Roots of Peace works to understand the needs of the farmers of a given community and tailor projects to meet their needs to improve their incomes and help establish lasting peace. Roots of Peace works to remove remnants of war, training farmers to meet market demand, strengthening supply chains and facilitating market linkages.
Landmines cause as many as 20,000 deaths and injuries each year.
ROP's demine-replant-rebuild frameworkrestores land to productivity (“from mines to vines”), then engages rural communities in income-generating programs.
Heidi Kühn's ambition is that areas ravaged by war and landmines become safe and fruitful homes for people and wildlife.
ROP benefited more than a million farmers in the decade 2004-2014.
Roots of Peace is a catalyst for change, working to improve the income of smallholder farmers of war-torn lands. The orgaization is committed to replacing the remnants of war with the Roots of Peace, where planting peace and prosperity is our product and global legacy.
Roots of Peace puts in place a proven methodology rooted in a philosophy of providing market-driven solutions tailored to rural communities of war-torn lands. This community-driven approach creates lasting socioeconomic impact, serving as a catalyst for industry-wide development, and transforming local markets and international value chains.
Chief Visionary Officer, Roots of Peace
In the midst of a career in business and journalism, while raising three children, Heidi Kühn was diagnosed with cancer. Following treatment, she decided to express her appreciation for the gift of life by helping the less fortunate and living close to and nurturing the land. Inspired by the campaign to ban and remove land mines, she founded Roots of Peace (ROP) in 1997 in her family home. ROP developed a “demine-replant-rebuild” framework that begins with restoring the land to productivity (“from mines to vines”). ROP then creates income-generating programs for rural communities and guides them until they are sustainable, resilient, self-sufficient, and able to grow independently, building foundations for stability and peace. ROP had carried out its programs in Afghanistan, Croatia, and Angola, removing more than 100,000 landmines in Afghanistan alone.
Roots of Peace has impacted over 1.1 million farmers and family members, spanning seven countries: Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Croatia, Iraq, Vietnam, and Israel/Palestine. Our work has facilitated agricultural exports worth over $250 million . Much of this work requires the removal of land mines and unexploded ordinance. Working with partners, Roots of Peace has facilitated the removal of over 105,000 land mines and unexploded bombs. Starting in Afghanistan in 2003, Roots of Peace has worked with over two dozen agricultural value chains throughout every province in the country, planting over 5 million trees, creating over 10,000 full-time jobs and facilitating exports worth over $125 million. In Vietnam, Roots of Peace planted over 300,000 trees and vines to transform former battlefields into productive farmland. Roots of Peace programs improve farmer income by over 50 percent while maintaining over half of their land for food security crops. Ninety-seven percent of participating farmers shared the information they learned in Roots of Peace training with their neighbors.
