Ukraine is working on creating an effective organizational structure for demining and will involve international partners in the coordination platform. This was discussed during the meeting of First Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine - Minister of Economy Yuliia Svyrydenko with Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Japan to Ukraine Matsuda Kuninori, the UN Resident Coordinator in Ukraine Denise Brown, UNDP Mine Action Coordinator in Ukraine Paul Heslop and Director of the UN World Food Programme in Ukraine Matthew Hollingworth.

“The issue of demining the territory of Ukraine is one of the key issues for our Government, and we continue to build an effective structure for the organization of this process, relying on the support and experience of international partners. Today, we are completing the process of electing the members of the Supervisory Board of the Humanitarian Demining Center, which will deal with operational tasks. And we are discussing the creation of a donor coordination platform for demining, which will carry out the coordination and communication, in particular with donors, at the political level," Yuliia Svyrydenko noted.

First Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine presented the vision of the organizational structure for managing the demining process and the system of interaction, in particular between the Humanitarian Demining Center and the coordination platform for work with donors, to the participants of the meeting. The participants of the meeting confirmed their readiness to join the work of the future platform, in particular, the UN Resident Coordinator in Ukraine Denise Brown and Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Japan to Ukraine Matsuda Kuninori agreed to be co-chairs of this platform, from the Ukrainian side it will be co-chaired by Yuliia Svyrydenko.

During the meeting, the issue of the importance of conducting a large-scale information campaign on demining in order to avoid casualties among the population living in the areas contaminated by explosive objects was also discussed.

We remind that 174 thousand square kilometers of the territory of Ukraine are potentially contaminated and require examination by technical and non-technical means and, if necessary, humanitarian demining. According to the World Bank, the full range of humanitarian demining works in the territory of Ukraine is valued at $37.4 billion.