Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan is contaminated with anti-personnel mines and cluster munition remnants.

Cluster Munition Remnants

Anti-Personnel Mines
  • Performance

    Not Applicable

Key Developments

Following a 24-hour large-scale military offensive by Azerbaijan on 19 September 2023, Azerbaijan regained
full control of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, referred to as the Karabakh Economic Region, adding to existing cluster munition contamination already under Azerbaijan’s jurisdiction and control. There was no reported use of cluster munitions during the September 2023 offensive unlike during the conflict in 2020, when both parties to the conflict used cluster munitions. Azerbaijan continues to scale up a massive clearance effort of mines and explosive remnants of war (ERW), including cluster munition remnants (CMR).

In 2023, the Mine Action Agency of the Republic of Azerbaijan (ANAMA, formerly the Azerbaijan National Agency for Mine Action) reported releasing 452.6km2 of cluster munition-contaminated area through clearance and technical survey (TS), with the destruction of 1,818 submunitions.1 These figures, however, are based on the total size of area for task polygons in which submunitions were found during land release as ANAMA does not currently disaggregate cluster munition tasks from other battle area clearance (BAC) tasks or from mine clearance. In order to avoid inflating CMR clearance data, Mine Action Review has estimated that the amount of land actually containing CMR, released through clearance in 2023, was 8km2.


Recommendations for Action

  • Azerbaijan should commit to never again use cluster munitions and should accede to the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) as a matter of priority.
  • ANAMA should work to establish a nationwide baseline of CMR-contaminated area using evidence-based non- technical survey (NTS) and TS.
  • ANAMA should ensure that survey, clearance, and contamination data related to CMR are disaggregated from data relating to other ERW and mines.
  • Azerbaijan should adopt the revised National Mine Action Standards (NMAS) without delay to allow cancellation of areas through NTS, where appropriate, which is not permitted under the existing standards.
  • ANAMA should elaborate a separate methodology for clearing CMR, distinct from BAC, ensuring that the footprint of a cluster strike is identified and that clearance is conducted to fade-out.
  • ANAMA should finalise and adopt the new draft mine action strategy, to replace the one that expired in 2018, reflecting the significant increase in explosive ordnance (EO) contamination now under Azerbaijan’s control.

Download the full 2024 report for Azerbaijan

Click here to download the full "Clearing Cluster Munition Remnants 2024" report for Azerbaijan.