Prince Harry spent this past weekend in Angola, Africa, walking the same war-ravaged roads his mother travelled just before she died in 1997.
Harry, 28, has kept his mother’s humanitarian legacy alive by committing to a cause that was close to her heart, The HALO Trust, a British charity organisation that works to clear landmines in countries like Angola.
Harry is the patron of HALO’s 25th anniversary appeal.
HALO CEO Guy Willoughby thanked the young prince for following in his remarkable mother’s footsteps.
“Prince Harry’s invaluable support in our 25th anniversary year will help us to raise awareness of this important issue so that we can raise funds to recruit and train more deminers to get more landmines out of the ground more quickly,” Mr Willoughby said.
“Many people don’t realise that wars might be over, but people are still being killed and maimed by landmines every day – there were more than 4000 victims of landmines in 2011.”
This is the Prince’s second trip to Africa with HALO, having visited Mozambique in 2010. On that trip he met landmine victims, detonated several mines and spent time with a team of HALO deminers.
The removal of landmines plays an important role in the future of these countries, allowing people to build homes and plant crops safely. HALO has so far destroyed over 1.4 million landmines, making 31,413 hectares of land now safe.
