ARMS

World Report 2002 Entry

World Report 2001 Entry

World Report 2000 Entry

World Report 1999 Entry

World Report 1998 Entry

Landmine Monitor Report 2001:
Toward a Mine-Free World
The 1,175-page Landmine Monitor Report 2001: Toward a Mine-Free World is the product of an unprecedented initiative by the ICBL to monitor implementation of and compliance with the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, and more generally to assess the efforts of the international community to resolve the landmines problem. It focuses on a reporting period from May 2000 to mid-2001 and contains information on every country in the world. Landmine Monitor Report 2001 reports that it is likely there was new use of antipersonnel mines in 23 conflicts by as many as 15 governments and at least 30 rebel groups/non-state actors. This mainly reflects continued use in ongoing conflicts but new instances of reported use included the laying of mines on borders by Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and, notably, Russia inside Tajikistan, a Mine Ban Treaty State Party, as well as new use by rebels in Macedonia. According to the report, the most regular mine use is likely occurring in Russia (Chechnya), Sri Lanka, and Burma, by both government and rebel forces.
(2637)  9/11/01, 1175pp., $45.00
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Landmine Monitor Report 2000:
Toward a Mine-Free World
More than 22 million antipersonnel mines have been destroyed from the arsenals of at least fifty nations, and  the number of new landmine victims is dropping sharply in heavily mined  countries like Cambodia, Afghanistan, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Mozambique, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) said in  a report released today simultaneously in about 20 countries. The ICBL's 1,100-page Landmine  Monitor Report 2000: Toward a  Mine-Free World was edited and  produced by Human Rights Watch, a  founding member of the ICBL, which  won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997.  The report provides new details on mine use, production, trade,  stockpiling, demining and mine victim assistance in every country  of the world in the period from the March 1999 entry into force of  the Mine Ban Treaty to mid-2000.  The report states that since March 1999 it appears that  antipersonnel mines were used in twenty conflicts by eleven  governments and numerous rebel groups. Angola, which has  signed the treaty, continued to use mines, and it is likely that  Burundi and Sudan, which are also signatories, used mines. The  most extensive use of antipersonnel mines in this period occurred in Chechnya, especially by Russian forces, and  Kosovo, especially by Yugoslav forces.
(2505)  9/00, 1125pp., $45.00
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Landmine Monitor Report 1999
Towards a Mine Free World
Landmine Monitor is an unprecedented initiative by the International Campaign to Ban   Landmines (ICBL), 1997 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. It is the first time that   non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are coming together in a coordinated,   systematic and sustained way to monitor a disarmament or humanitarian law treaty, in   this case the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, and to assess more generally the efforts of the   international community to resolve the global landmine crisis which sees thousands of   innocent people maimed or killed every year.Researchers in more than eighty nations   gathered information to produce this 1,100-page book, which contains reports on the   landmines situation inevery country of the world. It has the most complete and   accurate information available. The report assesses the policies and actions of treaty   States Parties, signatories and non- signatories, in order to establish whether the Mine Ban Treaty and the norm it has established is making a difference today to the people   who need their land cleared of this weapon and their lives, communities and societies   rebuilt. To date, 135 governments have signed the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty and 74   have ratified. It became binding international law on 1 March 1999. It is now online.
(2319), 4/99, 1106pp., ISBN 1-56432-2319, $45.00
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LANDMINES: A DEADLY LEGACY
Antipersonnel landmines kill or maim thousands of people worldwide each year. The majority of  these victims are innocent civilians who step on a landmine after armed conflict has ceased. But once sown, landmines remain, hidden enemies, indiscriminate remnants of war that cannot distinguish between the boot of a soldier and the footfall of a child. The land is blighted, making it  nearly impossible for refugees to return home and for farmers to work their land, which impedes economic development. No longer just a problem of Afghanistan and Cambodia, the number of countries where landmines are a grave threat to civilian life is growing, and now includes such disparate places as Angola and the former Yugoslavia. The situation is already severe, and threatens to become overwhelming if action is not taken immediately. Landmines in the developing world are a weapon of mass destruction in slow motion. Landmines: A Deadly Legacy is the first comprehensive examination of the worldwide disaster created by landmines.  Drawing on our experience in monitoring human rights in armed conflicts, the report describes their history and military use, their social and medical consequences, provides a series of detailed country studies, and examines international laws governing their use. It also contains the first in-depth research into global production and trade in landmines, identifying China, the former Soviet Union, and Italy as the world’s leading exporters. The wealth of reference materials and technical appendices makes this a unique sourcebook on landmines for lay readers, journalists, international lawyers, policymakers, and aid workers. We call for a ban on the production, stockpiling, transfer, and use of antipersonnel landmines as the only way to address this human rights, humanitarian, and ecological disaster.
(1134) 10/93, 528 pp., $20.00
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AFGHANISTAN

Crisis of Impunity:
The Role of Pakistan, Russia, and Iran in Fueling the Civil War in Afghanistan
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The United Nations Security Council should impose a comprehensive embargo on all military assistance against all warring factions in Afghanistan, Human Rights Watch urged today. In this report, Human Rights Watch accused Pakistan, Iran, and Russia of providing military support to Afghan factions with a long record of committing gross abuses of human rights. Other states in the region have also contributed to the ongoing war. The 55-page report details the nature of military support provided to the warring parties; the major transit routes used to move arms and other equipment; the suppliers; the role of state and nonstate actors; and the response of the international community. Human Rights Watch conducted research on military assistance to the Taliban and the United Front over a two-year period, traveling to both Kabul and areas of Afghanistan under United Front control, as well as Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Pakistan, and interviewing government officials, members of the diplomatic community, military officers, civil servants, journalists, academics, and others.
(C1303) 07/01, 58 pp., $7.00
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ANGOLA
Angola Unravels: The Rise and Fall of the Lusaka Peace Process
Angola returned to all-out war in December 1998, the fourth period of open warfare in living memory. The human cost since fighting resumed is  impossible to determine  with precision, but the United Nations estimates  that nearly one million people have  become internally displaced persons  because of the renewed conflict, 10 percent of  Angola's population. This  return to war also represented the end of the uneasy peace  process that  began with the Lusaka Protocol in Zambia in November 1994. The  Lusaka Protocol provided for a cease-fire, the integration of UNITA generals  into the government's armed forces (which were to become nonpartisan and civilian  controlled), demobilization (later amended to demilitarization) under U.N. supervision,  the repatriation of mercenaries, the incorporation of UNITA troops into the Angolan  National Police under the Interior Ministry, and the prohibition of any other police or  surveillance organization. As a backdrop to the protocol, a Security Council embargo  on arms and oil transfers to UNITA had been in place since 1993, while both the  government and UNITA had agreed to halt new arms acquisitions as part of the  accords. But the embargo on UNITA was not enforced, and both sides openly  continued major arms purchases throughout the process.
(2335), 9/99, 205pp;  ISBN 1-56432-233-5, $15.00

BETWEEN WAR & PEACE:
Arms Trade and Human Rights Abuses since the Lusaka Protocol
In updating our 1994 report, Arms Trade & Violations of the Laws of War in Angola, we found that despite the signing of the Lusaka Protocol between the Angolan government and UNITA that led to a cease-fire, sporadic fighting continued in 1995. Widespread human rights abuses by both parties included restrictions on freedom of movement, conscription of child soldiers, and the intimidation, detention and killing of journalists. While there was an overall decline in arms shipments, new weaponry continued to arrive in Angola from Russia, Ukraine, and Zaire.
(A801) 2/96, 44 pp., $5.00/£2.95
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Arms Trade and Violations of the Laws of War since the 1992 Elections
(Sumário em Portugués) Angola’s “forgotten war,” fueled by a steady supply of weapons to both sides, has claimed an estimated 100,000 civilian lives since the conflict resumed following the September 1992 elections. The government and the UNITA rebels are responsible for an appalling range of violations of the laws of war. Angolan government forces have engaged in indiscriminate aerial bombardments, torture, disappearances, summary executions, looting, and recruitment of child soldiers. Government forces have tortured and killed thousands of civilians suspected of being UNITA supporters. Thousands more civilians have been killed or injured in the indiscriminate bombing of population centers in UNITA zones. UNITA forces have engaged in indiscriminate shelling, long-term sieges that starve civilians, summary executions, torture, mutilation of the dead, hostage-taking, and attacks on international relief operations. An estimated 20-30,000 people died in UNITA's siege of Kuito and 10,000 in the siege of Huambo, as UNITA rained 1,000 shells per day on both cities. The government of Angola is the largest arms purchaser in sub-Saharan Africa, mortgaging its future oil production to finance an estimated $3.5 billion worth of weapons imports in 1993 and 1994 from Russia, Brazil, North Korea, Spain, Portugal, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. UNITA is also buying large amounts of weaponry from both private arms dealers and foreign governments, including South Africa, Zaire and Namibia.
(1452) 11/94, 176 pp., ISBN 1-56432-145-2, $15.00/£12.95
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Landmines in Angola
Landmines have rendered large areas of arable land and pasture, many roads, bridges, river banks, villages, and some important economic installations unfit for the people of Angola. This report shows that attempts to restrict their use in Angola have failed and that anti-personnel landmines present a serious and chronic threat to civilians, far in excess of any short-term military advantage that may be gained.
(091X) 1/93, 80 pp., ISBN 1-56432-091-X, $7.00/£5.95
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BULGARIA
Bulgaria: Money Talks -- Arms Dealing with Human Rights Abusers
Bulgaria has earned a reputation as an anything-goes weapons bazaar where Kalashnikovassault rifles, mortars, antitank mines, ammunition, explosives and other items are available for aprice — no matter who the buyers are or how they might use the deadly wares. In the 1990sBulgaria has been a weapons source for armed forces in Iraq, the former Yugoslavia, Angola, andRwanda, among other countries. It has beenimplicated repeatedly in weapons sales to regions ofarmed conflict, countries under international or regional arms embargoes, and armed forcesknown to commit gross violations of human rights and international humanitarian law. Bulgaria isan important source of small arms and light weapons, but it has also sold a considerable amountof surplus heavy weapons from its arsenal.
(D1104) 04/99, 56pp., $7.00
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CAMBODIA
CAMBODIA AT WAR
Although the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Cambodia has been hailed as one of the most successful ever, the country was back at war even before the last of the peacekeepers left. The civilian population now faces a wide range of abuses from both the Khmer Rouge and the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces. This report, based on three missions to Cambodia between March 1994 and February 1995, documents cases of murder, rape, hostage-taking, and the use of famine as a weapon by the Khmer Rouge in their new "scorched earth" tactics. On the government side, the report examines severe abuses by government soldiers against civilians, including secret detention, extortion and murder of dozens of people by military intelligence, and the failure of the Cambodian government in most cases to prosecute its own officials responsible for abuses. The report also documents how the Cambodian government has begun to retaliate against institutions and individuals that have been critical of those abuses, such as the press, the lively domestic human rights community, and independent and critical parliamentarians. Human Rights Watch analyzes the foreign support for both the Khmer Rouge and government forces and calls for an end to the provision of arms and military equipment to the warring parties, as well as for an abolition of the use, acquisition and stockpiling of antipersonnel landmines. It also calls on international donors to insist that the Cambodian government hold its officials, civilian and military, accountable for gross violations of human rights.
(1509) 3/95, 168 pp., ISBN 1-56432-150-9, $15.00/£12.95
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GEORGIA
Violations of the Laws of War and Russia’s Role in the Conflict
On August 14, 1992, a fratricidal war broke out on the resort beaches of Abkhazia, a small territory located on the Black Sea coast of the newly independent Republic of Georgia. A 16-month conflict ensued between Abkhaz forces and the central government of Georgia. The Abkhaz fought for expanded autonomy and ultimately full independence from Georgia; the Georgian government sought to maintain control over its territory. Intensive battles raged on land, air and sea. Several thousand were killed and many more wounded on both sides; hundreds of thousands were displaced from their homes in clear violations of the laws of war. (D707) 3/95, 56 pp., $7.00/£5.95
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INDIA
Arms and Abuses in Indian Punjab and Kashmir
The massive proliferation of small arms and light weapons in South Asia is directly linked to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, and the subsequent creation by the United States of a system, commonly known as the Afghan pipeline, to funnel weapons covertly to the Afghan resistance. The Afghan pipeline, set up by the CIA and Pakistan’s ISI, enabled the transfer of tens of thousands of tons of weaponry to the mujahidin, and then later, to the Sikh and Kashmiri militants. The human rights situations in Punjab and Kashmir have been acutely affected by the militants’ acquisition of weapons of all types, leading to numerous types of abuses against civilians.
(C610) 9/94, 59 pp., $7.00/£5.95
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ISRAEL
CIVILIAN PAWNS: Laws of War Violations and the Use of Weapons on the Israel-Lebanon Border
For over a decade, a conflict has raged on the border of Israel and Lebanon, where Israel occupies a large section of Lebanese territory. Civilians have been the principal targets and victims in this conflict. Both sides—Israel and its allied Lebanese militia, the South Lebanon Army, on one side, and guerrillas affiliated with Hizballah and a number of small Palestinian factions on the other—have exhibited a willful disregard for international humanitarian law, directly targeting civilians and indiscriminately lobbing shells and firing rockets at population centers. Tensions are high; periods of relative calm are punctuated by sharp attacks. The fighting has spiraled into massive Israeli military forays into Lebanon on several occasions. During the intervals, barrages back and forth have led to a situation in which no one is ever secure. A set of informal, unwritten "understandings" between Israel and Hizballah, brokered by the U.S., governed the conflict between July 1993 and April 1996. Each side committed itself to refrain from attacking civilians—unless the other side had attacked civilians first. Thus the civilian populations of southern Lebanon and northern Israel were rendered pawns in the hands of the belligerents. This report exposes the inherent fragility of these understandings. (1673) 5/96, 152 pp., ISBN 1-56432-167-3, $10.00/£8.95
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MOZAMBIQUE
Landmines in Mozambique
In spite of the peace accord signed in October 1992 between government forces and RENAMO rebels, innocent civilians are maimed and killed by landmines in Mozambique on a daily basis. To date, these weapons have claimed more than 10,000 victims — mostly civilians — and the casualty toll could increase rapidly as millions of refugees and displaced people return home to roads and fields littered with mines. Landmines were used in violation of international law by government troops, RENAMO rebels, and various foreign forces. In some instances, civilians were directly targeted; often the mines were scattered in an indiscriminate and random fashion, terrorizing local communities. The devastation caused by landmines in Mozambique — not only for the many civilian victims, but also to the socioeconomic well-being of the nation — is appalling. Clearance of mines could take decades, but so far, little has been done. Landmines in Mozambique is part of a series of reports by Human Rights Watch that document the effects on the civilian population of landmines used in armed conflicts. Human Rights Watch calls for an international ban on the production, stockpiling, transfer and use of antipersonnel landmines as the only way to address this global human rights, humanitarian and ecological disaster.
(1215) 3/94, 136 pp., ISBN 1-56432-121-5, $10.00/£8.95
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RWANDA
REARMING WITH IMPUNITY
International Support for the Perpetrators of the Rwandan Genocide After a year in exile, the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide have rebuilt their military infrastructure, largely in Zaire, and are rearming themselves in preparation for a violent return to Rwanda. Waging a campaign of terror and destabilization against the new government in Kigali, they have vowed to "wage a war that will be long and full of dead people until the minority Tutsi are finished and completely out of the country." Several members of the international community, including France, Zaire and South Africa, have actively aided and abetted this effort through a combination of direct shipments of arms, facilitating such shipments from other sources, and providing other forms of military assistance.
(A704) 5/95, 19 pp., $3.00/£1.95
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ARMING RWANDA
The Arms Trade and Human Rights Abuses in the Rwandan War
In October 1990, the Rwandese Patriotic Front launched an invasion from neighboring Uganda, aimed at overthrowing the Rwandan government. While the war has stopped in an uneasy peace, an estimated 4,500 people died in the conflict and nearly one million civilians are refugees. The influx of weapons supplied by the French, Egyptian and South African governments (the latter in violation of a Security Council resolution) created a local arms race of astonishing proportion and lethality.
(A601) 1/94, 64 pp., $7.00/£5.95
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SOUTH AFRICA
South Africa -- Question of Principle: Arms Trade and Human Rights
South Africa is not living up to its own high standards with respect to arms exports, Human Rights Watch charged today.  In this report, "A Question of  Principle: Arms Trade and  Human Rights," Human  Rights Watch charged the  South African government  with selling weapons to  countries with serious  human rights problems, where an influx of weaponry could  significantly worsen ongoing abuses.  Human Rights Watch noted that after 1994, South Africa  announced more restrictive policies on arms transfers. But the  report charges that those policies are not always being followed.  In 1994, a scandal erupted involving the sale by Armscor, the  apartheid-era governmental arms export agency, of weapons to  Yemen for probable on-shipment to the former Yugoslavia, then  under U.N. embargo. The Human Rights Watch report cited examples of weapons sales since 1994 to governments engaging in repression against their own people or to countries involved in their own or others' civil wars. These sales clearly violated South Africa's own stated policies. Purchasers of South African arms include Algeria, Angola, Colombia, the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville), India, Namibia, Pakistan, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. 
(A1205), 10/00, 48pp., $5.00
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Still Killing: Landmines in South Africa
A former soldier who planted a landmine in northern Angola in 1965 recently returned to help find it. The mine was still operational, still waiting after 30 years to claim a victim. Landmines are inherently indiscriminate weapons recognizing no cease-fire and, long after the fighting has stopped, continue to maim or kill the children and grandchildren of the soldiers who laid them. No other people in the world are more likely to have had their lives devastated by landmines than those living in southern Africa. These weapons have claimed more than 250,000 victims since 1961, when the first known casualty from a mine occurred. By 1997 ten of the twelve countries in the Southern Africa Development Community—Angola, Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe—had recorded landmine incidents and one conservative estimate places some 20 million mines in the ground there.We have concluded that the only solution to the global landmines crisis is a ban on antipersonnel mines, combined with greatly expanded programs for mine clearance and victim assistance.
(2068) 5/97, 224 pp., $15.00
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SUDAN
Sudan Global Trade Local Impact : Arms Transfers to all Sides in the Civil War in Sudan More than one million people may have died, with millions more forcibly displaced, since today’s ongoing civil war broke out in Sudan in 1983. This conflict is spreading to other regions of the country and is linked to guerrilla wars in neighboring Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Uganda. A steady flow of arms into the Horn of Africa for the past half century has fueled the fighting and multiplied its lethal impact on the civilian population. Human Rights Watch began its investigation of the arms trade feeding the Sudanese civil war in 1996, concentrating on types of armaments, sources of arms supply, channels of arms distribution, and the connection between arms flows and already identified human rights abusers.
(A1004)8/98, 52 pp., $7.00
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CIVILIAN DEVASTATION
Abuses by All Parties in the War in Southern Sudan
Since 1983, the civil war in southern Sudan has claimed the lives of some 1.3 million civilians as a result of targeted killings, indiscriminate fire, or starvation and disease. Both government and rebel forces are culpable as they wage war in total disregard for the welfare of civilians, violating almost every rule of war applicable in an internal armed conflict. Government forces have engaged in indiscriminate aerial bombardments, scorched earth tactics, torture, disappearance and summary executions. The two factions of the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army have engaged in indiscriminate attacks, destruction of property, looting, and long-term sieges that starve civilians. The cumulative effect has been to turn Sudan’s southern region into a permanent emergency situation where war, flood, drought, and disease have torn apart ordinary survival strategies and made millions dependent in whole or in part on international assistance. International relief efforts were expanded in 1993 as the Sudanese government — alarmed not by the suffering of its own people but by the United Nations peace-keeping action in neighboring Somalia — broadened access to relief organizations for the first time. As a result of U.N. and nongovernmental organizations’ efforts, child malnutrition and disease declined through vaccination, food, and non-food distribution. Despite these and other successes in 1993, the excess mortality rate numbered 220,000 people and 700,000 others were still refugees in their own country, over 100,000 of them displaced by ongoing government attacks in the first few months of 1994 as the government took back rebel territory. Short of an end to the war, only the elevation of respect for human rights and humanitarian law by all parties will prevent the extinction of millions more.
(1290) 6/94, 296 pp., ISBN 1-56432-129-0, $15.00/£12.95
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TURKEY
Weapons Transfers and Violations of the Laws of War in Turkey
Since 1984, the government of Turkey has waged an increasingly bitter war with insurgents of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). To date, the toll is estimated at over 19,000 deaths, including some 2,000 death-squad killings of suspected PKK sympathizers, two million internally displaced, and more than 2,200 villages destroyed mostly by Turkish security forces. In an effort to root out PKK fighters and sympathizers from southeast Turkey, the government has adopted increasingly brutal counterinsurgency measures, in clear violation of international law. The PKK, for its part, has also systematically engaged in violations such as summary executions and indiscriminate fire. This report documents the Turkish security forces’ violations of human rights, and their reliance on U.S. and NATO-supplied weapons in doing so. Drawing on investigations of some 30 incidents that occurred between 1992 and 1995, the report links specific weapons systems to individual incidents of Turkish violations. Supplemented by interviews with former Turkish soldiers, U.S. officials and defense experts, the report concludes that U.S. weapons, as well as those supplied by other NATO members, are regularly used.
View the summary and recommendations of this report
(1614) 11/95, 184 pp., ISBN 1-56432-161-4, $15.00/£12.95
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U.S. Cluster Bombs for Turkey?
We issued this report upon learning of a tense debate within the U.S. State and Defense Departments over whether to allow the export to Turkey of the most advanced and deadly cluster bomb in the U.S. arsenal, the CBU-87. Those who oppose the sale based on Turkey’s appalling human rights record are squared off against those who fear damage to the “strategic relationship” if the sale is denied. The CBU-87’s “combined effect” is its ability to be used both as an antitank and antipersonnel weapon. The CBU-87 could be used in Turkey’s counterinsurgency war with Kurdish rebels, with dire consequences for the civilian population, as the Turkish government has a well-documented record of contempt for civilian life during military operations.
(D619) 12/94, 28 pp., $5.00/£2.95
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UNITED STATES

DANGEROUS DEALINGS
Changes to U.S. Military Assistance After September 11
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Since September 11, the U.S. government has extended new military assistance to governments engaged in serious human rights abuse, including torture, political killings, illegal detention, religious persecution, and attacks on civilians during armed conflict, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The 15-page report, "Dangerous Dealings: Changes in U.S. Military Assistance After September 11," says Congress and the administration have degraded human rights policy by lifting sanctions on arms transfers to countries with poor human rights records and by cutting required approval times for such transfers. On January 9, for example, the United States rewarded Tajikistan for its support of the war on terrorism by lifting an eight-year-old ban on arms sales to that Central Asian state. Tajikistan has a history of torture, suppression of political opposition and the media, and arrests based on religion. In recent months, the United States has made almost daily announcements of foreign military aid, including deliveries of defense equipment, proposed arms sales, financial support, and military training. It has had to lift sanctions on several nations to allow such aid to go through. The United States has also dramatically increased military assistance to old allies that have gained new importance since Sept. 11.
(G1401) 02/2002, 15 pp., $3.00
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 In its Own Words: The U.S. Army and Antipersonnel Mines in the Korean and Vietnam Wars
Most of the world is poised to ban antipersonnel landmines, the indiscriminate weapons that kill or maim an estimated 26,000 civilians each year. More than 100 governments have committed to negotiating a comprehensive ban treaty in Oslo, Norway in September, with the intention of signing the treaty in Ottawa, Canada in December. Thus far, however, the United States has said that it will not participate in the negotiations and is not prepared to sign a ban treaty as early as December 1997, despite the fact that in a major policy announcement on May 16, 1996, President Clinton pledged that the U.S. "will seek a worldwide agreement as soon as possible to end the use of all antipersonnel landmines." Because of the desire of some in the U.S. military to hold on to this weapon as long as possible, President Clinton has been seeking a ban not through the fast-track "Ottawa Process" aimed at a ban treaty in December 1997, but through the notoriously slow United Nations Conference on Disarmament, a process expected to take many years, if not decades.
(G903) 7/97, 14 pp., $3.00
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Exposing the Source: U.S. Companies and the Production of Antipersonnel Mines
Despite the Clinton Administration's attempts to lay claim to the mantle of global leadership in the effort to ban antipersonnel landmines, the United States has refused to ban-or even formally suspend-the production of antipersonnel mines. From 1985 through 1996, the U.S. produced more than four million new antipersonnel mines. At the same time that President Clinton was urging the rest of the world to move toward the total elimination of the weapon, the Pentagon was awarding contracts to dozens of U.S. companies to manufacture antipersonnel mines to replace those used in the Persian Gulf War. The U.S. currently has a stockpile of 15 million antipersonnel mines, although three million older mines are scheduled to be destroyed by the end of 1999. In this report, Human Rights Watch-as part of a coordinated national effort to promote a total ban on antipersonnel landmines-identifies forty-seven U.S. companies that have been involved in the manufacture of antipersonnel mines, their components, or delivery systems. That is more than twice the number of companies previously acknowledged by the Department of Defense (DoD). This report is to be the basis for a "stigmatization" campaign by the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines (USCBL) to press all companies that have been involved in antipersonnel mine production in the past to renounce any future activities related to antipersonnel mine production.
(G902) 4/97, 47 pp., $5.00
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U.S. Blinding Laser Weapons
The U.S. has pursued the development of at least 10 different tactical laser weapons that have the potential of blinding individuals. The existence of most of these programs is not known to the American public, Congress, or even throughout the military, and services responsible for laser weapons seem largely unaware of the programs in research and development in other services. The secrecy surrounding these weapons and the apparent lack of oversight raises the question of whether international negotiations about them have proceeded on an ill-informed basis. We call on all countries to ban them and stop their development and deployment now.
(B705) 5/95, 16 pp., $3.00/£1.95
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YUGOSLAVIA

Civilian Deaths in the NATO Air Campaign
The U.S. Defense Department review of the NATO bombing campaign in Yugoslavia shows that the alliance has failed to learn from its mistakes in killing  civilians, Human Rights Watch charged today. The Pentagon review, released today in the course of Defense Secretary William Cohen's testimony beforeCongress, states that the bombing campaign was "the most precise and lowest-collateral-damage air operation ever conducted" (p. xvii), but provides no evidence to substantiate this summary assertion, nor any discussion of how many civilians died, why, or whether these deaths could have been avoided. However, this 79-page Human Rights Watch report documents that the number of incidents in which civilians were killed in the NATO air campaign in Yugoslavia is at least three times as high as what the Pentagon has claimed.In its report on the Yugoslav bombing, Human Rights Watch identified four areas in which NATO fell short of its obligation to minimize civilian deaths. These included: its use of cluster bombs in populated areas, its attacks in populated areas during the day when civilians were most likely to be present, its attacks on mobile targets without ensuring that they were military in nature, and its decision to strike some targets of little or no military value despite a substantial risk of civilian death, such as Serb radio and television headquarters in Belgrade.
(D1201) 2/00, 79 pp, $7.00
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Ticking Time Bombs: NATO's Use of Cluster Munitions in Yugoslavia
The announcement by the U.S. Defense Department at the end of April of a move toward the useof more Aarea weapons in Operation Allied Force, and the reports of a growing shortage of precision-guided weapons, point to an increased use of unguided (dumb) weapons by North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces in the war against Yugoslavia, including so-called cluster bombs. Human Rights Watch is concerned that the use of cluster bombs raises questions of humanitarian law, and that the use in particular of the CBU-89 Gator scatterable minewould directly violate the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, which bans the production, use, trade, andstockpiling of antipersonnel landmines. The extensive use in armed conflict of cluster bombs,which contain large numbers of submunitions, uniquely threatens the civilian population. These submunitions which are expendable because they are designed simply to make them plentiful and individually less expensive are dispersed over large areas, creating a grave lingering danger forthe noncombatant civilian population. This is because cluster bomb submunitions have been shown to have a significant dud, or failure, rate.The duds in effect become antipersonnel landmines, incapable of distinguishing between combatants and innocent civilians.
(D1106), 6/99, 18pp., $3.00
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Arsenals on the Cheap: Nato Expansion and the Arms Cascade
As the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) celebrates its 50th anniversary and welcomesits three new members—the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland—one of the likelyconsequences of the Alliance's enlargement eastwards remains largely unexplored: a firesale ofstocks of old weapons. These arms will continue to fan the flames of violent conflict around theworld, and embolden human rights abusers.  To be sure, cheap and obsolete weapons have beenin high demand by combatants with dismal records on human rights. This lethal trade will onlyincrease when more weapons are freed up by former Warsaw Pact countries downsizing their military forces and striving to upgrade their arsenals to meet NATO standards. The signs of thistrend have been visible since the early 1990s when Warsaw Pact standard weapons, particularlysmall arms, were acquired by combatants in Africa and elsewhere, at times in violation ofinternational or regional arms embargoes.
(D1105) 4/99, 21pp., $3.00
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CLOUDS OF WAR: Chemical Weapons in the Former Yugoslavia
Human Rights Watch has uncovered evidence that the Yugoslav National Army (JNA) had an extensive and sophisticated chemical weapons program prior to the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991; that the army of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) inherited much of this program; and that the army of the Republic of Bosnia and Hercegovina produced crude chemical munitions during the Bosnian war (1992-95). Human Rights Watch also has strong indications that the army of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia continues to maintain an offensive chemical weapons
capability. (D905) 3/97, 16 pp., $3.00/£1.95
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