The United Nations Secretary-General has drawn extensively on data from Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) in a new report to the General Assembly examining the global threat posed by improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
Their report, Countering the threat posed by improvised explosive devices, was issued on 21 July 2026 for the eighty-first session of the UN General Assembly.
It was prepared in response to General Assembly resolution 79/53 and provides an overview of developments in the use of IEDs since the Secretary-General’s previous report in 2024.
AOAV’s explosive-violence monitoring provides some of the report’s central figures on the humanitarian impact of IEDs.
Citing data from AOAV, the Secretary-General reports that between July 2024 and June 2026 there were 954 recorded IED incidents across more than 40 countries and territories.
These attacks caused 9,753 casualties, of whom 73% were civilians.
The UN report notes that civilian casualties from IEDs had generally been declining during the previous decade, but that this trend was interrupted by an increase in 2024, driven largely by incidents in Lebanon. Civilian casualties then declined sharply again in 2025. IED casualties also fell as a proportion of casualties from all explosive weapons, from 10% in 2024 to 4% in 2025.
Around half of recorded IED incidents in 2024 and 2025 occurred in populated areas.
In those locations, civilians accounted for 90% of casualties in 2024 and 71% in 2025. Lebanon, Pakistan and Nigeria recorded the highest numbers of civilian casualties during the reporting period, followed by Syria, Somalia, Colombia, India, Afghanistan, Ukraine and Thailand.
Lebanon alone accounted for 58% of global civilian casualties from IEDs in 2024, largely because of the simultaneous explosions of pagers in densely populated areas.
In 2025, Pakistan became the country most heavily affected, with 179 recorded incidents causing 750 civilian casualties.
AOAV data are also used by the Secretary-General to assess who is deploying IEDs. The report states that non-State armed groups remained the principal users, accounting for approximately 85% of recorded IED incidents since June 2024,.
The report also cites AOAV’s Explosive Violence Monitor 2025 when examining the increasing convergence between IEDs and commercially available drones.
The Secretary-General warns that cheap and accessible uncrewed aerial systems allow non-State actors to increase the range and precision of attacks while reducing their exposure to countermeasures.
The report also raises concerns about artificial intelligence, 3D printing, commercially available components and new control systems making improvised weapons cheaper, more adaptable and harder to detect.
In its conclusions, the Secretary-General warns that the continued use of IEDs, particularly in populated areas, causes high levels of civilian harm while restricting humanitarian access and undermining recovery, development and peacebuilding.
The report calls for more effective international information-sharing and stronger integration of global, regional and national data systems.
In response to the report, Dr Iain Overton, the Executive Director of AOAV, said: ““AOAV has spent years documenting the civilian harm caused by improvised explosive devices, so it is significant to see that evidence informing the UN Secretary-General’s assessment of the global threat. The figures also reinforce a stark and consistent finding: when explosive weapons are used in populated areas, civilians are overwhelmingly the ones who suffer.”
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