Beyond Bombs with JJ Chalmers

Beyond Bombs, brought to you by The HALO Trust, the global charity that takes action on conflict.Each episode will feature eyewitness accounts and expert analysis from the men and women who work in 30 countries to clear the bullets, grenades and landmines left behind by war. Hosted on Libsyn.

Ukraine: Kharkiv on the Ground Part 2 10/17/2023

Ukraine: Kharkiv on the Ground Part 2 The continuation of a special two-part series finds JJ Chalmers on the ground in Ukraine, joined by HALO’s Mike Newton, Mohammad “Qaissy” Abufarda, and Sophia Badalian. This episode brings JJ and the team to the resilient village of Hrakove, where they meet de-facto village administrator Anatolii organizing aid for the community. As the team journeys back to the HALO Ukraine HQ in Brovary, JJ speaks to interpreter Ivan Yermilov, who recounts his personal experience living through the siege of Mariupol. JJ concludes the series with reflections on the insights and stories shared by everyone along the way, and what lays ahead for Ukraine. /episode/index/show/2b618303-b94f-4270-8801-91ddd11ffb6f/id/28341752

Ukraine: Kharkiv on the Ground Part 1 10/12/2023

Ukraine: Kharkiv on the Ground Part 1 Join JJ Chalmers in a special two-part series as he sets foot on the ground in Ukraine. Along with HALO’s Mike Newton, Mohammad “Qaissy” Abufarda, and Sophia Badalian, JJ and the team visit demining and survey operations in the eastern region of Kharkiv. In this episode, Senior Supervisor Bohdan Hreshko leads the team to the town of Chkalovkse, where a football pitch now lays ridden with anti-personnel mines, and an agricultural field in Mykolaivka that is sown with anti-personnel mines instead of crops. JJ speaks to farmers Natalia and Vyacheslav, whose fields are contaminated with mines and tripwires, and home was destroyed by an ammunition explosion. /episode/index/show/2b618303-b94f-4270-8801-91ddd11ffb6f/id/28298102

Laos 50 Years On 08/17/2023

Laos 50 Years On Exactly 50 years since the bombing stopped in Laos HALO is still clearing up unexploded bombs in the landlocked South East Asian country. JJ Chalmers talks to Sera Koulabdara, CEO of the charity Legacies of War and to William Hunter, who runs HALO's Laos programme. /episode/index/show/2b618303-b94f-4270-8801-91ddd11ffb6f/id/27778962

Life at HALO: Earthquakes and Other Emergencies 05/25/2023

Life at HALO: Earthquakes and Other Emergencies JJ Chalmers speaks to HALO's Syria programme manager Damian O'Brien, who was travelling back from Syria when the Turkish-Syria earthquake struck in February. His tale of survival is remarkable. Meanwhile Svitlana, delivers risk education classes for HALO in Ukraine. She was woken up by missiles on the first day of Russia's attack on her country. /episode/index/show/2b618303-b94f-4270-8801-91ddd11ffb6f/id/26938743

Somaliland: Hope in the Horn of Africa 04/27/2023

Somaliland: Hope in the Horn of Africa Somaliland cannot be found on an official map or atlas, yet has all the characteristics of a functioning state. HALO has demined hundreds of miles of roads and has been its second largest employer. We hear from Chris Pym and Aislinn Redbond on how we're now dealing with a new threat to life: the climate emergency. /episode/index/show/2b618303-b94f-4270-8801-91ddd11ffb6f/id/26660880

The Princess and the Minefield 04/13/2023

The Princess and the Minefield In 1997, nobody had heard of the HALO Trust. Few people cared about landmines. Then the most famous woman in the world walked through a minefield being cleared by HALO in Angola. We talk to Paul Heslop, the man charged with escorting Princess Diana and keeping her safe. A walk that highlighted the landmine problem to billions of people around the world. /episode/index/show/2b618303-b94f-4270-8801-91ddd11ffb6f/id/26520495

Chris Moon survivor extraordinaire: kidnapped, blown-up and running ultramarathons on one leg 03/30/2023

Chris Moon survivor extraordinaire: kidnapped, blown-up and running ultramarathons on one leg Chris Moon was clearing landmines for HALO in Cambodia in 1993 when he was taken captive by the Khmer Rouge. He is one of the few westerners who survived - and even became friends with one of his captors. He then went to clear mines in Mozambique - only to inadvertently set off a mine in supposedly safe land. He lost an arm and a leg - but then devoted himself to running ultramarathons. /episode/index/show/2b618303-b94f-4270-8801-91ddd11ffb6f/id/26379042

Ukraine: One Year On 03/09/2023

Ukraine: One Year On We hear from explosive ordnance education instructor Yulia Chykolba and HALO Ukraine's Imogen Churchill on how HALO relocated from the Donbas to clear landmines laid around Kyiv and Kharkiv during the last year and the importance of educating people of the risks of handling unknown shiny objects in fields and forests. /episode/index/show/2b618303-b94f-4270-8801-91ddd11ffb6f/id/26150703

Robot Mines, Homemade Explosives and 750lb Bombs 12/07/2022

Robot Mines, Homemade Explosives and 750lb Bombs The Ottawa Mine Ban Treaty meant a sharp decline in the use of factory-made landmines, but an unfortunate side effect has been the increase in homemade devices, otherwise known as Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). HALO specialist Pete Smith explains why these are still landmines, while colleague Andy Duncan explains how a new landmine specifically designed to penetrate body armour and sense human presence has been used by Russia in Ukraine. Meanwhile Fiona Kilpatrick talks about the challenges in destroy /episode/index/show/2b618303-b94f-4270-8801-91ddd11ffb6f/id/25656408

How Social Media Can Map War 11/30/2022

How Social Media Can Map War

Ukraine has been called the TikTok War. In this episode JJ explores how HALO uses social media, geographic information systems and unmanned arial vehicles to plot battles and bombs to help locate and prioritise clearance.

Our Libyan colleague Hasam talks about how he pioneered the use of Facebook to map mine contamination in his home country, using ‘landmine’ and ‘projectile’ as keywords and zooming in on satellite images to geolocate dangerous remnants of war. Capability officer A /episode/index/show/2b618303-b94f-4270-8801-91ddd11ffb6f/id/25656411

Women in Demining 11/22/2022

Women in Demining

HALO has always employed women from war-torn countries to clear their own communities. But how do bombs and conflict affect women differently? And how does a job as a deminer empower women in some of the traditional societies where HALO works?

JJ talks to campaigner Camilla Thurlow about her experience working alongside HALO female deminers in Cambodia and Zimbabwe, as well as her time with another organisation in Afghanistan, while /episode/index/show/2b618303-b94f-4270-8801-91ddd11ffb6f/id/25656414

Ukraine: The New Geopolitics 11/16/2022

Ukraine: The New Geopolitics JJ Chalmers talks about the human and economic cost of clearing up after the Ukraine war with military historian Professor Sir Hew Strachan of St Andrew's University, Major General James Cowan, HALO's CEO, and Emma Sky, Director of Yale University's International Leadership Centre. How does it compare with the costs of clearing the war-flattened cities of the Middle East or a country like Mozambique?

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Beyond Bombs with JJ Chalmers

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