Vietnam is a nation in southeast Asia with a rich history of agricultural and economic development, culture, literature, and arts and crafts which dates back more than 2,000 years. The Vietnamese people have a strong sense of national unity and independence. For many centuries the Vietnamese have resisted, and always eventually defeated, numerous foreign invaders.

Now, Vietnam enjoys peaceful and friendly relations with every nation, including former adversaries France, Japan, China, and the United States.

Although the Vietnamese people have been living in peace for more than 30 years, the legacy of past wars, especially the Vietnam-U.S. war, continues to kill and maim innocent people today, in the deadly guise of landmines and unexploded ordnance. Millions of bombs, mines, grenades, projectiles, and other munitions left by the war, many of them still deadly, are now scattered around people’s houses and gardens and along roadways, or buried just under the surface or deep into the earth. Many of the victims are children, born long after the war ended.