Prince Harry visited Africa's largest minefield 28 years after his mother campaigned against landmines in Angola in January 1997. Photo / Halo Trust, AFP
Prince Harry visited Africa's largest minefield 28 years after his mother campaigned against landmines in Angola in January 1997. Photo / Halo Trust, AFP
The Duke of Sussex said children should not have to fear playing outside as he was pictured walking through Angola’s largest minefield.
Prince Harry made an emotional pilgrimage to the African country, again walking in his late mother’s footsteps as he sought to continue her legacy.
Diana, Princess of Wales visits a minefield being cleared by the charity Halo in Huambo, Angola, in January 1997. Photo / Getty Images
The duke met familiesand children in Cuito Cuanavale, where the dangers of landmines still loom large, 28 years after Diana, Princess of Wales, visited the country.
He said: “Children should never have to live in fear of playing outside or walking to school. Here in Angola, over three decades later, the remnants of war still threaten lives every day.”
On arrival in the capital, Luanda, yesterday, he joined James Cowan, chief executive of The Halo Trust, in meeting Angolan President Joao Lourenco and securing a pledge for a “significant” three-year programme of further support.
He added: “The Angolan Government’s continued commitment is a powerful testament to Halo’s success in saving lives and reducing humanitarian risk.
“We thank President Lourenco for his leadership and partnership, as well as continued donor support as we work together towards completing the mission of a landmine-free country.”
It is almost six years since he last returned to the spot where Diana walked through an area strewn with mines.
By then, it had been transformed into a street in the bustling town of Huambo, with schools, shops and houses. Residents call it Princess Diana St.
The princess visited Angola with the Halo Trust in January 1997, seven months before she was killed in a Paris car crash.
She was photographed on that trip wearing protective equipment and walking through an active minefield during a brief period of peace in Angola’s two-decade civil war.
Her campaign helped to mobilise support for a treaty banning landmines that was signed in October that year, two months after her death.
At the time, the country was contaminated by more than 15 million landmines. Almost 30 years later, more than 1000 minefields, covering an estimated 67sq km, remain to be cleared in Angola.
Prince Harry at the safety class in Cuito Cuanavale. Photo / Halo Trust, AFP
The duke echoed his mother’s support as he helped deliver life-saving messages to children living in a remote Angolan village on Wednesday.
The area is so close to Africa’s largest minefield that it forms part of Halo’s community outreach programme, which aims to keep people safe from landmines until they have been cleared by experts.
The duke repeated simple phrases in Portuguese, including “stop, go back and tell your elders”, to prevent children from detonating lethal devices left behind from the civil war, which ended in 2002.
At least 60,000 people are known to have been killed or injured by landmines in Angola since 2008, although the exact number is likely to be higher.
Halo has cleared more than 120,000 landmines and 100,000 bombs from the country, but was unable to prevent at least 80 Angolans from being killed by them in the past five years.
Prince Harry travelled alone to Luanda before taking a series of small two-person planes to the minefields, where he was photographed wearing a Halo-branded cap and shirt, surrounded by laughing young children. It is hoped that the visit will encourage more donations from the Angolan Government.
In September last year, he described how important it was to him to follow in his mother’s footsteps, telling a summit in New York: “I think we all know how much she would want us to finish this particular job.”
Prince Harry said it was important to him to carry on his mother’s work. Photo / Halo Trust, AFP
In June 2019, the Angolan Government pledged $60 million to the cause, contracting the Halo Trust to clear 153 minefields in Luengue-Luiana and Mavinga national parks.
That September, Prince Harry travelled to a minefield in Dirico, a remote area in the southeast, where he safely detonated a device. In Huambo, he renamed the orthopaedic centre Princess Diana had visited in her honour.
In August 2013, he made a private visit to Cuito Cuanavale in Angola with the Halo Trust, wearing the same protective gear his mother had worn on her trip.
“I was deeply frustrated to learn from the charity’s executives and fieldworkers that the job she’d spotlighted, indeed the entire global crusade my mother had helped launch, was now stalled,” he wrote in his memoir Spare.
“Lack of resources, lack of resolve. This had been Mummy’s most passionate cause at the end. Taking up her cause, detonating a landmine myself, made me feel closer to her, and gave me strength and hope.”
