Laos

Laos is the most bombed country in the world, per capita, because of heavy aerial attacks in the 60s and 70s during the Vietnam War. From 1964-1973, more than two million tons of ordnance were dropped on Laos. The intensity and scale of this bombing was equal to one planeload of bombs every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years.  

Around 20,000 people—40 per cent of them children—have been killed or injured by cluster bombs or other unexploded items in Laos since the war ended. Soy, aged six, was playing with her friends when they discovered a cluster bomb. Not knowing how dangerous it was, they started to play with it. Moments later it exploded, killing one of her friends.

Our work is focused in Savannakhet Province, where 70 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. Most families are almost entirely dependent on growing rice, but unexploded bombs make cultivating rice potentially life threatening. Since 2012, HALO Laos has destroyed almost 120,000 explosives and taught hundreds of communities how to recognise and report dangerous items.