Laos: The Legacy

A group of women risk life and limb to clear Laos of cluster bombs and make their country safe for future generations. Phou Vong cautiously picks her way through the undergrowth, scanning the ground with a metal detector. The 46-year-old mother remembers the first time she found a "bombie".

"I was excited as well as frightened. I hesitated a bit but I thought I should be glad to see it, because in a sense I was helping my people," says Phou Vong, a de-miner working for the Mines Advisory Group in Laos.

The "bombies" she searches for, alongside other local women in the Lao province of Xieng Khouang, are the cluster bombs dropped by US pilots during the Vietnam War. The US dropped 260 million cluster bombs on Laos, giving it the distinction of being the most heavily bombed country per capita in the world. It was the equivalent of one bombing mission taking place every eight minutes for nine years.

The bombs targeted the Ho Chi Minh trail, the supply route for communist forces in neighbouring Vietnam. Officially, Laos was not even involved in the war, but its land and its people were blown to pieces. Up to 30 percent of the munitions dropped on Laos did not detonate, meaning there are up to 80 million bomblets in the soil that can explode at any time.