The certification of humanitarian demining operators and equipment has been sped up by half. This is a key result of the pilot certification project discussed at a meeting of the Interagency Working Group on Humanitarian Demining (IWG) chaired by Deputy Minister of Economy Ihor Bezkaravaynyi.
"An indicator of the project's performance was, in particular, a 10% increase in the number of mine-action operators. Last year, the number of operators increased from 28 to 73 as of 31 December, i.e. more than twice. And today there are already 80 of them. The main thing is that all certification processes have been doubled in speed. This means that our efforts are having the desired effect. Now we have to analyse in detail how everything works and what we can improve to turn the project from an experimental one into a permanent one at the end of this year or at the beginning of next year," said Ihor Bezkaravaynyi.
The Interagency Working Group also considered the implementation of a pilot project to certify mechanised demining equipment. According to Ihor Bezkaravaynyi, while in 2023 only 1 certificate was issued, in 2024 there were already 16 certificates and agreements for the right to use the product conformity certificate. During the meeting, the participants discussed steps that could improve the capabilities of the State Research Institute for Testing and Certification of Weapons and Military Equipment in terms of certification of demining machinery and equipment.
In addition, the IWG focused on the following issues:
"The year 2025 will be highly active in humanitarian demining. In particular, given the number of participants who will be willing to work in the field of mine action and the amount of new machinery and equipment. Therefore, we need to further accelerate all certification processes," summed up Ihor Bezkaravaynyi.