Callum brings two decades of experience leading humanitarian efforts in conflict areas.
Blue Shield International is pleased to announce the appointment of Callum Peebles as its Interim Director, effective November 2025.
Callum joins us from The HALO Trust, the largest and oldest landmine clearance organisation in the world, where he was most recently Director of Programmes. In that role, he was responsible for the strategic oversight of 6,500 staff and a $75 million portfolio spanning volatile environments from Abkhazia to the Solomon Islands.
For Blue Shield International, he brings two decades’ of experience directing large-scale humanitarian operations in conflict-affected states. In Afghanistan, he oversaw a complex project destroying over a thousand tonnes of landmines and land service ammunition. In Sri Lanka he led teams delivering emergency response to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, and in Mozambique he was responsible for part of a survey in the southern provinces which contributed to the national resilience strategy.
The nature of work in post-conflict environments inevitably involves aspects of heritage protection. Clearing the debris of war requires a clear assessment of sites and appropriate planning to ensure activities intrude on communities to the least possible extent. Callum has been responsible for clearance activities in and around various sites of cultural significance, including the Nallur Kandaswamy Temple in Sri Lanka, the Bala Hissar Fortress in Kabul, and the Prasat Preah Vihear Temple in Cambodia, where he cleared his first landmine.
Beyond the explicit heritage overlap, commonalities between leadership work at BSI and The HALO Trust are clear. Operating across the whole timeline of a conflict, both organisations prepare others from a training and policy perspective pre-conflict, offer support during a conflict phase, and then contribute to immediate recovery work as well as long term stabilisation of communities in the post-conflict stage.
With the support of the J M Kaplan fund, the Blue Shield is currently undertaking the Fulfilling Potential Review. This is a major strategic exercise designed to ensure that the organisation – whose activity has broadened significantly since its establishment in 1996 – is still resilient, sustainable, and able to meet future challenges. Callum will lead Blue Shield in this review, informed by his previous experience leading governance reform and risk mitigation planning at a global level, ensuring we keep people and what matters to them at the heart of our work.
“I’ve worked in nearly 20 conflict-affected countries, and I’ve always been deeply interested in what centres the people in each community. The opportunity to transfer my experience and skills to a similar but new mission in an area of deep interest was hugely compelling. I’m particularly excited to join Blue Shield International at a time of strategic review. I believe we have more to deliver, and it is my goal to use this period to develop and create a sustainable force for good.”
Callum specialises in translating global strategy into operational execution while ensuring robust accountability to major government donors. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute and is currently completing an MBA.
“I am delighted to welcome Callum to the Blue Shield as our first core staff appointment. As Interim Director, Callum will bring 20 years of experience working in the Humanitarian sector, play a pivotal role in supporting the Fulfilling Potential Review, and help the organisation to develop to fulfilling our aspiration to really become the ‘Red Cross for cultural property’ as envisioned in the 1950s by the then Director General of UNESCO.”
