Securing a Comprehensive Ban on Cluster Munitions

Today, representatives from more than 100 countries met in Oslo to sign the Convention on Cluster Munitions, a new treaty banning all cluster bombs. The signing of this historic pact marks the conclusion of a ten-year campaign, led by Human Rights Watch, to ban the use of this indiscriminate weapon. As our research and that of others has shown, cluster munitions have killed or injured countless civilians in wars in Vietnam, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Georgia, and elsewhere. Together with our partners in the Cluster Munition Coalition, we built a broad alliance of governments in support of a treaty banning the weapon, while fending off efforts by Washington and others to kill or water it down. The new treaty prohibits all cluster munitions without exception—unlike the loophole-ridden ban that some governments preferred in order to preserve their ability to use up the cluster munitions in their arsenals. We fought for that absolute ban because we knew that certain important governments, such as the United States, China, and Russia, were unlikely to sign up for the treaty. Our experience with the landmines treaty was that an absolute ban would stigmatize the weapons system as a whole, making it politically difficult for even these outliers to continue to use it. In the coming year, we will press other governments to sign the treaty and all signatories to ratify it swiftly. And in any future conflict, we will be on the ground ready to expose any use of cluster munitions. That, we hope, will help to relegate cluster munitions to the same “rarely used” category as landmines.