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What is the problem with cluster bombs?In a word, cluster bombs are indiscriminate. They kill in two ways. First, their wide coverage and often poor targeting mechanisms nearly guarantee that unintended victims will die or be injured, even when the weapons function as designed. See the Washington Post article below: (http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/nation/columns/dotmil/A46524-2001Feb23.html) Secondly, submunitions continue to kill long after the battle is over because of their failure to explode on contact or as designed. Dud rates are often in the 10-15% range, but may range as high as 30%. While the term dud suggests deactivation, in reality many duds remain armed having failed to explode on initial impact. These highly lethal submunitions are activated at the slightest touch, frequently killing more than one person because of their wide fragmentation patterns. Like landmines, cluster munitions must be located and destroyed one by one, a costly and time consuming process. In 1976, thirteen nations called for a ban on anti-personnel cluster weapons. Those countries were Algeria, Austria, Egypt, Lebanon, Mali, Mauritania, Mexico, Norway, Sudan, Switzerland, Venezuela, and Yugoslavia. They focused on the immediate effects of cluster weapons, stating in a working paper that: These anti-personnel fragmentation weapons tend to have both indiscriminate effects and to cause unnecessary suffering. At detonation a vast number of small fragments or pellets are dispersed evenly covering a large area with a high degree of probability of hitting any person in the area. The effect of such a detonation on unprotected persons - military or civilian - in the comparatively large target area is almost certain to be severe with multiple injuries caused by many tiny fragments. Multiple injuries considerably raise the level of pain and suffering. They often call for prolonged and difficult medical treatment and the cumulative effect of the many injuries increases the mortality risk. . . . [W]hen the normal weapon effect is so extensive as to cover areas of several square kilometers in an attack by a single aircraft, these weapons are hardly capable of use anywhere without hitting civilians incidentally. The past two decades of experience not only reinforce these conclusions but demonstrate the additional negative side effect of cluster weapons, a vast numbers of unexploded ordnance remain. As with land mines, children often fall victim to submunitions. Attracted by a combination of size, shape, and/or color, children pick up submunitions and are killed or injured. A recent study sponsored by the International Committee of the Red Cross in Kosovo found that children were five times more likely to be killed or injured by submunitions than by land mines. The Call for a Moratorium on cluster bomb production and use
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© 2003 Mennonite Central Committee
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