Cluster Munitions - 12th Jun, 2008

Sian James has welcomed the news on the agreement to bad cluster munitions

International negotiations can often seem endless and unrewarding. That’s particularly true when you are trying to limit the use of weapons.

So when the talks succeed – as they did on 28th May in a landmark agreement to ban cluster bombs – it is a cause for real celebration. And it’s a credit to the thousands of people across the UK who have campaigned for such a ban because of their devastating impact on civilians.

When countries take part in military action, it is sadly inevitable that the weapons they use will cause death and injury. But what can’t be acceptable is if years after the conflict, fresh casualties are still happening – with the main victims all too often children.

Britain took such a strong lead against landmines a decade ago. And it’s why we help push for a similar historic deal to outlaw cluster bombs in Dublin.

Cluster bombs - a single bomb or shell which breaks up to scatter scores of small bombs across a wide area - are highly effective against troops and armour.

But many of these bomblets can fail to explode, as they should, on impact. Instead they can lay in the ground for months and years waiting to be disturbed or discovered.

When that happens, their explosion still kills or maims as the terrible annual toll of civilian victims across the world shows.

Even thirty years after the Vietnam War, cluster bombs dropped during the conflict are still killing people in south-east Asia. They include farmers tilling their land and curious children who find them when they are out playing.

The horrifying evidence, in fact, shows that as many as 60% of the victims of cluster bombs in south- east Asia are children. It is another reason why there has been a widespread and mounting international campaign to halt their use.

These efforts finally paid dividends last week when over 100 countries agreed to ban the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of all cluster munitions.

The Convention, which will be formally signed later this year, is a major breakthrough.

Gordon Brown, who personally intervened to help broker the deal, has promised the Government will now work to encourage the widest possible international support for the agreement.

I know campaigners are concerned that some major countries including the US, Russia, China, Pakistan, India and Israel have not yet agreed to sign the convention.

But we hope that, in time, they will. We also hope, as has happened with the landmine ban agreed in 1997, that it will encourage even those countries who did not sign to stop using such weapons.

The UK doesn’t produce or export cluster munitions but they have been part of the weaponry of our Armed Forces for many years.

We have, however, already taken steps to phase out their use. The UK has already withdrawn and promise to destroy all cluster munitions without a self destruction mechanism – the first country to do so.

Since the agreement in Dublin we will now take out of service and destroy the last two types of Cluster munitions we retain.

But the agreement, reached in Dublin, also calls on countries to step up efforts to help countries clear up unexploded munitions to reduce casualties.

The UK already spends around £10 million a year helping clear mines, cluster bombs and other unexploded munitions from past conflict sites.

The UN estimates that as many as 1.6 unexploded munitions lie after the recent conflict in Lebanon in 2006. Since the conflict in Lebanon in 2006 the UK has pledged more than £3.7 million for clearance. The UK’s early contributions through DFID to the UN’s Rapid Response were instrumental in the UN’s ability to remain present throughout the conflict and to act rapidly to remove mines and explosive remnants of war.

It has been a long haul. But thanks to the efforts of thousands of anti-cluster bomb campaigners, we have taken a huge step of ridding the world of these indiscriminating weapons.