Jo Murray
Jo & Gemma Bike Bosnia 2022
Fundraising for MAG (Mines Advisory Group)
Story
If you sponsor me between April 25th – July 24th 2022, your donation will be doubled by the UK government as part of MAG’s Unlock the Land appeal.
By sponsoring me, your donation will be used to support MAG’s global work whilst matched gifts from the UK government will support an all-female team to clear unexploded bombs in Vangkhom village, Laos. Everyone has the right to live in safety – together we can get to unexploded bombs before a child does. www.maginternational.org/unlocktheland
For two non-cyclists that live on the flat Fylde coast, a hilly adventure through Croatia and Bosnia will be a challenge for our legs and our bums. Every pound we can raise for MAG will make it all worthwhile!
By 1996, some two million land mines and unexploded munitions littered Bosnia. By September 2013, land mines and unexploded munitions remained scattered in 28,699 locations
Since the war in Bosnia started in 1992 over 5000 people have been killed or injured by landmines and unexploded munitions, that's an average of 10 a month for the past 30 years in a country with a similar population to Wales !
Bosnia and Herzegovina's contamination with land mines stems exclusively from the 1992–95 war in the country.
On top of this, aside from severely damaging the nation’s tourism industry, the landmine legacy has also caused an unprecedented level of national economic stagnation as well. This is largely due to the fact that for decades now, previously available emergency sources of income (farming, crop cultivation, etc.) have been heavily stifled by the presence of these landmines which have polluted many farming fields throughout the country.
Bosnia’s limited ability to produce food using its native land has been especially hard on the local economy, since the nation itself has historically been a largely agrarian-based society that has often used farming and crop cultivation in order to supplant the need for industrial employment.
