ONEArmenia, HALO Trust launch campaign to demine Lachin

PanARMENIAN.Net - ONEArmenia, in partnership with The HALO Trust (HALO), has launched a crowdfunding campaign, Mine Free Lachin, to clear one minefield (31,839m² of land) in the Lachin Corridor, near the village of Meghvadzor, ONEArmenia said in a statement on Thursday, February 23.

A total of 31 minefields remain in Lachin. Once this land is cleared, the people living there can go about their lives, cultivating the fields, grazing their cattle, and further developing their communities safely and without fear of life-threatening accidents. Freeing the land of mines is an integral step towards development of the region, ONEArmenia said.

The HALO Trust has cleared 88% of the known minefields in Karabakh and is hopeful that by 2020 Karabakh will be 100% mine free.

“We are working to permanently remove a finite, solvable problem. Once the mines are found and destroyed, they don’t come back, allowing people to go on with their lives without fear of permanent physical, mental and emotional trauma,” said Ash Boddy, HALO Program Manager in Nagorno Karabakh.

HALO has been working to clear Nagorno Karabakh of landmines since 2000 and is the only organization engaged in such activity there. To date, the organizations has cleared 453 minefields totalling 45,872,000m² of land and impacting the lives of approximately 125,000 people.