Banning Cluster Bombs: Light in the Darkness of Conflicts
Although cluster munitions were widely used in the Vietnam-Indochina war, they never received the media and thus the public attention of napalm. (1) The United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research recently published a study on the continued destructive impact of cluster bombs in Laos noting that “The Lao People’s Democratic Republic has the dubious distinction of being the most heavily bombed country in the world” (2). Cluster-bomb land clearance is still going on while the 1963-1973 war in Laos has largely faded from broader public memory. The wide use by NATO forces in the Kosovo conflict again drew attention to the use of cluster bombs and unexploded ordnance. The ironic gap between the humanitarian aims given for the war and the continued killing by cluster bombs after the war was too wide not to notice. However, the difficulties of UN administration of Kosovo and of negotiating a “final status” soon overshadowed all other concerns. Likewise the use of cluster bombs in Iraq is overshadowed by the continuing tensions, sectarian violence, the role of the USA and Iran, and what shape Iraq will take after the withdrawal of US troops.
Thus, it was the indiscriminate use of cluster bombs against Lebanon in a particularly senseless and inconclusive war that has finally led to sustained efforts for a ban.
The ban on cluster bombs follows closely the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction which came into force in March 1999 and has been now ratified by 156 States. Many of the same NGOs active on anti-personnel mines were also the motors of the efforts on cluster bombs — a combination of disarmament and humanitarian groups.
We can play an active role to encourage the States which have signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions to have their Parliaments ratify. A more difficult task will be to convince those States addicted to cluster bombs: USA, Russia, China, Israel, India and Pakistan. The ban may discourage their use by these States, but a signature by them would be an important sign of respect for international agreements and world law. Pressure must be kept up on those outside the law.
(1) See Eric Prokosch, who called attention to the range of weapons used in the Vietnam war in his Technology of Killing: A Military and Political History of Anti-personnel Weapons ( London: Zed Books, 1995)
(2) R. Cave, A. Lawson and A. Sherriff. Cluster Munitions in Albania and Lao PDR (Geneva: UN Institute for Disarmament Research, 2006)
(3) Ratifications as of 8 March 2010 by geographic areas:
Europe Albania, Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, France, Germany, Holy See (The Vatican), Ireland, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, Norway, San Marino, Slovenia, Spain, Latin America Mexico, Nicaragua, Uruguay
