Teaching safety

For families living surrounding by landmines and explosives, risk education is a matter of life and death.

Mohammed, age 12, from Syria lost 80 per cent of his vision in an accident involving unexploded ammunition. His best friend Abdullah was killed. They had been collecting the metal from explosives to sell as scrap to earn money for food and toys.

The best way to prevent casualties is to clear the debris left behind after conflict, but it is painstaking work and it takes time. Teaching people how to stay safe until we can remove the explosives for good is vital, to stop more children like Mohammed from getting hurt.

Children are at the highest risk because they are curious. An unexploded bomb can look like a tempting toy to an inquisitive child.

We use a variety of tools to teach children about the dangers and give them easy ways to remember basic rules to stay safe. In Colombia, our team has devised cartoons and games as part or our 'Creando Entornos Seguros’ (Creating Safe Spaces) campaign. It features animated characters, including Ana the deminer and her young son, Pablo.

When families displaced by conflict return home or fighting starts again as a result of civil unrest, the risk of accidents increases.

Hayatulla’s village in Afghanistan was littered with landmines after fighting between Jihadi forces, so HALO sent in a quick response team to teach families how to stay safe until the mines could be removed.

In 2024 alone, we educated over one million people about how to live safely in mined areas. Almost 600,000 of these were children.