Our Marie will now, in her capacity as patron for DanChurchAid, put focus on landmines and other unexplored ordinances.
https://www.billedbladet.dk/kongelige/danmark/prinsesse-marie-gaar-ind-i-kampen-mod-landminer
Video:
https://www.noedhjaelp.dk/det-goer-vi/sider/nye-veje-til-haabet/minerydning
Each month some 700 worldwide are killed or maimed by mines or undetonated ammunition. - Mines and minelets from cluster-bombs are the big sinners.
Mines because they are hidden and specifically designed to preferably invalid their victims.
Cluster-bombs consists of up to several hundred minelets the size of a hand grenade, which explode on impact. The purpose being to increase the area that is destroyed or damaged, but also to "pollute" an area. Because a large percentage of the minelets do not explode, but they are still live and very dangerous. That means and area the size of a football field is most unsafe and it takes a long time for sappers to clear it.
Some of the minelets have delayed action, which means they may go off while sappers or medics are in the area...
Minelets are supposed to self destruct after a period, but even the best cluster-bombs cannot guarantee that.
The main victims are children, who pick things up, farmers, who have to go into the fields and livestock.
Back when I served in Croatia I had the very unpleasant task of treating an elderly women who had fallen victim to a jump-mine.
When you trigger a jump-mine, usually by a trip-wire, a small charge sends the mine about a meter or so up in the air, then it explodes sending a shower of balls 360 degrees.
This mine must have hit a branch or something, because the balls had mainly hit her legs, but she was mess!
We treated her and got her off to a hospital. I don't know if she lived. I don't think so, she had that characteristic "sunken" look in her face.
I wish I could know what happened.
Anyway, mines are a true scourge! And even after all these years, it still happens that I look for mines when going for a walk somewhere. Not as often anymore though.
So I can only applaud Marie for putting focus on this.