A selection of Elsa Buchanan’s reporting, photo essays and communications work, drawn from field assignments and collaborations across the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Covering conflict, human rights and humanitarian issues, the work combines on-the-ground reporting with specialist analysis.
Human Impact
Stories exploring how conflict shapes daily life, from displacement and education to livelihoods, environment, and long-term recovery.
Conflict & Security
Reporting on frontlines, weapons, and military dynamics, examining how conflict is fought and sustained in complex environments.
Accountability & Rights
Investigations and reporting examining violations, legal accountability, and the human rights dimensions of conflict and crisis.
Health & Humanitarian
Reporting on healthcare, humanitarian response, and the long-term impact of conflict on communities, from emergency care to recovery and resilience.
Banned but still killing: The human cost of anti-personnel mines in Yemen
Despite being banned under international law, anti-personnel mines continue to be used in Yemen, with devastating consequences for civilians. Drawing on field evidence and documented cases, this piece examines the human cost of these weapons and the accountability gaps that allow their continued deployment.
Staying ready: Why refresher training matters in Yemen’s evolving minefields
As Yemen's explosive threat continues to evolve, deminers face hazards that are increasingly complex and unpredictable. Drawing on exclusive access to training programmes and interviews with mine action specialists, this report explores why refresher training is essential for teams working in contaminated areas, helping them adapt to new devices, changing tactics and emerging risks in one of the world's most challenging mine action environments.
As reports emerge of Houthi mobilisation, landmines often follow in Yemen
Drawing on exclusive access and interviews with deminers, local communities and security analysts, this report examines the link between renewed military mobilisation and the spread of landmine contamination in Yemen. As frontlines shift and tensions rise, affected communities fear that new deployments could leave behind a familiar and deadly legacy: explosive hazards that continue to threaten civilians long after the fighting has moved on.
Yemen’s overlooked emergency: disability, access and the cost of explosive violence
For thousands of Yemenis injured by landmines and explosive remnants of war, surviving the blast is only the beginning. Through interviews with survivors and rehabilitation specialists, this report examines the barriers people with disabilities face in accessing healthcare, education, employment and public spaces, revealing an often-overlooked consequence of Yemen's long-running conflict.
When the earth becomes a casualty: How landmines devastate Yemen’s environment
While landmines in Yemen kill and injure civilians, they are also poisoning soil, blocking access to farmland and leaving lasting scars on the environment. Through interviews with deminers, environmental specialists and affected communities, this report explores the hidden ecological consequences of contamination and the challenges facing areas struggling to recover from years of conflict.
Mine Action in Yemen: Reaching those cut off by war, illiteracy and mistrust
Gaining rare access to communities beyond the reach of traditional awareness campaigns, this report explores how mine action teams in Yemen adapt their work for people isolated by conflict, illiteracy and deep mistrust. Through field reporting and interviews with deminers and risk education specialists, the story reveals the challenges of protecting civilians in some of the country's most vulnerable and hard-to-reach areas.
Landmine survivors in Yemen face more than physical injuries: they face rejection, stigma and silence
For many Yemeni landmine survivors, the explosion is only the beginning of their ordeal. Drawing on interviews with survivors, psychologists and rehabilitation specialists, this report explores the social consequences of life-changing injuries, including stigma, discrimination, family rejection and the loss of employment opportunities. It reveals how survivors often face a second battle after leaving hospital: rebuilding their place within communities that frequently view disability through the lens of shame, dependency or misfortune.
Turning the tide: How civilians hoarding weapons for personal gain are now handing over thousands of landmines
In communities affected by years of conflict, civilians once incentivised to keep weapons and explosive remnants are now voluntarily surrendering thousands of dangerous items. Drawing on exclusive access to mine action programmes in Yemen, this report explores how community engagement, trust-building and risk awareness are helping remove explosive hazards from circulation, reducing threats to civilians and supporting safer recovery.
Fears take hold of Yemen Red Sea Coast civilians already reeling from presence of mines and IEDs as tensions escalate
With tensions rising along Yemen's Red Sea coast, civilians already living among landmines and improvised explosive devices faced growing uncertainty about what lay ahead. Based on exclusive access and interviews with affected communities, the report explores how years of contamination have transformed daily life, leaving families trapped between conflict, fear and the constant threat of explosive hazards.
Landmine Awareness in Yemen: Changing gender dynamics
Inside landmine awareness sessions in Taiz, where fighting continues, women and girls speak openly about risk, offering rare insight into how gender segregation shapes access to life-saving information.
Medics in minefields: The silent heroes of mine action
In Yemen’s minefields, medics work alongside deminers to save lives, offering a rare glimpse into the often unseen role of emergency care in one of the world’s most dangerous environments.
Landmines continue to threaten Yemen’s beekeeping heritage
In Yemen, where honey is a source of pride and shared identity, landmines are cutting off beekeepers from vital pastures, threatening livelihoods and a tradition that endures even through conflict.
Yemen’s tragedy of landmines laid without conventional patterns
Experts in Yemen warn that the widespread use of non-patterned, unmarked minefields is creating unpredictable hazards, significantly increasing risks for civilians and complicating clearance operations.
Water in war: how landmines in water wells contaminate the environment and displace tens of thousands
In Yemen, landmines planted in and around water sources are contaminating vital supplies, forcing communities to flee and reshaping daily life in already fragile areas.
Landmines in schoolrooms: the perils of accessing education in Yemen
In Yemen, children describe the dangers of returning to classrooms contaminated by landmines, while demining teams report chilling discoveries of explosive devices inside school buildings.
Humanitarian demining is not a crime: The ‘deliberate’ targeting of demining personnel
Mine action experts in Yemen are raising the alarm over the deliberate targeting of deminers, warning that booby-trapped devices and anti-handling mechanisms are being used to kill those clearing land.
‘Walking daily between life and death’: living in one of Yemen’s most landmine contaminated areas
In one of Yemen’s most landmine-contaminated areas, civilians speak of roads and farmland cut off by explosive hazards, leaving communities isolated and movement severely restricted.
Bounding fragmentation mines: Yemen’s indiscriminate war
In Yemen, experts warn that the growing use of bounding fragmentation mines (designed to detonate at waist height and scatter lethal shrapnel) is increasing the indiscriminate threat to civilians and complicating clearance operations.
Made in Yemen: How Houthis’ use of sea mines affects fishing communities
This investigation explores the human cost of sea mines along Yemen's coastline, where fishing communities have found themselves on the front line of an invisible maritime threat. Through exclusive interviews with fishermen, coastal residents and mine action specialists, the report examines how explosive hazards at sea have disrupted livelihoods, restricted access to traditional fishing grounds and deepened economic hardship for families already struggling amid years of conflict.
Set to kill: When booby-trapped landmines become lethal legacy in Yemen
This investigation examines the devastating legacy of booby-trapped landmines in Yemen, where explosive devices continue to kill and maim civilians years after being laid. Through survivor testimonies, field evidence and interviews with demining specialists, the report documents how improvised and victim-activated explosive hazards have transformed homes, farms, roads and everyday objects into deadly traps, leaving communities to navigate a hidden threat long after the fighting has moved elsewhere.