Glendale to host lecture on mine clearance in Artsakh

PanARMENIAN.Net - Gala Danilova from the HALO TRUST will lecture on the mine clearance progress in Artsakh, on Tuesday, March 12 at the Glendale Central Library Auditorium.

The presentation will be in both English and Armenian.

The HALO Trust is a non-political, non-religious organization which specializes in the removal of the hazardous debris of war. HALO began mine clearance operations in Afghanistan in 1988 and currently works in 13 countries around the world. HALO’s programs in the Caucasus started on1995 in Nagorno Karabakh (Artsakh).

The 1992-94 war in Artsakh left behind hundreds of minefields and cluster bomb strikes. It has had profound impacts upon the day-to-day lives of the rural population, significantly inhibiting the incomes of thousands of poor families and causing 268 accidents, with almost 350 people killed or injured. This is amongst the highest per capita civilian casualty rates in the world with a quarter of these victims being children. HALO Artsakh has returned over 66,718 acres of contaminated land to productive use. Over 67,000 landmines, cluster munitions and other items of unexploded ordnance have been safely located and destroyed. Accidents will continue to happen until the remaining minefields and cluster munition strikes are cleared.

Gala Danilova, is a graduate of Mesrop Mashdots University in Stepanakert where she studied History and International Relations. She joined HALO in September 2002 as a Mine Risk Education (MRE) coordinator in Stepanakert. After several years in the MRE program she was given responsibility for Logistics and then Statistics in HALO`s Artsakh office. She also supported HALO`s MRE team in Abkhazia and HALO’s USA office fundraising efforts in the United States during her three trips in 2007-2008. In May 2009 she was promoted to her current assignment as the Director of Finance.