20 ways Princess Diana’s legacy of good lives on

9. Angola

BBC aired Heart of the Matter in February 1997, a special created by Diana about land mines. Diana visited Angola, an African country with largest population of amputees, and shared her shock at statistics of landmine destruction to educate the world about what was going on in Africa: “That one person in every 333 had lost a limb, most of them through land mine explosions. But that hadn’t prepared me for reality.”

Diana visited several amputee victims individually during her time there, explaining why she decided the paparazzi’s obsession with her was, in this case, a good thing. “I have all this media interest, so let’s take it somewhere where they can be positive and embrace a situation which is distressing like this,” she said during the special.

She walked the streets of Kuito, considered the most mined city in the world at the time, and substituted her typically fashion-forward ensembles for a riot hat and flak jacket. After her Angola trip and her game-changing walk through an active minefield, representatives of 122 governments met in Ottawa in December of 1997 and agreed to ban the use of anti-personnel landmines. Her choice to publicly sacrifice her own safety to bring attention to these issues put her on a different level of philanthropy.  Before Angelina Jolie and Bono, there was Princess Diana. She paved the way for other celebrities to make giving back look glamorous.