The only madness is that we’ve not banned the bomblets earlier

By Toby Flux

At the end of May last year a 109-country conference discussing a ban on cluster munitions was deadlocked and heading for failure. The UK’s objection to such a ban made it pointless, or even counter-productive, for their own country to cease the production, deployment and use of such anti-personnel weapons, the conference was told.

The new Prime Minister however was keeping fully briefed and, just when it all looked hopeless, he acted.

“We have decided, after a great deal of discussion, that we can help break the log jam so that we can get international agreement that would ban cluster bombs,” Gordon Brown said.

He continued:

“We have decided we will take all our types of cluster bombs out of service…I believe that is going to make a difference to the negotiations that are now taking place…I look forward to other countries following us in this action and I look forward to other countries being able to take these cluster bombs out of service…I think this would be a big step forward to make the world a safer place.”

He was right, the UK’s volte face did indeed break the log jam, and that evening they agreed an international ban on such weapons.

Today 98 countries, including the UK, have signed – including nations with direct experience of their use – but only 10 have so far ratified the Convention. Thirty nations need to ratify for the Convention to enter into force and become binding international law, and I’m pleased to learn that the UK looks set to be one of them. Only after the Convention enters into force will states be bound by all of the Convention’s terms and the deadlines start counting down for clearance of contaminated land and destruction of remaining stockpiles.

In opposition to such a ban, Dan McCurry wrote previously this afternoon on LabourList that:

“The campaign to end cluster bombs compared them to landmines, but there is no comparison at all. Landmines are put in the ground with the intention of not exploding. This is morally unacceptable. Cluster bombs are dropped with the intention of doing their job, exploding, this is completely different.”

I’m afraid Dan is wrong.

Cluster bombs may (or may not) be designed to explode on impact, but the fact is that many do not. Of course all weapons have a failure rate, but if just 1% of these munitions fail then every delivery will leave unexploded bomblets just waiting for a child to discover. And that’s precisely what happens. More than 1% fail and they are often discovered by children, who are in turn killed or brutally maimed. There is no comparison with conventional bombs, and every comparison to landmines.

Dan concluded his article by saying:

“We’re losing people in Afghanistan due to a lack of boots, yet we’re pouring resources into destroying munitions for no logical reason whatsoever other than the fact that someone said they’re like landmines; that some of them don’t go off. If we have a technical problem, let’s fix the technical problem, not destroy resources just for the sake of it.”

He is no doubt unaware that Afghanistan is itself a signatory, perhaps because they know all too well who suffers most from their use – civilians – or perhaps because they know that the “technical issue” is unfixable.

With the change of administration in the US came a new policy too. Now there are new rules in place for the bombs’ use, including a ban on sales where they might be suspected of being used where civilians are present. The bomblets are also required to have a self-destruct failure rate of less than 1%, which few of the US cluster bombs meet, before being cleared for sale. It is unlikely that the US will be exporting under these rules then, but Obama’s administration hasn’t yet signed the Convention (though he should and still might).

The only madness involved in the decision to ban these weapons is that it’s taken so long to get even this far. The UK’s ratification can’t come soon enough.

More details about the international campaign to ban cluster bombs can be found at www.stopclusterbombs.org.