Embassy of Japan supports The HALO Trust in Zimbabwe

On 18 March 2013, The HALO Trust received a grant of $864,153 from the Embassy of Japan in Harare. The grant will allow HALO to equip, train and deploy seven manual demining sections and provides running costs for a minefield survey capacity. Ninety two Zimbabwean staff will be employed by the grant.

The demining activities will take place in north-eastern Zimbabwe along the border with Mozambique where communities live at risk, right beside some of the densest minefields left in the world. This is also cotton and cattle country. The clearance of the minefields will allow communities to put land back into productive use and will prevent the loss of livestock. In Zimbabwe’s rural communities wealth is very often held in cattle and thus the loss of a single beast equates to the loss of a significant portion of family capital.