'My brother was killed at just 14-years-old - I fear my daughter will die the same way'

As a child, Aman Mamarash played among the gum trees that dot the sloping hills of his secluded village on the edge of northern Iraq. But when war broke out, he fled the border area with his family, seeking safety deeper into the country.

When they returned, their home had been turned into a deathtrap. Fields that had been passed down through generations had been sown with lethal landmines that could claim their lives with just one wrong step. It didn’t take long for the casualties to start.

Aman’s brother was killed by a landmine explosion aged only 14. Now nearly thirty years later, a father himself, he is haunted by the fear of losing his daughter - 11-year-old Helen - to the same deadly remnants of war.

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“We never stop worrying about our children,” the chief of the Dolla Chawty Jaf community in Sulaymaniyah, said. “We warn them of the dangers of the minefields, but we know that children are curious and like to explore.

“It is always on our minds.”

Aman explained how his family fled their ancestral lands close to the Iranian border during the bloody Iran - Iraq war of the 1980s. They were able to return in the 90s, and discovered their home had been used as a military base and was littered with both landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXOs).

“You can still see that mortars, mines, and all the different types of explosives were left all over the area,” he said. “It is very dangerous, it presents a challenge to us all the time.”

The fear for the lives of the village’s children isn’t the only issue Aman and his community encounter because of the minefields. They rely on farming and agriculture to make a living, and while the