Location: Bangkok, Thailand
Type: Military
Thailand has for a long time faced significant threat from landmines, UXO, and IEDs. For this reason, the Royal Thai Army and Navy have for a been involved in demining efforts, particularly along Thailand’s borders, since 1987, and hence have a lot of experience in this area.
Recognising the extent of the task, the Office of the Prime Minister of Thailand issued an order (No. 151/1998) in 1998 to form the National Mine Action Committee (NMAC). NMAC comprises all major government ministries and department and encourages these departments to develop policies and to monitor the obligations set forth by the treaty, including:
- Implementation of the law prohibiting the use of anti-personnel landmines;
- Implementation of demining operations and mine risk education (MRE);
- Establishing the minimum quantity of anti-personnel landmines to remain in Thailand for education and demining purposes, and the destruction of all anti-personnel landmine stocks in excess of this established minimum; and
- Implementation of the landmine victim assistance activities.
TMAC was set up under the Royal Thai Armed Forces to ensure the implementation of the National Mine Action Plan.
TMAC has since been responsible for clearing hundreds of thousands of square metres of land, that have now been declared mine free. They have destroyed hundreds of antipersonnel mines and pieces of unexploded ordnance.
TMAC has a training centre for mine-risk education and a training centre for deminers. Civilian deminers have also been trained at these centres and are said to provide invaluable help in the demining operations.
TMAC has worked alongside other organisations such as Handicap International in order to further the efforts in Thailand, particularly in regard to mine-risk education.
This profile is part of AOAV’s investigation into counter-IED (C-IED) actors around the globe. To see the list of all C-IED actors recorded by AOAV, see here. To see those engaged in the Middle East, the Sahel, North Africa or other highly impacted countries please see here, here, here, and here respectively. This research was made possible by funding from the NATO Counter Improvised Explosive Devices Centre of Excellence (C-IED COE). To read the full report, ‘Addressing the threat posed by IEDs: National, Regional and Global Initiatives’, see here.
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