Take Action
If you are a US resident, please urge your elected representatives to cosponsor The Cluster Munitions Civilian Protection Act of 2007 and support clear, sensible US policy on cluster munitions.

View an interactive map to view your country’s standing and write a letter to your government urging them to support the effort to ban dangerous cluster munitions.

Download a sample letter then mail or e-mail your elected representatives.

International Treaty
In February of 2007, governments met in Oslo to launch a historic initiative to ban cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians. Forty-six countries agreed to the Oslo Declaration, committing themselves to create a legally binding treaty by 2008 that will prohibit the use, transfer, and production of cluster munitions and require destruction of existing stockpiles. The treaty will also ensure adequate care and rehabilitation to survivors and their communities, risk education, and clearance of contaminated areas.


Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch has an incredible amount of expertise on cluster munitions and an enormous body of work investigating their impact around the world. HRW is known for its successful leadership in the establishment of the Mine Ban Treaty (for which Human Rights Watch shared in the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize). In 2003, Human Rights Watch helped found and currently co-chairs the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC). The CMC has called for governments to establish a new treaty on cluster munitions by 2008. This campaign is particularly important because we have continuously witnessed the failure of governments to start cluster munitions negotiations within the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW). After years of conducting advocacy on this issue, the Norwegian government stepped forward to take the lead on a process to develop a new international treaty that would ban inaccurate and unreliable cluster munitions.

Human Rights Watch aims to keep the humanitarian costs of this weapon center stage, to fend off predictable efforts to water down a ban, and to build a strong, broad coalition capable of standing up to pressure to abandon the effort, whether from Washington, Moscow, Beijing, or elsewhere. In the meantime, Human Rights Watch has called for all governments to adopt a national moratorium on the use and transfer of such weapons, placing the burden on governments to demonstrate that any specific cluster munitions in their possession do not pose unacceptable harm to civilians.

Read Human Rights Watch’s latest work on cluster munitions.