It will be counter-productive to agree to a new protocol that sets far lower standards than the Convention on Cluster Munitions. Instead, we urge states that are not yet ready to join the Convention on Cluster Munitions to consider, on the international level, the option of a politically-binding declaration that commits them to undertake measures of humanitarian benefit.

The international community should press Georgia and Russia to bring to justice those who violated the laws of war, causing many civilian deaths and injuries and widespread destruction of civilian property in last summer’s short but deadly conflict. As an EU-funded independent, international fact-finding mission on the conflict in Georgia published its report on September 30, 2009, the lack of accountability is striking.

Back in 2006, Israel's profligate use of cluster munitions in Lebanon caught the public eye, nowhere more so than in the Arab world.

Germany’s ratification of the new treaty banning cluster munitions is an important step.

At least 32 signatories to the Convention on Cluster Munitions and at least 48 non-signatories possess stockpiles of cluster munitions. This presentation provides an overview of which states stockpile the weapon, focusing on the number and type of cluster munitions stockpiled by signatory states.

The Convention on Cluster Munitions clearly permits joint military operations, but countries that have joined the treaty should prohibit all assistance with using cluster munitions. They should remember the purpose behind the treaty they negotiated and make no exceptions.

To meet the object and purpose of the Convention on Cluster Munitions, states implementing and interpreting the convention should prohibit assisting anyone with the use, production, transfer, and stockpiling of cluster munitions in any situation, including in joint military operations.

Countries that have signed the new treaty banning cluster munitions should not in any way facilitate the use of this weapon, even in joint military operations with allies that have not joined the treaty.