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The extraordinary life of Diana, Princess of Wales, not only humanized the British monarchy, but captured the world’s attention. And she harnessed that media frenzy to raise awareness of a number of progressive philanthropic causes.
Diana was known as a prodigious fundraiser and at one point was linked to more than 100 charities. Although she chose to cut ties with the bulk of them in 1996 to lead more of a private life after her divorce from Prince Charles, she remained the patron of six charities until her death on Aug 31, 1997.
Her passing initially led to a funding shortfall for those charities, but they eventually received grants from the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund, which set up in response to public donations amounting to more than $100 million following her death.
Now 20 years later, here is what has happened to some of her biggest humanitarian causes:
Perhaps the cause most often linked to Diana is advocacy against landmines. Shortly before her death in 1997, Diana visited Bosnia and Angola, where she was pictured picking her way through a minefield in the Southern African country while wearing a visor and bomb-proof breastplate.
“I’d read the statistics that Angola has the highest percentage of amputees anywhere in the world…that one person in every 333 had lost a limb, most of them through land mine explosions” Diana told the press in Angola, which was captured in the documentary Heart of the Matter. “But that hadn’t prepared me for reality.”
James Cowan, CEO of the mine-removal charity the Halo Trust, credits the Princess with the success of the Ottawa Mine Ban Treaty, which opened for signatures months after her death in Dec. 1997. The international treaty, which has been signed by 122 countries, prohibits the use, stockpiling, production and transfer of landmines.
The Halo Trust, which cleared the minefield Diana walked through, has removed more than 92,000 landmines, 800 minefields and 162,000 shells, bombs and missiles in Angola since Diana’s death. Even though the country’s two-decade-long civil war is long over, the legacy of landmines remain. "The bad thing is only a third of landmines in Angola has been removed” Cowan tells TIME.
Prince Harry now works with the Trust to further the campaign made famous by his mother. He warned in the 2017 speech that more needed to be done to fulfil the Ottawa treaty. “In 2015, global deaths and injuries from landmines reached a ten-year high; but perhaps more shocking is the fact that almost 80% of them were civilians” Harry said. “Such tragedies undermine the promises made by the world twenty years ago; too many communities remained shackled in a cycle of poverty and fear.”
The world is far from free of landmines, however. Cowan says there are 64 states and territories affected by mines, cluster munitions and improvised explosive devices (IEDs), which come from a mix of old conflicts and new. He warns that extremist groups like ISIS and Boko Haram are exacerbating the problem by laying down more IEDs. “The first challenge is to take out old landmines in countries like Angola, Cambodia” he says. “But to also turn attention to the new conflicts causing so much suffering.”
