Beyond Bombs with JJ Chalmers

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 spea...

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-pers...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 hum...

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 zoomi...

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 a...

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 Mozambiq...

JJ Chalmers used to be a Royal Marine commando but since competing in the Invictus Games has been presenting the Olympic and Paralympic Games and appearing on Strictly Come Dancing. Today he welcomes you to Beyond Bombs, a new podcast brought to you by The HALO Trust, the world-leading charity that clears weapons from war zones so that people can rebuild their lives after conflict.  The shelling o...

JJ Chalmers used to be a Royal Marine commando but since competing in the Invictus Games has been presenting the Olympic and Paralympic Games and appearing on Strictly Come Dancing. Today he welcomes you to Beyond Bombs, a new podcast brought to you by The HALO Trust, the world-leading charity that clears weapons from war zones so that people can rebuild their lives after conflict.  Hosted on Acas...