Interview with Steve Goose (HRW/ICBL) on cluster munitions by Purna Shova Chitrakar, Ban Landmines Campaign Nepal (NCBL), May 2007

1. What are cluster munitions and the campaign against cluster munitions?

Cluster munitions are basically weapons with a canister that opens up in mid-air and spews out dozens, sometimes hundreds of smaller explosive bomblets or sub-munitions. There are many types of these weapons but what they have in common is a wide area effect: they spread out indiscriminately over a very wide area.  And they leave behind large numbers of duds that in essence are little anti-personnel landmines.  Whenever these weapons have been used, they have caused excessive civilian casualties both during the time of attack--when they are dropped out of aircraft or shot from artillery and rocket systems—and after the conflict has ended because they leave behind a large number of hazardous duds.  

The weapon has not been used as extensively as anti-personnel landmines; it's been used in about two dozen countries.  But when it has been used, it has frequently been used in ways that have violated International Humanitarian Law—in ways that have caused too many civilians to die and suffer injuries. Because of this, NGOs (non- governmental organizations) came together in November 2003.   It was in the wake of use of cluster munitions in Yugoslavia and Kosovo in 1999 and use of cluster munitions in huge numbers in the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The NGOs came together to form a coalition, the Cluster Munition Coalition, that is dedicated to trying to get rid of these dangerous indiscriminate weapons. It now has several hundred members in about 50 countries, all working together to bring about a treaty which prohibits dangerous cluster munitions.

2 The ICBL has started to work on the campaign against cluster munitions. What are the similarities between cluster munitions and landmines?

The ICBL made a decision last year in December 2006 to expand its work into cluster munitions.  It is still going to focus primarily on anti-personnel landmines, but for the first time the ICBL has agreed to devote significant work to campaigning on something other than anti-personnel landmines.  It has done so for several reasons.

One, as I have already mentioned, cluster munitions leave behind a large number of hazardous duds that have failed to explode on impact as designed.  These duds function just like anti-personnel landmines: if you pick them up, step on them, or kick them they go off. They are victim-activated pieces of unexploded ordnance. So in many ways cluster munitions pose the same kinds of threats as anti-personnel landmines; they have an indiscriminate effect and cannot tell soldiers from children.  They also create huge problems in terms of need for clearance and long-term assistance to the survivors of cluster munition incidents.  There's a lot of overlap between mines and clusters in terms of their impact on communities and what is needed to deal with them in the long run.

3 What are challenges facing the campaign regarding cluster munitions?

Perhaps the biggest challenge is the fact that 75 countries possess this weapon. They have billions of sub-munitions (individual bomblets) in their arsenals today. So it’s a weapon that is already quite widespread and that some militaries say is very important to them; they say it is vital to fighting future wars.  There is a perception by some that these are essential weapons to military forces, but we think that this is a false perception.

4 What does the campaign expect from national campaigns and what are the responses from governments and campaigners?

There was a major leap forward in the fight against cluster munitions at the end of last year when, after about 5 years of agitation from NGOs in a forum called the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW), a significant number of governments suggested that there should be negotiations on a new international treaty dealing with cluster munitions. That proposal was rejected in the CCW by the United States, Russia, China, India, Pakistan and numbers of others. But in the wake of the failure of CCW to adequately address the cluster munition issue, Norway proposed a new process outside the CCW, and it had immediate backing from some two dozen countries.

This is exactly what happened with the landmine campaign. In the wake of the failure of CCW to deal effectively with anti-personnel mines in 1996, Canada led the way on a new process outside the CCW--a process in which small and medium size governments joined together with the NGOs in the form of ICBL, as well as the ICRC and interested UN agencies, to move forward rapidly toward the solution of the problem.  That is precisely what we see now on cluster munitions. We have got the Oslo process with governments coming together to begin to move toward a new international treaty, prohibiting cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians.

They first met in Oslo in February 2007, where 46 governments agreed to a political declaration that committed them to concluding the negotiation of new treaty on cluster munitions by 2008.   They also agreed to a road map to get to that treaty, with negotiating meetings to be held in Peru, Austria, New Zealand, and Ireland over the course for the next year or so.   We are confident now that we'll get a new treaty. That's our objective: a new treaty on cluster munitions that is as comprehensive as possible, one that will eliminate all of those cluster munitions that cause unacceptable dangers to civilian populations.

5 Anything else you want to say to the world?

Cluster munitions are the weapons most in need of new international law. These are the weapons that in many ways pose the greatest dangers to civilian populations.  They need to be singled out because of their inherent characteristics.  They are prone to being used indiscriminately as we have seen time and again; they are dangerous in terms of their wide area effect during attacks and because they in leave behind large areas infested with landmine-like hazards.  If governments and civil society truly want to protect civilians in future armed conflicts, one of the best things they can do is prohibit cluster munitions.

Cluster munitions have not been used all that extensively yet, so we have the chance to prevent  a future catastrophe.  This campaign is not only about helping those who have already suffered from cluster munitions; it is very much about preventing a future disaster that could be worse than the landmine crisis.  We need to do it now.