

• "Facilitate rapid, safe, and unhindered humanitarian access to those in need in situations of armed conflict in accordance with applicable international law, including International Humanitarian Law." (Paragraph 4.4)

• "Provide, facilitate, or support assistance to victims - people injured, survivors, families of people killed or injured - as well as communities affected by armed conflict." (Paragraph 4.5)

Yet, since 2022, the use of explosive weapons in populated areas has escalated to alarming levels in Ukraine, Gaza, Yemen and other contexts, with unprecedented impacts on civilians, especially women, children, persons with disabilities, older persons, or others facing disproportionate risk from explosive weapons, such as the humanitarian and healthcare personnel striving to assist them.

This project fills a critical gap. It offers actionable recommendations and promising practices to support the effective implementation of the Declaration’s humanitarian commitments by States, United Nations agencies, donors, civil society organisations and other humanitarian stakeholders.

Exploring four key humanitarian issues in affected contexts:

Below you can discover the findings of our research and multi-stakeholder process, focused on four key humanitarian issues in contexts affected by the use of explosive weapons in populated areas:

1. Principled and safe humanitarian access

2. Healthcare access for affected populations

3. Explosive Ordnance Risk Education and Conflict Preparedness

4. Intersecting vulnerabilities in affected contexts

Humanitarian
access

Healthcare access

Explosive Ordnance Risk Education

Intersecting vulnerabilities

Principled and safe humanitarian access

Why it matters

The widespread use of explosive weapons in populated areas severely undermines the safety of humanitarian and health workers and restricts access to essential aid and services for affected populations. This pattern of harm causes indiscriminate destruction, damaging critical infrastructure such as hospitals, roads, and water systems, and places humanitarian and health personnel at extreme risk. Aid convoys, ambulances, and distribution points are targeted or rendered inoperable, leading to the delay or suspension of vital services. The presence of unexploded ordnance further restricts access and endangers both responders and civilians.

When humanitarian access is impeded, affected populations—especially women, children, older persons, and persons with disabilities—are left without essential care, faced with increased vulnerability and impossible recovery.

Key data & facts

In 2024, at least 1,631 explosive weapons incidents affected humanitarian aid efforts across 16 countries and territories. (Explosive Weapons Monitor 2024)

Local and national staff and volunteers are disproportionately affected, often operating with limited protection and under increased risk both on- and off-duty.

Volunteers lack basic safety measures or affiliations, even while delivering life-saving services.

The use of explosive weapons creates chaotic operating environments, impeding coordination, funding continuity, and staff retention.

“I work morning shifts at the centre. It takes me about an hour and a half to reach work […]. I will continue my work for as long as movement is still possible and the security situation allows it. Every day, I face the heart-wrenching decision of leaving my daughters behind. I constantly worry about their safety while I’m at work.”

Local humanitarian worker, Gaza, May 2025

“We're facing a dramatic shortage. […] Access to the north of the strip is virtually impossible, so even if we had stock, we wouldn't necessarily be able to distribute it. And there are no other players to take up the slack: everyone's in the same situation.”

Emergency rehabilitation specialist, Gaza, June 2025

Spotlight on good practices

Decentralised and low-visibility aid delivery

In accordance with context-specific risk analyses, humanitarian and health services are divided into smaller, dispersed units, or moved underground, to reduce visibility and avoid being targeted. Mobile teams are used to deliver assistance flexibly while avoiding gatherings.

Better coordination and sharing of data

Various data collection systems report on the harm caused by explosive weapons on humanitarian workers and the direct and indirect effects of explosive weapons on humanitarian infrastructure and facilities. This evidence is critical to support the understanding of the impacts and advocacy efforts.

Use of local knowledge and negotiation capacity

Local actors play a crucial role in negotiating access with armed groups in high-risk areas, especially where international staff face movement restrictions, although they face disproportionate risk when operating with insufficient protection or support.

Effective storytelling and communication

Humanitarian agencies have shared the experiences of local staff through videos, voice notes, and social media to humanise the risks. These narratives raise awareness of the dangers faced by aid workers and increase pressure for accountability and advocacy.

Agenda for action on humanitarian access

The key recommendations are structured around three pillars:

Increase and improve awareness, understanding and collective advocacy for a safer environment for health and humanitarian workers in contexts where explosive weapons are used.

Better include and prioritise the security challenges and meet the specific needs of national and local humanitarian and health workers in their diversity.

Foster coordination and communication between and among national authorities, armed actors and security forces, humanitarian and mine action sectors, and civil society actors, to enhance acceptance of humanitarian actors and operations, information-sharing and joint risk-management efforts in contexts where explosive weapons are widely used.

For more detailed recommendations,
you can check the full report:

Download the report in Arabic

Download the report in English

Download the report in French

Download the report in Spanish

Explore another topic

Healthcare access for affected populations

Why it matters

The use of explosive weapons in populated areas has a devastating and lasting impact on health systems. They are the leading cause of civilian death and injury in armed conflict. Survivors often suffer complex wounds—burns, amputations, blast injuries—that require long-term care and rehabilitation. The harm is not only physical: mental health needs surge as people endure trauma.

Yet, when bombs strike, the very health infrastructure needed to provide this care is in ruins. Communities are deprived of essential, life-saving treatment. Mental health and rehabilitation needs are chronically unmet, especially for children, women, and persons with disabilities. Even after the bombing stops, the danger remains. Unexploded ordnance contaminates roads, homes, and healthcare facilities, restricting access to care and putting both civilians and health workers at constant risk.

Key data & facts

In 2024, at least 1,857 incidents of use of explosive weapons against healthcare systems—facilities and workers—were reported across 25 countries. (Explosive Weapons Monitor 2024)

In 2023, more than 209 medical professionals in health facilities or in health vehicles were killed by explosive weapons, a 207% increase compared to 2022. (Insecurity Insight, 2024)

In 2023, local staff represented 84% of health workers killed by explosive weapons globally. (Insecurity Insight, 2024)

Children are seven times more likely to die from blast injuries than adults. (Children and Armed Conflict, 2024).

“We needed help for the injuries we sustained from the explosions but the main emergency assistance point was completely destroyed, and there was no other place to go.(…).”

Olha Lieshukova, survivor advocate, Ukraine, October 2024

Antonina and her husband, in their sixties, fled the frontline to seek refuge in a rural area of Eastern Ukraine. Antonina was suffering from cancer when the conflict broke out, and unfortunately had a stroke shortly after moving. Accessing healthcare is especially challenging for people more vulnerable to exclusion and people living on the frontline or in rural territories.

“The health system, which was already under-resourced, cannot deal with the overall health needs due to the war. Services lack capacity.”

Mental health service provider, Ukraine, September 2024

Spotlight on good practices

Protecting health facilities

In accordance with context-specific risk analyses, health workers have adapted by moving medical services to safer, unconventional spaces like homes, basements, and places of worship. Hospitals have been split up into multiple smaller sites to reduce exposure. Buildings have been reinforced with concrete and sandbags when possible, and upper floors were often abandoned for safety.

Alternative health delivery models

Alternative delivery models are explored. The Emergency Medical Teams (EMT), led by the World Health Organization, deploy trained specialists, including mental health and rehabilitation experts, to crisis zones.

Community First Aid Responder Training empowers locals to provide immediate care before professional help arrives.

Mobile clinics and medical points, sometimes community-led, are also alternative models to deliver essential services where facilities are destroyed or inaccessible.

Engaging communities to foster an inclusive health response

Various initiatives contribute to providing more targeted healthcare services adapted to communities’ lived realities. For example:

Risk Communication and Community Engagement (RCCE) connects civilians to services, especially when infrastructure is damaged. Community mobilisers spread health information and bridge gaps in service delivery.

UK-Med’s Nurturing Assistance for Families Amidst Strife (NAFAS) involves communities in designing culturally sensitive and sustainable mental health and psychosocial support interventions.

Agenda for action on healthcare access

The agenda is structured around three objectives :

Deliver inclusive, holistic and non-discriminatory healthcare to civilians affected by explosive weapons, in their diversity.

Mitigate the short and long-term and multiple impacts of the use of explosive weapons on health systems.

Foster meaningful participation, leadership and empowerment of communities affected by explosive weapons and local actors.

Six priority actions areas:

Political leadership and humanitarian diplomacy

Funding

Humanitarian programme planning, delivery and coordination

Tools, training, guidance and practical measures

Cross-sectoral and peer-to-peer learning, and facilitation of knowledge and good practices

Advocacy and data

For more detailed recommendations,
you can check the full report:

Download the report in Arabic

Download the report in English

Download the report in French

Download the report in Spanish

Explore another topic

Explosive Ordnance Risk Education and Conflict Preparedness

Why it matters

The indiscriminate use of explosive weapons in towns, cities, and villages causes high civilian casualties, disrupted essential services, repeated displacement, and long-term explosive contamination. Civilians account for the overwhelming majority of casualties in these settings.

Explosive Ordnance Risk Education (EORE) and Conflict Preparedness and Protection (CPP) are essential interventions that equip affected populations with the knowledge and strategies they need to survive. Risk education helps civilians recognise and avoid threats such as unexploded ordnance or improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Conflict preparedness goes further, offering guidance on how to protect oneself and others during active conflict—for example, where to shelter during shelling or how to respond during forced displacement. Despite their proven importance, these interventions remain underfunded, under-recognized, and inconsistently integrated into humanitarian responses. Risk education and conflict preparedness are vital to upholding the right of civilians to live in safety and dignity, even in settings where explosive weapons are used in populated areas.

Key data & facts

Gaza:
Over 40,000 airstrikes were recorded between October 7, 2023 and April 2025. Based on an estimated 10% munitions failure rate, mine action operators believe that at least 4,000 pieces of unexploded ordnance now contaminate the rubble. (Reuters, 2025).

Lebanon:
Between July 2023 and February 2025, over 15,400 explosive weapon attacks were recorded, resulting in the damage or destruction of approximately 100,000 housing units and the displacement of over 1.2 million people. (UNHCR, 2024)

Myanmar:
Funding for risk education and conflict preparedness remains limited, with most actors reliant on small grants or integration into broader protection or health programs. (UNOCHA, 2024)

Ukraine:
Between February 2022 and May 2025, indirect-fire and aerial-delivered weapons, including shelling, artillery, missile attacks, airstrikes, and drone strikes, accounted for approximately 96% of all 9,174 recorded civilian fatalities. (OHCHR, 2025)

Deir el-Balah has been heavily bombed and is now contaminated with explosive remnants and non-exploded ordnance. People who have been displaced and live in makeshift camp live near this danger.

“While Risk Education focuses on preventing accidents from explosive ordnance, Conflict Preparedness addresses broader risks associated with displacement, conflict, and lack of access to essential services. Together, they ensure communities are informed about immediate physical risks; equipped with strategies to protect themselves during active conflict or displacement; and better prepared to make safe decisions in unpredictable, high-risk environments.”

Representative of the National Mine Action Center, Lebanon

Spotlight on good practices

Community-Driven Risk Education in Gaza

Local actors, including community leaders and civil society organisations, play a vital role in delivering risk education and conflict preparedness where access is blocked. In Gaza, informal WhatsApp networks were used to share trusted life-saving messages during bombardment. These grassroots efforts ensured continuity of protection in extremely volatile conditions. Community-led approaches allow for rapid adaptation of content and delivery methods in response to changing threats.

Rapid Shift to Conflict Preparedness and Protection in Lebanon

During the 2023–2024 escalation of violence, the mine action community in Lebanon pivoted from traditional risk education to include conflict preparedness. With support from the Lebanon Mine Action Center (LMAC), operators quickly developed trauma-sensitive messages, tailored to the threat of airstrikes and white phosphorus, and new communication strategies. This rapid shift proved effective in helping civilians make safer choices under fire.

Mainstreaming Risk Education into Humanitarian Funding in Myanmar

In 2024, the Myanmar Humanitarian Fund became one of the first pooled funds to mandate the inclusion of Explosive Ordnance Risk Education in all project proposals. This decision ensured that health, protection, WASH, and education actors integrated explosive risk messaging into their work. It helped address underfunding by embedding this intervention into multi-sectoral planning.

Conflict-Sensitive Messaging in Ukraine

In response to “risk education fatigue,” operators in Ukraine adapted their strategies to account for trauma, normalisation of violence, and survival-driven behaviours. Messaging was redesigned to speak to the lived realities in war, to be actionable and empowering—particularly for groups like farmers and caregivers who face daily exposure.

Agenda for action on risk education and conflict preparedness

The recommendations are structured around eight main areas:

Ensure that Explosive Ordnance Risk Education and Conflict Preparedness and Protection are recognised, resourced, and integrated into protection, preparedness, and humanitarian coordination structures, including revised frameworks emerging from the humanitarian reset.

Develop globally recognised guidance to ensure consistency, quality, and institutional buy-in for Conflict Preparedness and Protection.

Strengthen access and security measures for actors delivering Explosive Ordnance Risk Education and Conflict Preparedness and Protection, particularly local actors operating in high-risk environments.

Respond to compounded risks linked to intersecting factors of vulnerabilities, namely disability, gender and age, by supporting tailored, locally developed, and context-appropriate messaging.

Improve the collection, analysis, and use of timely, inclusive, and conflict-sensitive data to inform programming.

Integrate these interventions into broader mine action and humanitarian sectors such as health, education, shelter and mental health and psychosocial support.

Increase investment in the workforce with structured capacity development, responsive technical support, and strengthened national capacity.

Promote equitable partnerships and long-term funding to ensure local ownership and sustainability of Explosive Ordnance Risk Education and Conflict Preparedness and Protection.

For more detailed recommendations,
you can check the full report:

Download the report in Arabic

Download the report in English

Download the report in French

Download the report in Spanish

Explore another topic

Intersecting vulnerabilities in affected contexts

Why it matters

Explosive weapons in populated areas (EWIPA) continue to devastate civilian lives, but their impact is not felt equally. Factors such as gender, age, disability, and ethnicity intersect to shape who is most at risk, how people experience harm, and who can access assistance. Ignoring these intersecting vulnerabilities means overlooking those who face the highest barriers to safety, recovery, and participation in humanitarian response.

An intersectional approach helps to reveal hidden patterns of risk — from women with restricted mobility, women with children and older persons facing disproportionate barriers to reach shelters, to persons from ethnic minorities being excluded from aid registration systems. Recognising these overlapping factors is essential to design truly inclusive humanitarian responses that reflect the lived realities of civilians in context affected by explosive weapons.

When humanitarian systems treat inclusion as an “add-on,” those most exposed to EWIPA-related harm remain invisible in data, funding, and decision-making. Integrating an intersectional approach is crucial to uphold humanitarian principles and ensure that lifesaving assistance reaches everyone, without exception.

Key data & facts

73% of interviewed Ukrainian women’s organisations reported losing major funding in 2025, with important impact on their operations that included the complete shut-down of some programmes. (UN Women, 2025)

35% of older persons interviewed in Ukraine living in collective centres were unaware of evacuation services, thus creating an information gaps that endanger their lives. (HelpAge International, 2024)

95% of humanitarian organisations surveyed in Yemen did not collect disability-disaggregated data, obscuring the specific needs of persons with disabilities. (HI, 2020)

Persons with disabilities and older persons also often go uncounted in EWIPA casualty data, due to limited disaggregation and systemic data gaps.

“Explosive weapons don’t choose a group; they strike apartment buildings, homes, and entire villages. Some groups are disproportionately affected—not because they’re targeted, but because they face greater barriers to safety and evacuation.”

Representative of a Women-Led Organisation, Ukraine.

“Older people and persons with disabilities—whether with mobility issues, hearing or visual impairments—face immense barriers to reaching safety. It’s not just about stairs and ramps; it’s also about accessible information for those who can’t hear air raid alarms or see warning signs.”

Representative of an INGO, Ukraine

“Women’s safe spaces are being constantly targeted and destroyed. Many of the centres we support through our partners have been hit or damaged—some directly targeted, others affected by nearby strikes. Only a few remain operational, and even those require major rehabilitation to continue providing services.”

Representative of a UN agency, Gaza

“Humanitarian planning frequently relies on a one-size-fits-all approach. However, without deliberate efforts to include persons with disabilities and women-headed households, these groups are often overlooked and excluded.”

Representative of a Women-Led Organisation, Yemen

Spotlight on good practices

Reinforcing Inclusive Coordination

In accordance with context-specific risk analyses, humanitarian and health services are divided into smaller, dispersed units, or moved underground, to reduce visibility and avoid being targeted. Mobile teams are used to deliver assistance flexibly while avoiding gatherings.

Ensuring an Intersectional Protection in Gaza

The Gaza Protection Cluster created a real-time monitoring and referral system mapping vulnerabilities by gender, age, and disability, linked to a “protection warehouse”. It enables rapid distribution of aid and prioritisation of people most at risk. During aid distributions, the Cluster deployed 500 trained safeguarding responders to enforce basic protections.

Using Rapid Gender Analyses

Several organisations and agencies now use Rapid Gender Analyses to analyse how intersecting , such as age, gender, disability together with other vulnerabilities such as displacement, create disproportionate risks for women, girls and other marginalised groups. These tools strengthen inclusive planning, and amplify under-represented voices to guide more equitable programme design.

Promoting Accessible Communication in Ukraine

UNICEF and HelpAge designed simple, visual evacuation guides for children and adults with cognitive or sensory disabilities. Low-cost, picture-based materials made emergency instructions understandable and reassuring for all.

Agenda for action on intersecting vulnerabilities

The recommendations are structured around six priority areas:

Strengthen understanding and awareness on inclusion and intersectionality across humanitarian actors.

Increase technical resources and expertise on intersectional and disability-inclusive approaches.

Transform power, leadership, and participation to ensure the inclusion in decision-making of diverse actors, including local and national actors, women-led organisations, women-with-disabilities-led organisations, organisations of persons with disabilities, and to foster equitable partnership.

Strengthen collaboration and coordination to integrate inclusion and intersectionality across existing disarmament and humanitarian initiatives and mechanisms.

Invest in inclusive and joined-up data systems to strengthen the evidence, data collection and analysis on intersectionality, identify and address gaps.

Reform funding models and invest in intersectionality by promoting flexible, multi-year funding models accessible to local, self-led organisations.

For more detailed recommendations,
you can check the full report:

Download the report in Arabic

Download the report in English

Download the report in French

Download the report in Spanish

Explore another topic

Definitions and key concepts

EXPLOSIVE WEAPONS

Conventional weapons activated by the detonation of a highly explosive substance creating a blast and fragmentation effect, such as aerial bombs, artillery shells, mortars, missile and rocket warheads, grenades or IEDs. The use of explosive weapons is particularly devastating for civilians in a populated area when they have “a wide-area effect” because of a large destructive radius; large fragmentation or blast range; spreading of multiple munitions over a wide area; lack of precision of their launcher system.

POPULATED AREAS

The term “populated areas” should be read as synonymous with the term “concentration of civilians” which appears in existing international humanitarian law (Protocol III of the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons). “Concentrations of civilians" can be permanent or temporary, such as in inhabited parts of cities, towns or villages, camps or columns of refugees or evacuees, or groups of nomads.

UNEXPLODED ORDNANCE

Explosive ordnance that has been primed, fused, armed or otherwise prepared for use or used. It may have been fired, dropped, launched or projected yet remains unexploded either through malfunction or design or for any other reason.

CONFLICT PREPAREDNESS AND PROTECTION

Initially conceptualised as Conflict Preparedness and Protection by Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA) in the late 2010s to address a broad range of conflict-related risks beyond explosive ordnance, faced by civilians before, during and after conflict. The approach has since been adopted to help reduce risks from explosive weapons and conflict-related incidents. It is tailored to community needs and context-specific threats, including risks from explosive weapons, such as shelling or bombing, and their direct consequences (e.g. physical injury, psychological trauma, forced displacement, emergency evacuation, power blackouts, fire, family separation, and exposure to controversial and other indiscriminate weapons, such as white phosphorus).

DIRECT AND INDIRECT (OR REVERBERATING) EFFECTS

The use of explosive weapons in populated areas results not only in killing, maiming and the destruction of people’s homes but also in the destruction of critical infrastructure and essential services. Coupled with a lack of access to basic services, this often forces civilians to flee their homes. The lack of safe access and the presence of explosive ordnance further complicates humanitarian aid delivery. The return of displaced populations and access to basic goods and services are rendered impossible, delaying reconstruction. Indirect effects can extend over time, long after the armed conflict has ended.

EXPLOSIVE ORDNANCE

Interpreted as encompassing mines, cluster munitions, unexploded ordnance, abandoned ordnance, booby traps, other devices (as defined by the Protocol II of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons) and IEDs.

EXPLOSIVE ORDNANCE RISK EDUCATION (EORE)

Activities designed to reduce the risk of injury from explosive ordnance by raising awareness and promoting safe behaviour. It is recognised as an obligation under both the Mine Ban Treaty and the Convention on Cluster Munitions, where States Parties are required to provide risk education in contaminated areas. Initially implemented in post-conflict settings to support humanitarian demining and community liaison, EORE is now increasingly delivered in emergencies and active conflict environments, where it plays a critical role in providing timely, actionable information to protect civilians during hostilities.

Partners:

Funded by:

About this project

Humanity & Inclusion - Handicap International (HI), Article 36 and Insecurity Insight, members of International Network on Explosive Weapons (INEW), have joined forces for this two-year project launched in December 2023. It is funded by the Directorate General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Affairs (ECHO) and co-funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

For two years, the partners collected a wide range of credible evidence thanks to the publication of evidence-based advocacy studies on four focus areas: principled and safe humanitarian access (December 2024); healthcare access for affected populations (January 2025); explosive ordnance risk education and conflict preparedness and protection (September 2025); and vulnerable groups among the affected population (November 2025).

The project engaged states and armed forces, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations bodies, humanitarian operators, survivors’ associations and other civil society organisations in a multi-stakeholder process through a series of four collaborative workshops to develop actionable policy recommendations.

Resources

Report 1 - How Can the Political Declaration on Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas Promote Safe and Principled Humanitarian Access?
Download in English, French, Spanish, Arabic

Report 2 - How can healthcare access be strengthened in settings where explosive weapons are being used?
Download in English, French, Spanish, Arabic

Report 3 - Saving Lives in Conflicts: Risk Education and Conflict Preparedness to Protect Civilians in EWIPA Settings
Download in English, French, Spanish, Arabic

Report 4 -Lives at the Intersections: How Identity Shapes Risk of Harm and Access to Aid in EWIPA Contexts
Download in English, French, Spanish, Arabic

Report 5 - Compiled recommendations
Download in English, French, Spanish, Arabic

The Explosive Weapons Monitor

is a civil society initiative that conduct research and analysis on harms from and practices of explosive weapon use.

Access the website of the Explosive Weapons Monitor