Is this the end for cluster munitions?

Banning a military weapon said to inflict a 98 percent civilian casualty rate is seen by many as an open-and-shut case, but for two weeks government representatives and interested parties will be guided by the phrase "cluster munitions that have unacceptable humanitarian consequences" in formulating a convention to curtail use of these weapons or totally getting rid of them.

On 19 May, in the Irish capital of Dublin, representatives from countries around the globe will gather for the Dublin Diplomatic Conference on Cluster Munitions. Not since the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, which banned the use of antipersonnel landmines and was signed by 155 states, has a protocol elicited such a groundswell of international support.

[Cluster munitions] have so far been used in at least 21 countries, but rarely, if ever, for their intended purpose as weapons to be deployed against tanks and massed infantry formations, and usually in close proximity to civilian populations

It is expected that the 37 states not signatory to the Mine Ban Treaty, also referred to as the Ottawa Convention - including China, India, Israel, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United States - will also decline to be party to a treaty limiting the use of cluster munitions.

If some form of consensus is reached, a treaty will be ratified later this year in Norway, where the process began in February 2007, after foreign minister Jonas Gahr Store said at a conference in the capital, Oslo: "We must bring an end to the unacceptable human suffering caused by the use of cluster munitions. This suffering is not an inevitable and unavoidable consequence of modern war. It is the result of a particular group of weapons developed for other conflict scenarios than those we are faced with today."

Thomas Nash, international coordinator of the Cluster Munition Coalition, which represents more than 250 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in 70 countries, reportedly said: "The purpose of this really historic conference is to negotiate the final terms of an international treaty that will ban the use, production, stockpiling and trade of cluster munitions, and set up a framework to ensure the rights of survivors and affected communities are dealt with in a proper way."

But the devil is likely to be in the detail.

Devil in the detail

Handicap International (HI), an NGO working to improve the conditions and quality of life of disabled people in the developing world and post-conflict zones, defines cluster submunition as explosive ordnance that, to perform its task, separates from a parent munition or dispenser. This definition includes all explosive ordnance designed to explode at some point in time after dispersal or release from the parent cluster munition, as well as munitions that are sometimes referred to as bomblets (e.g. from air-dropped cluster munitions), grenades (e.g. from ground-launched artillery, rocket or missile systems) and "improved conventional munitions".

May-Elin Stener, the Minister Counsellor at the Norwegian Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa, told IRIN she expected a great deal of technical discussion in Dublin, because defining cluster munitions causing unacceptable humanitarian consequences would be crucial in delivering a convention providing the necessary humanitarian protection.

Analysts familiar with the aims of a cluster munitions convention said a general and unqualified banning of all weapons consisting of more than one explosive submunition would compromise munitions bearing little resemblance to traditional cluster munitions.

While many cluster munitions were indiscriminate - and based on laws of war that disproportionate civilian suffering from armed attacks was illegal - the development of weaponry capable of distinguishing between a military target, such as army barracks adjacent to a hospital, there was a legal and humanitarian obligation for the use of these weapons.

Experts said it was likely that the convention would seek to ban all cluster munitions that left a high number of unexploded remnants after being deployed, even if they were equipped with fail-safe mechanisms.

However, those cluster munitions capable of distinguishing between military targets and civilians - provided they were equipped with adequate fail-safe mechanisms - were unlikely to fall within the ambit of the convention, as they were not seen as violating the aims of preventing "unacceptable humanitarian consequences".

"Most discussions in the negotiations will be generated around the definition of cluster munitions, failure rates and technical 'fixes'", HI said in its 2007 report, Circle of Impact: The Fatal Footprint of Cluster Munitions on People and Communities, which cites a military representative asking why researchers were "surprised" by their initial finding that 98 percent of cluster submunitions casualties were civilians.

"However, it is important to remember that cluster munitions are imprecise weapons, designed to strike a greater surface area than many other conventional weapons by dispersing smaller yet highly lethal explosive submunitions," the HI report pointed out.

Calls for such weapons to be banned were first made 30 years ago, but it was their use by Israeli forces in the final days of the 2006 Lebanon conflict that provided the impetus for a treaty banning or limiting their use.

Cluster munitions were first used by Soviet forces against German tank formations during the Second World War, and the next known use was by the German air force in an attack on the British port town of Grimsby. An eye- witness account of more than 60 years ago could easily be confused with the recent experiences of Lebanese villagers.

"They were found on roofs, on beds, hanging by one wing through ceilings, and the only way for the bomb disposal squads to deal with them was to blow them up with a charge just wherever they happened to be," a Grimsby fireman reportedly said.

Only about 25 percent of the 1,000 submunitions delivered in Grimsby exploded immediately or within 30 minutes of impact, killing 14 people. In a paper on the Grimsby bombing, The Humanitarian Effects of Cluster Munitions: Why Should We Worry? authors John Borrie and Rosy Cave quoted various Grimsby residents: "The rest of the bomblets lay unexploded on roads and roofs and caught in trees and hedges. Within an hour of the all-clear signal, another 31 people were killed, and many more injured."

Borrie and Cave noted that "Despite immediate action by the authorities, it took more than 10,000 hours of work over the next 18 days to clear the submunitions and re-open the port."

In Circle of Impact, HI said, "It is estimated that during the 2006 [Lebanon] conflict alone, well over four million cluster submunitions were delivered." Most of the cluster munitions were from the Vietnam era, and the submunitions had a high failure rate.

About one million people fled southern Lebanon, which undoubtedly reduced the number of casualties, HI said, although there were 16 known casualties from air strikes, nine of which were children. Only two casualties were caused by unexploded cluster submunitions during the conflict period, a father and his 11-year-old son.

But as internally displaced people returned in the first month after the ceasefire on 14 August 2006, "casualties due to cluster munitions occurred at a rate of three per day. Until the end of 2006, there were on average two casualties per day, and as of January (2007) there are on average two casualties per week," HI said.

Military use

About 34 countries are known to have produced about 210 different types of cluster munitions. According to Human Rights Watch, an international rights organisation, about 75 countries currently stockpile them, accounting for millions of cluster munitions containing billions of individual submunitions.

Photo: Dina Debbas/UNICEF

A nine-year-old cluster bomb victim

Cluster munitions were developed during the Cold War and it was envisaged that they would be used against massed formations of tanks and infantry during a conventional conflict between Warsaw Pact forces and those of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.

They have so far been used in at least 21 countries, but rarely, if ever, for their intended purpose as weapons to be deployed against tanks and massed infantry formations, and usually in close proximity to civilian populations.

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