Bilde av Håvard Bach

Håvard Bach

Head of mine action - Apopo

Håvard has a long and varied mine action background, with involvement in almost all aspects of mine clearance over the past 26 years. He was involved with APOPO since the early days when discussing the possibility of using rats for mine clearance with Bart, APOPO's founder.

What is your background?

After I graduated from the Military Officers Academy in Norway, I worked as deputy and eventually as the Head of the Norwegian Engineering component to United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). I was in charge of all mine clearance and explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) carried out by the Norwegian Battalion.

I left the army to join the Norwegian People's Aid (NPA) in 1992 when their first mine action program was established in Cambodia. A year later I went on to begin the NPA mine action program in Mozambique and a few years after that I did it all over again in Angola.

From Angola, I moved to Geneva to the then newly established Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining (GICHD), as Head of Operational Methods for 11 years before joining APOPO briefly as Head of Mine Action and Human Security in 2010. In 2011, I was back at NPA as Chief Technical Advisor, Operational Methods and in my last 4 months there, I was the acting Chief of Operations at NPA.

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