Banning Cluster Bombs: Light in the Darkness of Conflicts
(for the full article, click here: OM-Times April 2010 Edition)
In a remarkable combination of civil society pressure and leadership from a small number of progressive States, a strong ban on the use, manufacture, and stocking of cluster bombs will come into force on 1 August 2010 now that 30 States have ratified the Convention on Cluster Munitions.
The Convention bans the use, production, transfer of cluster munitions and sets deadlines for stockpile destruction and clearance of contaminated land. The Convention obliges States to support victims and affected communities.
There will be in November 2010 the first Meeting of Parties to the Convention in Laos, Laos being the State where the largest number of fragmentation weapons had been used. Therefore it is important to encourage as many States as possible to ratify the Convention prior to the November conference so as to be able to participate in this first meeting of the Parties. In a note at the end of the article, I list the 30 States which have ratified by geographic area as treaty ratification is often influenced by what other States in a region do (or do not do).
We see that it is the European States which have the most ratification. This is in large part due to the leadership of diplomats from Norway and Ireland. There has been no such positive leadership in other world areas, with the possible exception of Laos in Asia. However the diplomatic service of Laos is small and without great resources. Thus, outside Europe, pressure for ratification will have to come from the non-governmental sector which played an important role in the preparation and promotion of the Convention.
However all bright sunlight casts a dark shadow, and in this case the shadow is the fact that the major makers and users of cluster munitions were deliberately absent from the negotiations and the agreement: Brazil, China, India, Israel, Russia, Pakistan, and the USA.
Yet as arms negotiations go, the cluster bomb ban has been swift. They began in Oslo, Norway in February 2007 and were thus often called the “Oslo Process.” The negotiations were a justified reaction to their wide use by Israel in Lebanon during the July-August 2006 conflict. The UN Mine Action Coordination Centre (UNMACC) working in southern Lebanon reported that their density there is higher than in Kosovo and Iraq, especially in built up areas, posing a constant threat to hundreds of thousands of people, as well as to UN peacemakers. It is estimated that one million cluster bombs were fired on south Lebanon during the 34 days of war, many during the last two days of war when a ceasefire was a real possibility. The Hezbollah militia also shot off rockets with cluster bombs into northern Israel.
