At six years old, Song Kosal was a lovely little Cambodian girl. Her eyes sparkled, and her smile lit up her face so much that everyone who knew her was always trying to make her laugh. But one afternoon, in the blink of an eye, her life changed forever. And it wasn’t just her life. What happened to Kosal transformed the lives of her family.

That afternoon in the summer of 1995, Kosal was working with her mother in a rice paddy in a quiet town on the Thai-Cambodia border where they lived. Much of that border was one of the most heavily mined areas in the world, belying the seeming serenity of that town. While helping her mother work, in the middle of that rice paddy, Song Kosal stepped on a landmine.

The immediate shock of the blast was overwhelming, but its aftermath was even more devastating. Kosal’s right leg was severely injured. Ultimately, it was mutilated beyond repair and had to be amputated.

Antipersonnel landmines are particularly heinous weapons. They are designed, for the most part, to injure and maim and not to kill. Maiming requires an intense medical response, both immediate but also more long-term: blood transfusions, surgeries, and rehabilitation, mental and physical. Suddenly a person who was healthy and strong is permanently maimed, and his or her life is altered irrevocably.

Damaged Families

If people ever do think about landmines, they tend to think about their impact on soldiers; however, soldiers are often the least affected, and when they are affected, they frequently have access to resources that civilians do not. They are supported by medical response teams and other systems. Most people don’t think about the impact of landmines on civilians, especially on women and young girls. The majority of landmines have been used in poor countries that have minimal to nonexistent medical infrastructure. Sometimes it can literally take days to get a mine victim to even rudimentary medical care. Many who might have lived die simply because they cannot quickly get the help they need.

Imagine, then, how families like Kosal’s, who are subsistence farmers, manage in such a situation. They barely get by, eking out a living because everyone in the family, even six-year-old girls who should be in school, is working.