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            [ID] => 17387
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            [post_date] => 2026-04-01 17:04:26
            [post_date_gmt] => 2026-04-01 17:04:26
            [post_content] => A landmine detonates beneath a boy’s feet in Ar-Raqqa. In Aleppo, unexploded ordnance throws a man from his motorcycle on his way to work. In a field she has worked for years, a woman loses a limb. 

For Henri Bonnin and his colleagues from ATscale, who support Project Aegis, these are familiar stories. 

Globally, in 2024, more than 6,200 people were killed or injured by landmines and unexploded ordnance — the highest level in four years. Nearly 90 percent were civilians.

“I’ve always been struck by the number of children,” Bonnin, an occupational therapist and humanitarian, said. “They have nothing to do with the war, and still, they are among the most affected.”

“I’ve always been struck by the number of children. They have nothing to do with the war... [but] are among the most affected.”

In Syria, children account for up to 43 percent of casualties in a country that has seen more than 84,000 landmine-related casualties over the past decade. In just the first three months of 2025, at least 188 children were killed or injured — an average of two per day.

An estimated 14.4 million people — roughly 65 percent of the population — live in areas contaminated by landmines and unexploded ordnance. It’s a risk that’s increasing as more Syrians return home.

At the same time, mine action remains chronically underfunded, and the broader humanitarian financing gap continues to widen.

It has never been a question of need. But with finite resources and expanding crises, the pressure to quantify costs and demonstrate impact has never been greater. 

Addressing the Blind Spot

For decades, the international system has grown increasingly sophisticated at measuring the costs of war. It can estimate the price of clearing a minefield — between $300 and $1,000 USD per device. It can track how many square kilometers have been made safe and how many people have received risk education.

“But the cost of victim assistance has never been calculated,” Bonnin said.

"The cost of victim assistance has never been calculated.”

In other words: What does it cost to survive?

That omission is a policy blind spot. What goes unmeasured is often underfunded, leaving long-term recovery perpetually overshadowed by immediate response.

In Syria, as in other post-conflict environments, that gap carries real consequences. The failure to invest in long-term rehabilitation doesn’t just prolong suffering, it increases the risk of renewed instability.

Project Aegis is designed to change that. 

Turning Data into Action

Led by the UNOPS Peace and Security Cluster, Project Aegis brings together ATscale: The Global Partnership for Assistive Technology, UNMAS Syria and the Mine Action Area of Responsibility, with development support from researchers at Carnegie Mellon University.

Its aim is to calculate, at scale, the long-term cost of survival.

Drawing on tens of thousands of records, including data from more than 20,000 survivors in Syria, the platform analyzes injuries, recovery needs and long-term care requirements for victims — from prosthetics to psychosocial support.

“It acts like a medical coordinator,” Bonnin said.

Collaborative by Design

The initiative was driven by UNOPS' Compass division, which integrated victim datasets and service mapping into a user-friendly platform — leveraging AI to process vast volumes of data and project costs over time. In effect, it transforms fragmented patient information into something decision-makers can act on.

Students at Carnegie Mellon University contributed to the forecasting model, while UNOPS teams engineered the system that allows it to function in real-world settings.

“We wanted to do something for a nonprofit organization,” CMU researcher Siyuan Liu said. Fellow researcher Yiwen Niu added, “It brought together many stakeholders to build something that could actually be used.”

And the model does more than estimate point-in-time costs; it maps decades-long care pathways that help organizations, donors and even patients to plan.

A child who loses a leg may require dozens of prosthetics over a lifetime. Add surgeries, rehabilitation, transportation and lost economic productivity, and the cumulative cost becomes staggering — and previously invisible.

The system also disaggregates those costs by location — recognizing that care in Aleppo differs significantly from Damascus or rural areas, where infrastructure, access and supply chains shape both price and possibility.

“That’s why AI has been so useful in this context,” Bonnin said. “Nobody was able to extract and analyze the data at this scale — until now.”

Measuring What Matters

In an era of tightening budgets and growing need, the question is not whether to fund humanitarian programs like these, but how to do so in ways that maximize both impact and return.

“For survivors to rebuild their lives and participate fully in society, they need integrated, sustained funding,” said Christelle Loupforest, UNMAS Representative in Geneva and a lead on victim assistance policy within the Global Protection Cluster. “Project Aegis strengthens that case, showing not just the long-term cost of care, but the real savings that come from prevention and clearance.”

“For survivors to rebuild their lives and participate fully in society, they need integrated, sustained funding.”

Tools like Project Aegis—whose platform will be presented for the first time at the global mine action forum in late April—offer that framework.

By translating long-term human needs into quantifiable cost projections, they're enabling more precise, evidence-based decisions about where and how to invest. They're also strengthening the case for sustained engagement in multilateral systems where this very work can be coordinated and scaled.

Project Aegis may be a pilot, but it’s already looking to expand—and it should.

Because the true cost of war isn’t just what’s destroyed, but what must be rebuilt. And their team is going a long way to that essential rebuilding.

Feature photo credit to UNMAS/Asso Sabahaddin

            [post_title] => The Hidden Price of War: How AI is Being Used to Support Assistance to Landmine Victims
            [post_excerpt] => A pilot project in Syria is using AI to calculate the long-term cost of surviving landmine injuries—turning fragmented data into actionable insights for smarter funding, planning and recovery.
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Humanitarian Affairs

                  
                  

                      The Hidden Price of War: How AI is Being Used to Support Assistance to Landmine Victims
                  

                            
                            
A pilot project in Syria is using AI to calculate the long-term cost of surviving landmine injuries—turning fragmented data into actionable insights for smarter funding, planning and recovery.

                            
04/01/2026

                            

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