Fostering a culture of safety among children and youth: Making mine safety rules known to children
UNICEF continues its holistic mine education efforts, aiming to foster safe behavior among children and caregivers, as well as to bring about changes at the community and state policy levels.
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For over 10 years, Ukraine has been one of the most heavily mine-contaminated countries in the world, alongside Afghanistan, Sudan and Yemen. Due to ongoing hostilities in recent years, nearly a third of the country's territory is potentially contaminated with mines and other explosive ordnance. While from 2014, mine-contaminated areas were limited to certain districts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, since February 2022 the issue has spread to most regions of the country, where the threat comes not only from mines and unexploded ordnance but also from cluster munitions, which are banned by international conventions.
According to the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining, 176 different types of explosive remnants of war (ERW) have been recorded in 15 out of 25 regions of Ukraine.
This situation poses risks to the health and lives of all Ukrainians, especially children and youth, who are socially active and not yet sufficiently aware of the risks of war due to their young age. Over the past decade, 2,519 civilians in Ukraine, including 328 children, have been affected by mines and other explosive devices. In particular, 73 children were killed and 255 were injured.
However, since the escalation of the war, ERW incidents have escalated – from February 2022 to August 2024, there were 1,379 civilian casualties, including 150 children, which is almost equal to the number of incidents over the previous seven years of hostilities in eastern Ukraine.
Given this situation, supporting children who have sustained mine-explosive injuries, as well as relevant preventive efforts – such as fostering safe behaviour – have become an essential part of the life of Ukrainians for many years to come.
Parents should learn together with their children: 'Don't come near! Don't touch! Call 101!' Research shows that when parents discuss safety rules with their children, it significantly enhances their awareness and adoption of safe behaviors.
In response to the growing threats, UNICEF, together with local and international partners, has launched a holistic programme to raise awareness among the population, particularly children, about mine risks and safe behaviour standards, and to foster a culture of safety at the national level. Since 2014, UNICEF has been engaged in mine education in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions and, since 2022, across the entire country.
UNICEF's mine education efforts in Ukraine aim to influence children's behaviour through multiple channels:
at the individual level;
at the interpersonal level – through interaction with family and friends;
at the community level – by creating a supportive environment and providing services (at educational institutions, youth centres and so on);
at the national level – through the implementation of new policies and legislation.
Being able to recognise risks
To ensure that children behave safely, UNICEF and partners conduct mine safety lessons across the country and develop posters, visual materials and other engaging formats to present information that could influence children's behaviour and, eventually, save their lives. Among these materials are a comic book and workbook about the Super Team Against Mines, developed in collaboration with child psychologists and educators using the edutainment approach. Through a visually appealing story, the superhero team teaches children safety rules, and the workbook helps to reinforce that knowledge. Additionally, an eponymous animated film featuring the comic book characters has been created for children and teenagers aged 8 to 13.
In addition to the comic book and tasks, an online game has been created that teaches children how to recognise dangerous objects, explains where they might be encountered, describes warning signs and instructs on how to act if they come across such an object: https://game.bezpeka.info/
The format of cartoons has proven to be effective in mine safety education, as both younger children and teenagers enjoy them. The cartoon ‘Safe Holidays’ is aimed at children aged 4 to 10 and teaches them to be cautious during holidays when they spend a lot of time without close adult supervision and may find themselves near potentially dangerous places (bodies of water, forests, abandoned buildings). Another protagonist of the mine safety cartoons is children's favourite Patron the Dog. Stories about Patron, UNICEF's Goodwill Dog, appeal to children of different ages – from 4 to 16 years old – and cover mine risks topics, as well as mental health support, which could contribute to avoiding excessive risks. In addition to the cartoon, a series of comics featuring Patron the Dog have been released in 2024, which explain in an entertaining and informative way the current risks in Ukraine and how to stay safe.
All materials are available for download on the ‘All About Mine Safety’ website and in the Spilnoteka library.
Еdutainment: Learning through play
UNICEF uses the edutainment approach not only in its comics, coloring books and cartoons, but across all mine safety learning materials. This includes materials for group activities, such as board games for teenagers aged 10 to 16, riddle cards for children aged 4 to 12 that teachers and educators can use during lessons, and workbooks accompanying brochures for children of different age groups and adults.
All materials developed by UNICEF for children of different ages focus on four aspects of mine safety education:
what dangerous objects might look like and why;
where children might encounter them;
what warning signs signal danger;
what to do if they come across ERW.
Child psychologists and mine education experts were involved in the development of these materials, explaining to children in a simple way how to behave safely in areas that could be contaminated with mines.
In the summer of 2024, UNICEF, together with the State Emergency Service of Ukraine and Ukrzaliznytsia, launched a safety board game for teenagers called ‘Steps (Not) in All Directions’. It was presented at Kyiv’s railway station, which is visited by thousands of children from all over the country. The game is designed like a board game and bright cells with tasks were placed on the floor of the station. By spinning a drum and moving across the game board, children avoid various threats and receive instructions on what to do and what not to do, thus learning the basic rules of mine safety.
Recognition and awards
In November 2024, UNICEF's campaign on Explosive Ordnance Risk Education for Children and Youth received the prestigious Effie Awards Ukraine 2024. The project won silver in the ‘Sustained Success: Non-Profit’ category. The Effie Awards is the only major marketing communications award which reflects the combination of strategy, creative and resulting effectiveness of communications. Based on a behavioural science and edutainment approach, UNICEF's creative team created ways in which everyone can easily learn and share mine safety rules.
Nine out of ten children in Ukraine now know the rule: Don't approach, don't touch, call 101!
Another award-winning campaign was ‘Teenagers. Safety. Rumble (Dvizhymba)’, which won silver in the category ‘Small Budget: Non-Profit’ and bronze in the category ‘Engaged Community’. Through youth movement Junior Rescuers activation online, together with the State Emergency Service, adolescents and youth explained safety rules to their peers through popular creative TikTok videos.
Reaching out to the most vulnerable communities through mobile classes
At the end of 2023, UNICEF in partnership with the Ministry of Interior Affairs and the State Emergency Service launched Mobile Safety Classes – specially equipped vehicles for conducting safety lessons, both inside the vehicles themselves and outside in communities most affected by hostilities and landmines. In this way, children who often do not have access to in-person education due to safety risks were able to receive life-saving knowledge. The mobile safety classes are equipped with everything necessary for conducting lessons, regardless of the weather. Instructors from the State Emergency Service and the National Police, who teach at the Mobile Safety Classes, received special training from UNICEF and partners. Now, they can teach children of different ages about mine and fire safety, safe behaviour at home, road safety, cyber safety and more. Children like receiving valuable knowledge presented in a playful and interactive format – it is also easier to remember.
A total of 154,000 children have been reached since the launch of the mobile safety classes. The classes operate in 10 regions – Chernihiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Kyiv, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Poltava, Sumy, Zaporizhzhia and Zhytomyr, as well as in the city of Kyiv.
Mine education as a mandatory part of the school curriculum
UNICEF, together with the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, developed a mine safety workshop to ensure that every school student knows the rules that could protect their life and health. This workshop has become a recommended part of the school’s mandatory course ‘Health, Safety and Well-being’.
A handbook with detailed lesson plans and presentations for mine safety lessons, developed by UNICEF jointly with partners, is now available for teachers. These materials are adapted for primary and secondary schools. In addition, there are many other interactive materials and videos for group work, including:
- interactive online lessons in the All-Ukrainian Online School for distance learning, adapted for younger and older school students;
- a series of recommendations from psychologists on how to talk with children about explosive objects;
- a brochure with tasks from the Super Team Against Mines for teenagers;
- mine safety riddles for preschool, primary and secondary school students;
- cartoons for children (‘Safe Holidays’ for children aged 3 to 10, ‘Super Team Against Mines’ for children aged 8 to 16, ‘Patron the Dog’ for children aged 4 to 16);
- videos with Patron the Dog and sappers about the most common types of explosive objects and advice on safe behaviour to help mitigate the consequences of hostilities;
- informational posters and games.
Children will not get bored and, most importantly, they will memorize the safety rules better.
At the same time, UNICEF is enhancing the competences of specialists, who can contribute to shaping children's safe behaviour – educators, rescuers, and police officers – by delivering important and up-to-date knowledge to children in an engaging manner and building their communication, taking into account the special educational needs of students. To this end, UNICEF, together with its partners, has developed an online course on delivering mine safety to children of different ages, taking into account their age, educational and psychological characteristics, in the context of ongoing hostilities. The course equips specialists with practical tools for forming safe behaviour in the areas potentially contaminated with mines and other explosive objects, and offers advice on creating a safe environment, mental health support for children, knowledge assessment, as well as practical materials and presentations for conducting interactive classes online and offline. It also introduces international standards and approaches to behavioural changes, offering creative formats that combine learning and play, aimed at changing children's behaviour and making it safer.
In the creation of the course, UNICEF involved experts in child and developmental psychology, pedagogy, inclusive education, mine awareness and behavioural changes to help participants become effective safety guides for children and youth. The course is recommended by the Methodological Council of the Ukrainian Institute of Education Development.
According to Inna Galenko, a school teacher from the Kharkiv region who, due to the security situation in her local area, started looking for useful resources and came across the online course from UNICEF, this course not only helped to structure and deepen her knowledge on safety topics but also offered valuable advice from child psychologists on how to stabilise children's anxiety, which Inna now uses both in lessons and everyday life.
“Perhaps the most useful topic for students is about hidden dangers. I provided examples of everyday objects that could be dangerous. As my student Maria said in class: ‘What is not yours, do not take into your hands under any circumstances.’”
As of the end of 2024, 15,800 participants had registered for the course. A total of 3,331 educators completed the training and received certificates. The majority of participants were from the Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia regions. Among the staff of the State Emergency Service and the National Police, 4,100 participants received certificates, mostly from the Lviv, Kherson and Khmelnytskyi regions.
Support for children with mine-related injuries
UNICEF also provides support to children directly affected by war – those who have sustained mine-explosive injuries, including those that have led to disabilities.
In January 2024, UNICEF, together with the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and with the support of the European Union, launched a programme to assist affected children. The holistic support within the programme includes case management, individual psychological counselling, psychosocial support and emergency case management, as well as the integration of children with disabilities into their communities. Additionally, in collaboration with the IRC and the Association of Sappers of Ukraine, UNICEF conducts training for specialists and social workers from the public sector and state services to provide appropriate assistance to children affected by mines.
At the moment, the programme operates in the Kharkiv, Kherson, Mykolaiv and Odesa regions. It is one of the few programmes in Ukraine that provides direct support to children who have sustained war-related injuries, particularly those living in remote communities. The programme takes into account the age-specific and individual needs of each child.
One of the first to receive assistance under this UNICEF programme was Yaroslav from the Kharkiv region. The boy lost his foot when he stopped by the roadside to repair his motorcycle and stepped on a butterfly mine, which immediately exploded.
For around six months, the teenager waited for a prosthesis and tried to adapt to his new reality. When Yaroslav finally received the prosthesis, the Department of Social Protection of the Population of the Kharkiv Regional State Administration and UNICEF referred his case to the assistance programme. Specialists analysed the needs of Yaroslav and his family, and the boy started attending individual consultations with an IRC psychologist. He also received a set of clothes, shoes and bed linen through the emergency response fund for critical cases. IRC social workers also referred Yaroslav's family for financial assistance. The social worker and psychologist continue to visit the boy's family and monitor his progress.
The result of these efforts is a high level of awareness about mine risks
To assess the efficiency of mine risk education, UNICEF, together with the research company 'Rating Group', conducted a comprehensive study on mine safety awareness and safe behaviour practices among caregivers and children aged 10 to 17 was conducted from 16 to 25 March 2024, supported by the European Union. The study aimed to identify the factors that contribute to children's risk-taking behaviour with explosive ordnance and to identify these risk groups. Additionally, the role of caregivers, schools and other institutions in teaching children mine safety rules, mine risk awareness and safe behaviour practices were assessed.
A total of 25,500 respondents were surveyed (12,750 parents and 12,750 adolescents), including a nationwide random sample (4,128 respondents) representative of families with children aged 10-17 years, and a booster random sample (21,372 respondents) representative of families with children aged 10-17 years from each of the 27 contaminated districts in the Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Zhytomyr, Zaporizhzhia, Kyiv, Mykolaiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Kherson, and Chernihiv regions. The survey was conducted in all areas except for non-government-controlled areas and areas where mobile communication was unavailable at the time of the survey.
The study revealed that boys aged 14 to 17 from mine-contaminated communities, particularly those residing in rural areas and from low-income families, exhibit the highest levels of unsafe behaviour towards ERW. In contrast, girls in this age group behave much more safely. The least risky behaviour is observed among children aged 10 to 13.
Although over 90 per cent of children are informed about mine risks, knowledge varies significantly across the regions. The most savvy about mine safety are children living in the Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, as well as parts of the Sumy region. In the Chernihiv, Kyiv and Zhytomyr regions, children's awareness is lower.
Despite knowing about dangerous places, over 80 per cent of children living in mine-contaminated areas continue to spend time near bodies of water, forests, fields and even abandoned military positions, where the risk of encountering ERW is particularly high.
Thanks to the information provided through comics and cartoons created by UNICEF, children demonstrate better mine safety awareness. In particular, among those who read UNICEF comics and brochures, 59 per cent have a low level of risk and only 9 per cent showed a high level of unsafe behaviour.
Overall, around 80 per cent of children were able to identify potentially dangerous and explosive objects. However, 40 per cent of the surveyed children demonstrated a medium risk of unsafe behaviour, and 13 per cent a high risk, meaning that despite being aware of the danger, they still expose themselves to risks.
Research has also shown that the main sources of knowledge about mine risks for children are educational institutions and parents. This is why UNICEF continues to emphasise the need for parents and educators to upgrade their knowledge and continue providing essential information to children. For example, a ‘Parent's Guide: How to Talk to Children About Mine Safety’ was specifically developed for mums and dads.
The mine education programme, which UNICEF has been implementing in Ukraine for over 10 years, shows significant results that would not have been achieved without the support of partners and key donors – the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the European Union.
There is still decades of work ahead and, to ensure the highest impact, the programme must continue to focus on the most vulnerable populations, address gaps and motivate youth for safe behaviour. For these efforts to be effective, as many stakeholders as possible need to be involved in the programme. Only in this way can we jointly create a safe future for every child.
