Ta Doangchom, a Laotian cluster bomb victim, beside homemade prosthetic limbs in the Cooperative Orthotic and Prosthetic Enterprise (COPE) National Rehabilitation Centre in Vientiane. Credit: Irwin Loy/IPS

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 9 2015 (IPS)

The 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) banned the use of these deadly weapons for two primary reasons: they release small bomblets over a wide area, posing extended risks beyond war zones, and they leave behind unexploded ordnance which have killed civilians, including women and children, long after conflicts have ended.

As of last month, 117 have joined the Convention, with 95 States Parties (who have signed and ratified the treaty) and 22 signatories (who have signed but not ratified).“The protection of civilians must be non-political. By picking and choosing when it wishes to condemn the use of cluster bombs, the UK is playing politics with the protection of civilians." -- Thomas Nash of Article 36

At the First Review Conference of the CCM in Dubrovnik, Croatia, which began early this week, three States Parties – the UK, Canada and Australia – expressed reservations on a draft declaration on the use of cluster munitions.

In a selective approach to the implementation of the treaty, the three countries argued they could not accept or endorse text that condemned any use of cluster munitions because they contend that doing so would interfere with their ability to conduct joint military operations with states outside the convention.

The UK, which condemned the use of cluster bombs in Sudan, Syria and Ukraine this year, has refused to censure the use of the same deadly weapons by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen.

Not surprisingly, Saudi Arabia is a lucrative multi-billion-dollar arms market for the UK, which has traditionally provided sophisticated fighter planes, missiles and precision-guided bombs to the oil rich country.

Steve Goose of Human Rights Watch and the Cluster Munition Coalition said if the Convention is to succeed, States Parties must condemn any use of cluster munitions, by any actor, anywhere.

“States Parties cannot be selective about condemning, based on their relationship with the offender, or based on the type of cluster munition used,” he said.

If a State Party remains silent about confirmed use, one can argue that it is in effect condoning use, and thereby failing its obligations under the Convention, he noted.

The Cluster Munition Coalition believes the changes to the Dubrovnik Declaration sought by the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada are contrary to the aims of the Convention, and would be a setback to efforts to stigmatise the weapon, and to prevent future use; thus, such changes could have the effect of increased casualties and other harm to civilians, Goose added.

Thomas Nash, director of the UK-based weapons monitoring organisation Article 36, told IPS the UK has tried to block international condemnation of these banned weapons at a gathering of states who are parties to the treaty banning cluster munitions.

The UK has condemned the use of cluster bombs in Sudan, Syria and Ukraine, he pointed out, but it refuses to condemn the use by Saudi-led forces in Yemen.

“The protection of civilians must be non-political. By picking and choosing when it wishes to condemn the use of cluster bombs, the UK is playing politics with the protection of civilians,” Nash said.

He said UK efforts to water down international condemnation of cluster bombs show a callous disregard for the human suffering caused by these weapons.”

According to Article 36, prior to signing the Convention in 2008, the UK used cluster munitions extensively during the Falklands War (1982), in Kosovo (1998-1999) and in Iraq (1991-2003).

The UK also sold cluster munitions to Saudi Arabia prior to 2008, but it is not clear whether these transfers included the types of cluster munitions used in Yemen.

Asked for a rationale for the UK decision, Nash told IPS the UK says that it doesn’t want to condemn any use of cluster bombs by any actor because this might discourage some countries from joining the treaty in the future. “But this makes no sense.”

The UK has a legal obligation to discourage use of cluster bombs by any country and condemning the use of these banned weapons is the best way to do that, he argued.

Nash said the UK has come under close scrutiny over its arms sales to Saudi Arabia and there are numerous concerns over that country’s compliance with human rights and international humanitarian law.

Whether or not the UK refusal to condemn use of cluster bombs by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen is directly linked to UK arms transfers to Saudi Arabia, clearly, UK policy in this area is highly dubious, he noted.

“The best way for the UK to clarify this would be for it to condemn the use of cluster bombs by Saudi-led forces in Yemen,” he said.

He also pointed out that the UK has historically been heavily influenced by the United States on the question of cluster munitions and, like Saudi Arabia, the U.S. would no doubt be displeased by the UK condemning any use of cluster munitions by any actor.

“So this is likely to be a factor as well,” Nash added.

The U.S., he said, continues to finds itself on the wrong side of history when it comes to cluster bombs and the UK, having signed and ratified the ban treaty, needs to choose which side it wants to be on.

Nicole Auger, Middle East & Africa Analyst and International Defense Budgets Analyst at Forecast International, a leading U.S. defence research company, told IPS Saudi Arabia remains a critical market for the UK, “and I believe last year Saudi Arabia was the UK’s biggest arms export market at about 2.4 billion dollars. “

Saudi operates the Eurofighter Typhoon and Tornado fighter planes. Under BAE (British Aerospace) Systems’ Saudi Tornado Sustainment Program, BAE recently upgraded Saudi’s Tornado IDS (Interdictor/Strike fighter bombers) and air defense Tornado F3 fighters to extend service life through 2020.

Both the Typhoon and the Tornado are frontline fighter planes and have been playing a central role in the Yemen bombing campaign. Meanwhile, the air force also operates Hawk 65/65A trainers.

They have the Paveway IV precision-guided bomb from U.K.-based Raytheon Systems and the Storm Shadow air-to-surface cruise missile from MBDA, a French-Italian-British defense contractor.

She said Saudi Arabia was described as the first export customer for the MBDA Meteor missile in February this year, having signed a contract worth more than 1.0 billion dollars.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

Abdallah Yahya A. Al-Mouallimi (right), Permanent Representative of Saudi Arabia to the UN, speaks to journalists on July 28, 2015 following a Security Council meeting on the situation in Yemen. At his side is Khaled Hussein Mohamed Alyemany, Permanent Representative of the Republic of Yemen. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 21 2015 (IPS)

The United States is providing a thinly-veiled cover virtually legitimising the use of cluster bombs – banned by an international convention – by Saudi Arabia and its allies in their heavy fighting against Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Asked if cluster bombs are legitimate weapons of war, “if used appropriately”, U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters: “If used appropriately, there are end-use regulations regarding the use of them. But yes, when used appropriately and according (to) those end-use rules, it’s permissible.”“These weapons can’t distinguish military targets from civilians, and their unexploded sub-munitions threaten civilians, especially children, even long after the fighting.” -- Ole Solvang of HRW

But Steve Goose of Human Rights Watch told IPS the State Department official makes reference to “end use regulations.”

“Any recipient of U.S. cluster munitions has to agree not to use them in populated areas.  Saudi Arabia may be violating that requirement.  State and Defence Department officials are looking into that,” he said.

The Saudi-led coalition of Arab states, which has been uninterruptedly bombing rebel-controlled Yemen, includes Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain.

The 80 non-signatories to the convention include all 10 countries, plus Yemen. The United States, which is providing intelligence to the Saudi-led coalition, is also a non-signatory.

Asked whether it would be alarming or disconcerting if the coalition, is in fact, using American-supplied cluster bombs, Kirby told reporters early this week: “I would just tell you that we remain in close contact, regular contact with the Saudi Government on a wide range of issues in Yemen.

“We’ve urged all sides in the conflict – you’ve heard me say this before – including the Saudis, to take proactive measures to minimize harm to civilians. We have discussed reports of the alleged use of cluster munitions with the Saudis,” he added.

Goose said a U.S. Defence Department official has already said the U.S. is aware that Saudi Arabia has used cluster munitions, so there is no real need for the State Department to confirm or deny.

“Cluster munitions should not be used by anyone, anywhere, at any time due to the foreseeable harm to civilians,” Goose added.

He also said the States Parties to the Convention on Cluster Munitions are meeting for the first Five Year Review Conference of the convention next month and are expected to condemn Saudi use and call for a halt.

Cluster bombs have also been used in Syria, South Sudan, Ukraine and by a non-state actor,

the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), among others.

The Convention on Cluster Munitions, which was adopted in 2008, entered into force in 2010. A total of 117 states have joined the Convention, with 93 States parties who have signed and ratified the treaty.

The convention, which bans cluster munitions, requires destruction of stockpiles, clearance of areas contaminated by cluster munition remnants, and assistance to victims.

Human Rights Watch, a founding member of the international Cluster Munition Coalition, the civil society campaign behind the Convention on Cluster Munitions and publisher of Cluster Munition Monitor 2014, said last May that banned cluster munitions have wounded civilians, including a child, in attacks in Houthi-controlled territory in northern Yemen.

HRW is preparing another report on new use of cluster munitions, scheduled to be released next week.

On Sep. 3, the Cluster Munition Monitor 2015, which provides a global overview of states’ adherence to the ban convention, will be released in Geneva.

An HRW team, in a report released after a visit to the Saada governorate in northern Yemen, said the Saudi-led coalition and other warring parties in Yemen “need to recognise that using banned cluster munitions is very likely to harm civilians.”

Ole Solvang, senior emergencies researcher at HRW, said, “These weapons can’t distinguish military targets from civilians, and their unexploded sub-munitions threaten civilians, especially children, even long after the fighting.”

In one attack, which wounded three people, at least two of them most likely civilians, the cluster munitions were air-dropped, pointing to the Saudi-led coalition as responsible because it is the only party using aircraft.

In a second attack, which wounded four civilians, including a child, HRW said it was not able to conclusively determine responsibility because the cluster munitions were ground-fired, but the attack was on an area that has been under attack by the Saudi-led coalition.

In these and other documented cluster munition attacks, HRW has identified the use of three types of cluster munitions in Yemen and called upon the United States to denounce their use.

HRW also said the discovery of cluster munitions in Houthi-controlled territory that had been attacked by coalition aircraft on previous occasions and the location within range of Saudi artillery suggest that Saudi forces fired the cluster munitions, but further investigation is needed to conclusively determine responsibility.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

A B-1B Lancer unleashes cluster munitions. Credit: US Army

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Aug 23 2013 (IPS)

Arms control advocates are decrying a new U.S. Department of Defence announcement that it will be building and selling 1,300 cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia, worth some 641 million dollars.

The munitions at the heart of the sale are technically legal under recently strengthened U.S. regulations aimed at reducing impact on civilian safety, but activists contend that battlefield evidence suggests the weapons actually exceed those regulations.These weapons have not been used by the U.S. in over a decade, so it’s hard to see why it’s in our interest to sell these to Saudi Arabia.” -- Daryl Kimball of the Arms Control Association

Opponents say the move runs counter to a strengthening push to outlaw the use of cluster bombs around the world while also contradicting recent votes by both the U.S. and Saudi governments critical of the use of these munitions.

“Both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia have recently condemned the use of cluster munitions by the government of Syria – that’s ironic given this new sale, because a cluster munition is a cluster munition, no matter what kind it is,” Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, a watchdog group here in Washington, told IPS.

He was referring to the May 15 vote before the U.N. General Assembly in which both the United States and Saudi Arabia joined 105 other countries in strongly condemning Syria’s use of cluster bombs.

“To my knowledge, the sale of cluster munitions by the United States is infrequent today, so this sale is surprising in the sense that this is a very sophisticated, controversial system because these are cluster bombs,” Kimball continues.

“Further, that these weapons are used by Saudi Arabia is questionable from a military standpoint. These weapons have not been used by the U.S. in over a decade, so it’s hard to see why it’s in our interest to sell these to Saudi Arabia.”

Cluster bombs are air-dropped munitions meant to open in mid-air and release hundreds of additional “bomblets”, thus significantly expanding the potential damage inflicted in the attack. Yet for years global sentiment has coalesced against the use of cluster bombs due to the fact that some of the bomblets invariably fail to explode, resulting in lingering danger for civilians long after conflicts end.

As of 2011, 39 countries were dealing with the after-effects of cluster bomb use, according to the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines, an advocacy group. The group says that list includes Saudi Arabia.

“Cluster munitions stand out as the weapon that poses the gravest dangers to civilians since antipersonnel mines, which were banned in 1997,” the Campaign states on its website.

“Israel’s massive use of the weapon in Lebanon in August 2006 resulted in more than 200 civilian casualties in the year following the ceasefire and served as the catalyst that propelled governments to secure a legally binding international instrument tackling cluster munitions.”

One percent failure

In 2007, 47 governments endorsed a binding agreement, the Convention on Cluster Munitions, to outlaw the production, use or even transfer of cluster bombs. Some 112 countries have now signed the convention, and 83 have ratified it.

In mid-September, more than 100 countries will meet in Zambia to discuss progress in implementing the accord.

Neither the United States nor Saudi Arabia has signed onto the convention, however, which means that the newly announced sale is legal. According to reports, the U.S. has also continued to make irregular sales of cluster munitions to India, South Korea and Taiwan.

“Cluster munitions have been banned by more than half the world’s nations, so any transfer goes against the international rejection of these weapons,” Sarah Blakemore, director of the Cluster Munition Coalition, a London-based advocacy group, said in a statement.

“We are disappointed with the U.S. decision to export cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia, as both countries acknowledge the negative humanitarian impact of these weapons on civilians. The U.S. should acknowledge the treaty’s ban on cluster munition exports and re-evaluate the criteria for its export moratorium so that no cluster munitions are transferred.”

There are currently legislative moves afoot here that would severely limit the scope of potential U.S. sales of cluster bombs, beyond an export ban signed into law in 2009. In mid-July, Senator Diane Feinstein, who introduced a related bill in the Senate in February, co-authored a letter to President Barack Obama urging him to halt the use of cluster munitions with high failure rates.

“Cluster munitions are indiscriminate, unreliable and pose an unacceptable danger to U.S. forces and civilians alike. The U.S. government’s cluster munitions policy is outdated and should be immediately reviewed,” the letter states.

The lawmakers call for an immediate halt of the use of cluster bombs with an unexploded rate higher than one percent, a failure rate that also forms the basis of the current export ban. In fact, that one percent limit will become military policy by 2018, though Feinstein and other lawmakers are hoping to expedite that deadline.

Yet even if the Feinstein bill were to become law, the weapons system being sold by the U.S. to Saudi Arabia, known as the CBU-105, may still be legal. According to both the Defence Department and the weapon’s creator, the Mississippi-based Textron Defense Systems, the system’s failure rate is indeed less than one percent.

Proponents have hoped that this “safer” cluster bomb would be able to continue being used and sold, even in the context of the growing crackdown on these munitions. Indeed, the sales to India, South Korea and Taiwan were reportedly of CBU-105s.

No clean battlefield

Yet the Arms Control Association’s Kimball says there is evidence to suggest that this number is higher. Such evidence comes from the last period in which this model of cluster bomb was used, back in 2003 in Iraq.

“Despite the [public relations] that has been put out regarding the low failure rate of this weapon, in the field its failure rates are much higher,” he says. “This sale to Saudi Arabia should prompt even greater Congressional scrutiny about U.S. cluster munitions policy, particularly the sale of these controversial weapons to other countries.”

Researchers looking at the weapon’s unexploded rate in 2003 in Iraq found that the weapon “clearly does not leave a clean battlefield”.

“The percentage of submunitions which have failed is higher than 1%. Perhaps substantially so,” Rae McGrath, a spokesperson on cluster munitions for the Handicap International Network, stated in a 2008 presentation on findings for this type of weapon.

“At best, these unexploded submunitions would deny access to land for civilian communities until cleared.”

By Simba Shani Kamaria Russeau
CAIRO, Jul 17 2011 (IPS)

The conflict in Libya between pro- and anti-Gaddafi forces will continue to take its toll on communities long after the war has ended as long as hidden bombs remain scattered across public areas.

Fifteen-year-old Misurata resident Mohammed lost most of his left hand and sustained shrapnel injuries to his abdomen in April after an unexploded ordnance found near his house detonated in his hands while he was playing.

“It was a rifle grenade that he brought home, and his brothers actually played with it for a couple of days, but on the third day when he picked it up, it exploded,” photographer and communications manager with Mines Advisory Group (MAG), Sean Sutton told IPS.

“He was very lucky to survive but it was a deeply traumatic experience for him and his family,” adds Sutton. “Children are of course the most vulnerable in this scenario, because they don’t know what’s safe and also they tend to play with these ordnances, which puts them at risk.”

Cluster munitions or cluster bombs are air dropped or ground-launched explosive weapons that can eject up to 2,000 sub-munitions, or bomblets.

Unexploded ordnances (UXO) of cluster bomblets or sub-munitions are usually left behind after a strike and are designed to detonate at a later time, making their indiscriminate effects – of killing or maiming civilians – felt long after the attack has occurred.

“Cluster bombs cause two major risks: First, their widespread dispersal means they cannot distinguish between military targets and civilians, so the immediate humanitarian impact can be extreme, especially when the weapon is used in or near populated areas,” Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) Director Laura Cheeseman told IPS. “Secondly, many sub-munitions fail to detonate on impact and become de facto anti-personnel mines killing and maiming people long after the conflict has ended. These ‘duds’ are more lethal than anti-personnel mines – incidents involving sub-munitions ‘duds’ are much more likely to cause death than injury.”

Adopted in May 2008 in Dublin, Ireland, the Convention on Cluster Munitions prohibits ratifying nations from using cluster munitions. The convention, which became international law in August 2010, has been ratified by 55 states out of 108 signatories.

“During last month’s intercessional meetings of the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions there were repeated calls made by both the CMC and by states parties condemning Gaddafi’s use of these indiscriminate weapons, and for Libya to join the convention as soon as the conflict is over,” said Cheeseman.

Since late March, NATO has conducted nearly 6,000 bombing missions – including 382 strikes on ammunition storage facilities.

NATO operations aimed at enforcing a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for the protection of Libyan civilians has added new risks to the already thousands of unexploded ordnances strewn across residential areas.

“There’s a danger with the NATO strikes because in the attack the ammunition will be kicked out, which means the items are scattered in the surrounding areas posing a threat to civilians until they’re cleared up,” Mark Hiznay, arms researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW) told IPS.

In Benghazi, Tobruk and Zintan, civilians have been gaining access to munitions that were stored in military facilities. They are wandering into contaminated environments, and this causes another problem because “these ordnances could be unstable, explode with one touch or when handled”, Hiznay said.

“Landmines are also increasingly becoming a big issue, with the latest reports of minefields being laid on the outskirts of Zintan not far from Misurata in an area that’s agricultural land, so that’s a worrying development,” adds Sutton.

Last week, Libyan researchers with the HRW discovered at least three minefields laid by forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi – containing anti-personnel and anti-vehicle landmines on the outskirts of the Libyan village of al-Qawalish in the western Nafusa Mountains.

According to HRW, all three minefields were located in heavily populated civilian areas and many of the nearly 240 anti-personnel mines were Brazilian made, while the approximately 46 anti-vehicle mines were manufactured in China.

“The Brazilian made anti-personnel mines we discovered are very small, made almost entirely of plastic and can be difficult to detect with metal detectors in a large desert area – but these mines are no longer available because Brazil is a party to the Mine Ban Treaty and hasn’t manufactured or sold them since 1989,” stressed Hiznay. “However, the fact that we’re seeing so many Chinese mines is of concern because China has failed to sign any of the conventions. Hopefully measures like the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) would began to address this unregulated trade to regimes that have poor human rights records.”

Libya is one of 37 nations that have not joined the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty – which bans the use, production and transfer of all anti-personnel mines, requires destruction of stockpiles within four years, clearance of mined areas within 10 years and assistance to landmine victims.

Excerpt:

By Irwin Loy
SEKONG, Laos, Nov 15 2010 (IPS)

On a windy morning in southern Laos in November, a team of deminers built a makeshift bunker out of sandbags and piled the barrier around a tiny explosive.

Somphong Chanthavong of the group Norwegian People's Aid in southern Laos shows deadly shrapnel retrieved from exploded cluster submunition. Credit: Irwin Loy/IPS

Years ago, when this region of South-east Asia was engulfed in a simmering war of ideology, this pathway carved out of the hillside was a small part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The North Vietnamese army built its supply line through the mountains cutting through Laos, using the route to fuel its operations against the U.S.-backed south.

And so this area became the target of air strikes from the U.S. military. For a decade between 1964 to 1973, U.S. planes rained bombs down on the fields, roads and villages along the way. When the planes dropped cluster munitions, each bomb dispersed hundreds of tiny explosives on to the ground below. By the time the war ended, Laos had become the most heavily bombed country on the planet.

But though the fighting has long been over, the danger lingers. An estimated 30 percent of those cluster submunitions, or bombies, as they are known in Laos, failed to explode. In Laos’s impoverished south, they still litter villages and fields, making them impossible to farm. And each year, more men, women and children here stumble on the bombs, adding to a casualty toll that has already climbed beyond 50,000 in this country alone.

“Three! Two! One!” A deminer shouted a warning in Lao. A button is pressed and the distant bunker exploded, the blast echoing through the surrounding hills.

For Somphong Chanthavong, an operations coordinator for the group Norwegian People’s Aid, the sound represents one fewer bombie that can kill or maim his countrymen.

This remote province is one of the poorest in Laos. It is no coincidence, Somphong says, that it is also heavily contaminated with leftover weapons from a war that ended some 35 years ago.

“It affects the poor people,” the deminer said. “If they have land, they can work. They can grow rice and crops. If the land is contaminated by (unexploded weapons), it is like a booby trap.”

The Ho Chi Minh Trail stretched from North Vietnam into Laos, down to Cambodia and to the south. All three countries felt the effects of the U.S. air strikes and remain among the most contaminated in the world today. But while the supply line connected the three countries then, today, their governments have taken separate diplomatic approaches to the problem.

Laos has been an active proponent of a landmark treaty that bans the use of cluster bombs. On Nov. 9-12, Vientiane hosted the first high-level meeting of the Convention on Cluster Munitions since it came into effect in August.

Meanwhile, Cambodia and Vietnam have so far refused to sign the treaty, frustrating disarmament advocates who had hoped countries most affected by cluster bombs would take on leading roles in the ban.

“It’s countries like Vietnam and Cambodia where people are suffering,” said Thomas Nash, coordinator for the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC), which has led the civil society push behind the ban.

“This treaty is not designed just to ban the weapon. It’s designed to help people. The whole motivation for the treaty is to end suffering. So it’s countries like Vietnam and Cambodia that count for us,” he added.

Cambodia was an early proponent of the treaty, but backed off when the convention was opened for signing in 2008. Cambodian officials maintain that they are supportive of the convention and intend to sign. But they have also offered various reasons for why they cannot, from border tensions with neighbouring Thailand to a need to assess their current stockpiles following decades of conflict.

Vietnam, too, has expressed support for the convention. But it has also warned that it may not be able to meet the treaty’s deadline to clear contaminated land.

However, both countries may be taking significant risks in not signing the treaty early on, Nash argues.

Advocates say international donor money that funds clearance projects in the region are barely adequate to maintain minimal levels. Officials in all three countries have warned of fluctuating funding levels that threaten clearance targets. But affected countries also have a greater chance of obtaining clearance funds if they are early adopters of such international conventions, Nash says.

“In the early years, the political momentum is the highest, the visibility is strongest and the flow of money and resources from donors to affected countries is probably also going to be highest,” Nash said. “I think Cambodia and Vietnam have every reason to join the convention and, really, no reason not to.”

Early on, at least, it appeared some countries were willing to offer new funding as the spotlight shone on Vientiane in November. By the time the conference ended, Australia, Belgium, Luxembourg, New Zealand and Switzerland had announced new funds for clearance activities in Laos totalling more than 6.7 million U.S. dollars, according to the CMC.

It is not an insignificant amount in a country where clearance operations cost 12 to 14 million dollars each year. The group Legacies of War argues that this figure must be more than doubled for Laos to meet its long-term clearance goals.

In the meantime, countries that have signed on to the cluster bomb treaty emerged from the Vientiane meeting with a clearer idea of how to implement their obligations under the convention.

While it requires countries to destroy stockpiles within eight years, states parties agreed to set individual timelines and budgets for doing so within one year. They must also identify all contaminated areas and develop plans to clear them within that time frame.

Excerpt:

By Irwin Loy
VIENTIANE, Nov 9 2010 (IPS)

Eighteen-year-old Phongsavath Manithong rubbed his eyes with the back of his arms as he described how his life changed forever.

Ta Doangchom beside homemade prosthetic limbs in the Cooperative Orthotic and Prosthetic Enterprise (COPE) National Rehabilitation Centre Credit: Irwin Loy/IPS

Three years ago, Phongsavath stumbled onto a small, metallic sphere buried in the ground near his school.

He had heard stories about the planes that rumbled overhead decades before, dropping fire from the sky. But he had never before seen a bomb, or held one in his hands. “I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t think it would be dangerous. So I tried to open it,” Phongsavath recalled.

That decision changed his life forever. Phongsavath remembers only seeing a flash of light before his world fell dark. When he awoke in a hospital, he was blind. The bomb had robbed him of his eyesight and ripped away both his hands.

The weapon was part of a decades-old cluster bomb that had been dropped on Laos during the U.S. military’s secretive operations in Indochina between 1964 and 1973. The goal of the air strikes had been to destroy the crucial North Vietnamese Army supply line that snaked its way through Laos and Cambodia on its way to the south. By the time the war was over, those aerial campaigns entrenched Laos as the most heavily bombed country in history.

But today, it is people like Phongsavath who are paying the price for that conflict. Since the war ended, more than 20,000 people in this country have been killed or injured by leftover explosives.

Critics take particular aim at so-called cluster bombs – large explosives dropped from the sky, which contain hundreds of smaller submunitions, or ‘bombies’, as they are referred to in Laos – because they are especially deadly to civilians long after military hostilities have ended.

Estimates suggest more than 270 million individual bombies were scattered over Laos. With a failure rate estimated at around 30 percent, these deadly weapons litter the Lao countryside.

But advocates hope that 2010 represents a turning point in a long-running campaign to eradicate cluster bombs. In August, a treaty banning the use of cluster bombs came into effect. Starting Nov. 9 here in Vientiane, delegates from more than 100 countries are taking part in the first high- level meeting of signatory nations since then, aiming to hammer out a plan to implement the landmark accord.

“The horrifying thing is there may be up to 80 million of these bombs scattered around the countryside, in farmers’ fields, next to schools, beside roads,” said Thomas Nash, coordinator for the Cluster Munition Coalition, a broad group of civil society organisations who have pushed for the wide-reaching ban. “So there’s a huge amount of work to be done to clear this country of the deadly legacy from a war that ended over 35 years ago.”

Laos is seen, per capita, as the most heavily affected country by such munitions. But cluster bombs have riddled conflict-ridden countries around the globe, from Angola to Zambia and Lebanon to Libya.

The 108 nations that have signed on to the Convention on Cluster Munitions have committed to banning the use of the weapons and the eventual destruction of existing stockpiles. They have also made broad pledges to clear contaminated land and provide adequate aid to victims of cluster bombs.

But while heavily affected countries like Laos have ratified the treaty, major military players that still stockpile the weapons – the United States, China and Russia, for example – have not.

Advocates like Nash, however, are hoping the convention will serve to stigmatise the weapons enough so that their use is considered untenable – something he believes has already been accomplished with landmines.

The United States, for example, has not signed on to the Ottawa Treaty, which banned the use of landmines and came into effect more than a decade ago. But it is believed that the U.S. military has not deployed the weapons since the first Gulf War.

“Anti-personnel mines have been eradicated from most military arsenals and we believe the same will happen with cluster munitions,” Nash said.

“You cannot win a political war if you kill civilians, and that’s what cluster bombs do. So I think the message to countries … that haven’t signed is that we believe we have established a standard by which all countries are judged, whether they sign the treaty or not,” he added.

For many who are already scarred by cluster bombs, however, life remains a daily struggle.

Thirty-nine-year-old Ta Doangchom lost both his arms and the sight in his right eye when he triggered a bombie while foraging for food nine years ago. “I can’t support my family,” he said. “All of my children had to leave school because we were so poor. I feel like a burden on my wife and on my family.”

Like Ta, Phongsavath now advocates on behalf of other survivors, urging an end to the use of the weapons that devastated their lives. But he is also still learning to cope with what happened to him.

“I never saw the war with my own eyes,” Phongsavath said. “But I now know that the bombs were dropped on my country. And they didn’t just kill soldiers. They killed men, women and children.”

Excerpt:

By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Nov 2 2010 (IPS)

A campaign to rid the world of cluster munitions has still to rope in the U.S. government, a major producer and stockpiler of the deadly payload, on the eve of a key global conference in Laos to ban its production and use.

The mixed messages that Washington has been sending are expected to hover over the historic cluster munitions conference to be held Nov. 9-12 in Laos, a poverty-stricken South-east Asian country still grappling with the legacy of the bombs dropped by U.S. warplanes four decades ago.

Thus far, there are little signs that a U.S. government delegation will be attending the meeting as observers.

“We are hoping they (the U.S. government) will send a delegation even at the last moment,” says Thomas Nash, coordinator of the Cluster Munitions Coalition (CMC), a global network of civil society groups that have thrown their weight behind the world’s newest disarmament treaty, the Cluster Munitions Convention.

“The U.S. government is well aware of the problem in Laos,” Nash told IPS ahead of the first international conference that follows the U.N. disarmament treaty’s coming into force in August 2010.

The inaugural meeting of the state parties to the Convention on Cluster Munitions, as it is formally known, is expected to bring delegates from over 100 countries and activists from nearly 400 non-governmental organisations to the Lao capital, Vientiane.

Washington’s absence is of little surprise in light of the distance that the U.S. government has put between itself and this latest international law, which is meant to save lives that continue to be lost long after cluster munitions have been dropped.

“The U.S. did not directly participate, even as an observer, in the diplomatic Oslo Process in 2007 and 2008 that resulted in the Convention on Cluster Munitions,” reveals the ‘Cluster Munition Monitor 2010’, a report released in the Thai capital on the eve of next week’s meeting.

“The U.S. did not engage in the work of the convention in 2009 and 2010 … (nor did it) attend the Berlin Conference on the Destruction of Cluster Munitions in June 2009,” added the 286-page report, which seeks to monitor the ban on the production, trade, stockpiling, use, as well as the impact of the cluster munitions.

Yet even though it is not a signatory to this disarmament treaty, Washington supports a range of humanitarian programmes coping with the legacy of cluster munitions in concert with NGOs. Landlocked Laos itself has been receiving such assistance since the mid-1990s, with the U.S. reportedly pumping in two million dollars annually for initiatives to clear cluster bombs.

“The United States has been the largest contributor to clear cluster munitions in Laos,” says Stephen Goose, executive director of the arms division at Human Rights Watch (HRW), the New York-based global rights lobby. “The U.S. insists on using the weapons but also spends money to clear up the mess afterwards.”

But this paradox in U.S. government policy toward cluster munitions also cuts the other way, reveals Goose, who is also the editor of the ‘Cluster Munition Monitor 2010’. “Most of Washington’s NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) allies have joined the convention and they are bound not to help the U.S.” in keeping or transporting these weapons, he adds.

This means that Washington’s European military allies “cannot help refuel trucks or planes carrying these weapons for the U.S.,” Goose says.

Washington, however, is not alone among the world’s producers and stockpilers of cluster munitions that have not signed the disarmament convention, which was opened for signature in December 2008 and has secured endorsements from 108 countries.

China, India, Pakistan, Israel, and Russia are among the biggest producers of cluster munitions that have given the new convention the cold shoulder.

Laos has been at the vanguard of this campaign to give the international treaty more teeth in Asia, becoming the first in the continent to ratify the convention. But only four other countries in the region have signed and ratified the treaty – Fiji, Japan, Samoa and New Zealand.

Lao government officials are hoping the November event will help secure more ratifications from South-east Asia, which is among the regions most affected by cluster munitions decades after U.S. military intervention there.

Apart from Laos, neighbouring Vietnam and Cambodia were targets of cluster munitions during the U.S. government’s war in Vietnam, which Washington lost in 1975.

During that conflict, U.S. warplanes dropped more than two million tonnes of bombs over Laos, an amount that according to U.N. data exceeds the explosives dropped in Europe during World War II.

These air strikes, involving close to half a million bombing missions from 1964 to 1973, were meant to destroy the North Vietnamese supply route, called the Ho Chi Minh Trail, that passed through eastern Laos.

An estimated 270 million of these explosives were cluster munitions, called ‘bombies’ in Laos. After being dropped from larger bombs that contained 300 to 600 cluster bombs, the bombies spread across a large terrain and caused damage there.

But there were also millions of bombies that did not explode after they were dropped, and these continue to exact a heavy toll today. More than 50,000 people were killed or injured in unexploded ordnance (UXO) accidents between 1968 and 2008, states a UXO regulatory body in Laos.

“Laos topped the list of cluster munition casualties in 2009,” says Goose. “It accounted for a third of the casualties that year.”

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 30 2010 (IPS)

Thirty-eight countries will start observing the Convention on Cluster Munitions this Sunday, Aug. 1, after a rapid entry into force since the treaty was announced two years ago in Oslo.

“This new instrument is a major advance for the global disarmament and humanitarian agendas, and will help us to counter the widespread insecurity and suffering caused by these terrible weapons, particularly among civilians and children,” noted U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Cluster munitions explode in mid-air to release dozens – sometimes hundreds – of smaller “bomblets” across large areas. Because the final location of these scattered smaller bombs is difficult to control, they can cause large numbers of civilian casualties.

Bomblets that fail to explode immediately may also lay dormant, potentially acting as landmines and killing or maiming civilians long after a conflict is ended. Children are known to be particularly at risk from dud cluster munitions since they are often attracted to the shiny objects and less aware of their dangers.

Since the countdown towards enforcement started in February 2010, the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC), a civil society campaign, has been raising public awareness and encouraging countries to adhere to the “most significant disarmament and humanitarian treaty in over a decade”.

“Our activities more recently have been aimed at trying to get an early entry into force, getting to the 30 ratifications necessary to do this,” Stephen Goose, one of the founders and co-chair of the CMC and director of the Arms Division at Human Rights Watch (HRW), told IPS. “It is quite unusual for so many countries to have already completed their ratification procedures.”

After Sunday, more countries are expected to join the current list of 38. “Many of the states who signed but not yet ratified are very close to ratifying it, most of them awaiting completion of their national domestic law procedures,” an official with the Office for Disarmament Affaires (ODA) at the United Nations told IPS.

So far, 107 countries have signed. Others remain hesitant.

For example, Thailand, a leader in the adoption of the landmark Mine Ban Treaty in 1997, has not yet become a signatory. The CMC has been lobbying its Foreign Ministry to join the treaty, and called for Thailand to attend the First Meeting of States Parties from Nov. 9-12 in Laos.

“Although Thailand possesses cluster munition stockpiles, this should not be a barrier to joining this important agreement,” reads a recent letter sent by the CMC. “Thailand has already announced that it does not intend to use cluster munitions and its stockpiles are outdated. The Convention also contains an eight year period in which States Parties need to complete the destruction of stockpiles.”

IPS contacted the Mission of Thailand to the United Nations, but received no answer by press time.

The letter was one of many sent to governments around the world as part of the “Countdown to Entry Into Force” campaign led by the coalition that appealed to governments in Morocco, Slovakia, and Sudan, among others.

“The Convention will have a stigmatising effect even for countries that haven’t joined,” Conor Fortune, a media officer with the CMC, told IPS. “We’ve already seen that there was international public condemnation when the weapon was used in recent armed conflicts, by Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia in 2008 and by Israel in Lebanon in 2006.”

In the West, the United States has also been a focus of the coalition’s efforts. “At the moment the [Barack] Obama Administration is engaged in a very in-depth review of their landmine policy to see if they want to join the convention,” Goose explained. “The U.S. has already acknowledged that cluster munitions should be banned at some point in the future.”

Meanwhile, the Pentagon declared that the U.S. will restrain from using cluster munitions with a failure rate of more than one percent, which would include all but a small fraction, by the end of 2018.

“[The U.S.] should not wait another eight years to stop using cluster munitions; it should ban them now,” Goose declared.

Prohibition of cluster munitions, however, is just a part of what the convention stands for. The treaty also requires destruction of stockpiles within eight years and clearance of contaminated land within 10 years. It also recognises the rights of individuals affected by these weapons to receive assistance and compels all countries to support states in fulfilling their obligations.

“Assistance could be provided either bilaterally or through the U.N., international and regional organisations, International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and NGOs, and could take the form of financial, technical and other assistance,” according to ODA.

The primary responsibility to provide assistance lies, however, with state parties and applies to their jurisdiction. If one state lacks resources, other countries or organisations could provide it.

“Nations that remain outside this treaty are missing out on the most significant advance in disarmament of the past decade,” Goose said. “If governments care enough about humanitarian law and protecting civilians from the deadly effects of armed conflict, they will join immediately.”

Excerpt:

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 19 2010 (IPS)

The five permanent members of the Security Council – the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China – are accused of facilitating the transport of conventional weapons and cluster munitions to countries where they could be used to commit human rights violations and war crimes.

The pointed accusations come from the London-based Amnesty International (AI) which singles out recent arms shipments by transport companies and airlines registered in the five nations.

These weapons shipments “pose a substantial risk of being used to facilitate serious violations of international human rights…” says a new AI report released Monday.

Brian Wood, AI’s arms control manager, says “lax controls on arms shippers and flyers who increasingly move conventional arms around the world are not confined to jurisdictions with weak arms export and import laws”.

He said to save lives and protect human rights, the Arms Trade Treaty, currently under negotiation at the United Nations, must address the role of transporters and other intermediaries in the arms supply chains – not just specify what states’ export and import licensing procedures should be.

Dr. Natalie J. Goldring, a senior fellow with the Center for Peace and Security Studies in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, told IPS although U.S. President Barack Obama has begun to reverse the damage from policies on arms transfers by the administration of former President George W. Bush, “much more needs to be done”.

The U.S. government claims to have stronger standards for arms transfers than other countries, she said. But, she explained, “While this may be true on paper, in reality, the United States regularly transfers weapons to countries that its own State Department lists as violating human rights standards.”

Goldring said the new Amnesty report highlights the need to set global standards for arms transfers.

“Many participants in the ongoing preparatory committee meetings on an arms trade treaty have paid lip service to this idea,” Goldring said referring to the current negotiations on a new international treaty to curb the flow of illicit small arms.

The talks, which began last Jul. 12, are expected to conclude Jul. 23.

The preparatory committee will have three meetings during 2011 and 2012, followed by a major conference scheduled for 2012, which will negotiate the final treaty.

“But the real test will be whether the draft treaty sets consistent, high standards that respect international human rights and humanitarian law,” said Goldring.

The world’s major arms suppliers have been consistently accused of providing weapons to countries with non-democratic governments or politically repressive regimes accused of human rights violations.

These include Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Indonesia, Kuwait, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda and Yemen.

Some of examples highlighted in the AI study include deliveries of cluster munitions and their components on ships registered in the UK, and managed by UK and German shipping companies. The weapons were transported from South Korea to Pakistan between Mar. 2008 and Feb. 2010 for use by the country’s army.

“These deliveries took place despite the UK and Germany having committed to comprehensively ban the transfer and use of cluster munitions,” says the report titled ‘Deadly Movements: Arms Transportation Controls in the Arms Trade Treaty.’

The AI report also cites the example of machine gun/anti-aircraft gun parts from Bulgaria flown on a regular Air France passenger flight from Sofia to Charles de Gaulle airport, Paris, in Sep. 2008. The shipment was then flown to Nairobi with the final destination listed in the transport documents as Kigali, Rwanda.

There was a clear and substantial risk that machine gun/anti-aircraft gun parts procured by the Rwandan government might be diverted.

Such weapons were used in the fighting taking place in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where more than 220,000 people had been displaced and serious violations of human rights were perpetrated, AI said. The Bulgarian, French and Kenyan governments – which permitted the export and transit of the arms shipment through their territories – failed to stop the transfer, the report said.

Goldring told IPS that U.S. representatives continue to claim that it is important to reach decisions on the proposed Arms Trade Treaty through consensus.

“In theory, this sounds like a nice idea, but countries need to agree in order to move forward. In reality, this means that any one country can halt progress, even when all of the other participants are in agreement,” she noted.

Its also unfortunate, she pointed out, that the countries participating in the current Arms Trade Treaty negotiations have chosen to conduct much of their work behind closed doors.

Representatives of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have been blocked from the most recent sessions of the preparatory committee, and are scheduled to be excluded from many of the meetings this week as well.

“Excluding the non-governmental organisations means that much of the expertise on these issues is outside the room, rather than inside,” she said.

“To be credible, these negotiations must be conducted in an open and transparent manner,” Goldring declared.

The chair negotiating the treaty, Ambassador Roberto Garcia Moritan of Argentina, announced last Wednesday that civil society groups would no longer be allowed to be present during crucial discussions.

In a statement released last week the Campaigners of the Control Arms Alliance voiced their protest against NGOs being shut out.

The decision to close the meeting came as a surprise as numerous member states had made earlier statements on the importance of openness and transparency in the process.

Denis Mizne, Director at Sou da Paz in Brazil said that some states want to hide behind closed doors because they don’t want people to see how much they are prepared to protect trading interests at the expense of protecting the people that bear the brunt of illicit arms deals.

“This was a major let down during the first week of negotiations,” he added.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
PARIS, Apr 22 2010 (IPS)

Human rights groups are urging the French government to adopt a law that would ban the financing of companies that produce cluster munitions, the deadly bombs that have killed or maimed thousands of civilians in the past 40 years.

A child victim of cluster munitions. Credit: A. Carle - Handicap International

But human rights campaigners say that the treaty will have limited effect if national laws do not forbid banks and other financial institutions from funding companies that manufacture the arms.

“There is ambiguity and contradiction here in France because the country has ratified the convention and actively promotes it, but the government does not state that financing must be forbidden,” Thierry Philipponnat, a member of the executive board of Amnesty International France (AI), told IPS.

“It’s a strange situation where an activity has been made illegal yet is still being financed,” he added.

Amnesty and other groups say that while most French banking and insurance firms have clearly stated their policy of non-investment in cluster-bomb producers, some are not being transparent.

“They won’t say where their funding goes,” said Philipponnat. “But by definition, munitions producers are being financed, and someone must be doing the financing. It is funding that makes the production possible.”

Globally, financial institutions have continued to invest more than 43 billion US dollars in producers of cluster munitions despite the convention, campaigners say.

AI and several other organisations held a press conference this week to highlight the issue and to put pressure on lawmakers ahead of a Senate discussion on the convention scheduled for May 6.

The Senate, the upper house of the French Parliament, will debate how the treaty should be translated into national law and will adopt a draft bill. The bill will then go to the National Assembly, the lower house, and a “loi d’adaptation” (adaptation law) is expected to be passed before summer.

Cluster munitions are weapons that comprise multiple ‘bomblets’, or sub-arms. They can be dropped from aircraft or fired by artillery, exploding in mid-air and scattering bomblets over a wide area, injuring civilians.

Some of the sub-munitions do not explode, and their appearance and size make them look interesting and toy-like to children, says AI. The group and other observers estimate that 60 percent of civilian casualties are youngsters.

According to Handicap International, a non-governmental organisation, the bombs caused more civilian casualties in Iraq in 2003 and Kosovo in 1999 than any other weapons system. The organisation says that Israel’s “massive use” of the weapon in Lebanon in August 2006 resulted in more than 200 civilian casualties in the year following the ceasefire.

“For more than 40 years, cluster bombs have killed and wounded innocent people, causing untold suffering, loss and hardship for thousands in more than 20 countries,” the group said in a statement. “These weapons cause death and injury to civilians during attacks and for years afterwards because of the lethal contamination that they cause when they fail to detonate on impact.”

The treaty to ban the munitions was a victory for human rights campaigners when it was negotiated in Dublin in May 2008 and later adopted at a ceremony in Oslo in December. But activists would like to see governments take further steps to ensure that cluster bombs are “totally eradicated”.

Countries that have not signed the convention are the United States, China, Russia, Brazil, Israel, Pakistan and India, among others, some of whom still produce cluster munitions.

Many Latin American and Asian countries have yet to sign the treaty. The latest country to sign was Mauritania on Apr. 19 at the United Nations in New York, bringing to 40 the number of African countries that have joined the convention.

Jean-Marc Boivin, Handicap International’s head of political action and advocacy, said that while France ratified the treaty last September and was not a producer of cluster bombs, the government’s position was nevertheless not “very encouraging”.

“We need to have a clear mention in the law that funding is forbidden,” he told IPS. “And that must include direct as well as indirect financing.”

He said that the group had already forced one banking firm to change its policy by launching a publicity campaign about its investments.

“They had to revise their position to safeguard their image,” he said.

The government’s apparent reluctance to make funding illegal is an example of France’s tradition of openly distancing itself from certain practices while looking the other way when its companies continue their business, activists say.

Up to 2007, the country had insisted that cluster munitions were indispensable to the French army, but the government changed its position in the face of pressure from the international community and NGOs, according to the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights (CNCDH), a government body that advises legislators.

Pointing out that countries like Belgium, Luxembourg and New Zealand have already banned investment in cluster-bomb makers, CNCDH president Yves Repiquet stressed that France should follow suit.

He said that even if a company partially produces such arms in addition to other weapons, direct or indirect financing of the company should be banned.

At the Dublin negotiations in 2008, France promised to destroy nearly all of its cluster munitions stockpiles.

“France defends a position…without ambiguity: to ban all cluster munitions defined as unacceptable because they cause humanitarian damage,” the country’s foreign minister Bernard Kouchner and defence minister Herve Morin said then in a joint statement.

Excerpt:

By Matthew O. Berger
WASHINGTON, Feb 17 2010 (IPS)

Just over a year after it was opened for signature, an international treaty banning cluster bombs received the final two ratifications it needed to become international law Tuesday.

Burkina Faso and Moldova ratified the Convention on Cluster Munitions to much praise from human rights and victim advocacy groups. The treaty will become international law Aug. 1, when use, production and trade in cluster munitions will be banned and deadlines for stockpile destruction will be set.

States that have used cluster munitions in the past will also be obligated to provide support for communities affected by the use of the munitions and to assist in clearing contaminated land.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon pointed to the quick turnaround between the treaty’s adoption and its ratification as evidence of “the world’s collective revulsion at the impact of these terrible weapons.”

The treaty process was started in February 2007 when 46 states agreed to start drawing up a cluster munitions-banning treaty. The eventual convention was available for ratification starting in December 2008 and has now, 15 months later, reached the threshold needed to enter into force.

“The short time it took to reach this milestone shows that governments have a strong desire never to see these terrible weapons used again,” said Steve Goose, arms division director at Human Rights Watch and co-chair of the international Cluster Munition Coalition.

Cluster munitions explode in mid-air to release dozens – sometimes hundreds – of smaller “bomblets” across large areas. Because the final location of these scattered smaller bombs is difficult to control, they can cause large numbers of civilian casualties.

Bomblets that fail to explode immediately may also lay dormant, potentially acting as landmines and killing or maiming civilians long after a conflict is ended.

Children are known to be particularly at risk from dud cluster munitions since they are often attracted to the shiny objects and less aware of their dangers.

“Cluster munitions are unreliable and inaccurate, said Ban, adding that “they impair post-conflict recovery by making roads and land inaccessible to farmers and aid workers.”

The U.S. has historically been one main users of cluster munitions, but it – along with other key powers like China, India, Israel, Russia and Pakistan – has refused to sign on to the treaty.

The George W. Bush administration actively opposed the treaty, saying cluster munitions served an important military role.

It was hoped that the Barack Obama administration would shift this position, and legislation to ban most cluster munitions use by the U.S. military, the Cluster Munitions Civilian Protection Act, was introduced in Congress in less than a month after he took office.

But a year later, that legislation has stalled in committee and it is unclear where Obama stands on the issue, though the president did sign a law in March 2009 banning the export of all but a tiny fraction of U.S. cluster munitions.

The most recent large-scale employment of cluster bombs was in the Russia-Georgia war of August 2008, which Human Rights Watch has called the first known use of the controversial munitions since the Israeli attacks on Lebanon in 2006.

During the last 72 hours of the 2006 conflict, Israel reportedly fired over 1,800 cluster rockets containing 1.2 million submunitions. For the two months after the official cessation of hostilities, casualties were still being recorded at the rate of three or four people killed or maimed per day.

“Every signatory needs to ratify, and those who haven’t signed need to come on board to keep more civilian lives and limbs from being needlessly lost,” said Goose, pointing out that over half the world’s states have agreed to seek ratification.

“In light of this new international law, it is especially important for former users of the weapon – such as the United States, Russia and Israel – to re-examine their positions, which put questionable claims of military necessity above the well-documented humanitarian damage cluster munitions cause,” he said.

“Cluster munitions are already stigmatised to the point that no nation should ever use them again, even those who have not yet joined the Convention,” he added.

Even with over half the world’s countries onboard, without the U.S.’s involvement, the treaty covers less than half of the world’s cluster munitions.

“If the U.S. moved in it would ban more than half of the cluster munitions used in the world,” Lora Lumpe, legislative representative at the Friends Committee on National Legislation, which houses the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines, told IPS following the introduction of the legislation a year ago.

Furthermore, she explained, by signing on the U.S. could put pressure on the other large-scale users of cluster bombs which have also not signed onto the treaty, such as Russia and China.

“I’m confident that if there was a policy review that included the full range of U.S. interests at stake, they would see that there is no need to hold on to the threat of these munitions that most of the rest of the world has banned,” Lumpe told IPS at the time.

“The cluster munitions treaty is the most important disarmament treaty to be developed since the landmine ban entered into force more than ten years ago,” said Ed Kenny, Handicap International’s senior programme officer for advocacy, referring to the 1997 treaty banning landmines on which the cluster munitions treaty was modeled.

Following negotiations involving governments that were in support of a ban as well as the International Committee of the Red Cross and the U.N., the convention was signed onto by 107 states in Dublin on May 30, 2008.

The 30 countries amongst these who have ratified the treaty include both those where cluster munitions have been used and those who have stockpiles of the munitions – as well as one country, Spain, that has already completed the destruction of its stockpiles.

The next step following the treaty’s becoming international law in August will be a meeting of the states who have ratified it in Laos in late 2010.

Excerpt:

By Mel Frykberg
EZBT ABBED RABBO, Nov 16 2009 (IPS)

Tens of thousands of Gazans living in tents and damaged homes face a wet, cold and miserable winter as Israel’s blockade of the coastal territory continues to prevent the importation of building and reconstruction material.

During the last few weeks Gazans were given a brief reprieve from the oncoming winter as an unseasonal snap of warmish, sunny weather held off winter rain and plummeting temperatures.

But, during a tour of northern Gaza last week, the U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territory, Maxwell Gaylard, and the Association of International Development Agencies (AIDA) called on Israel to open its border crossings immediately to avert a further deterioration in the humanitarian situation on the ground.

“With winter rains and cold weather now imminent, the people of Gaza are even more desperately in need of construction materials such as cement, roofing tiles and glass to build and repair homes destroyed and damaged during the Israeli military offensive of 2008/2009,” said Gaylard.

During Israel’s intensive bombing campaign in December/January Gaza’s infrastructure was heavily targeted leading to the destruction and damage of thousands of homes.

“Gaza urgently requires 268,000 square metres of glass for windows and 67,000 square metres of glass for solar water heaters or enough glass to cover more than 30 football pitches. More than 500 children are still living in tents,” Mike Bailey from Oxfam told IPS.

Damage caused to Gaza’s water, sanitation and electricity systems, exacerbated by Israel’s crippling blockade which forbids the import of most essential spare parts and fuel, has further limited the ability of aid agencies to supply essential services.

The lack of concrete water storage tanks means that fresh water can only enter water pipes when there is electricity to power water pumps. Backup generators – which rely on fuel – are needed to ensure power cuts do not lead to water shortages and pollution of water.

“The humanitarian situation is going to deteriorate if something doesn’t give,” Gaylard told IPS during a tour of the Ezbt Abbed Rabbo area of the northern Gaza strip.

“We are reaching out to the international community. We are appealing to the member countries of the U.N. on a regular basis about this continuing crisis… We are holding discussions with the U.N. General Assembly and the U.N. Security Council. One would hope that the message would be getting out after the Goldstone report,” said Gaylard.

“We are continuing talks with the Israeli government but pressure must be brought to bear on those responsible for keeping the border crossings closed,” Gaylard told IPS.

Fifty metres away from where the media gathered to hear the U.N. coordinator address the escalating humanitarian crisis, dozens of Gazan families were living the crisis first-hand.

Muhammad Zaid’s five-storey home – which took four years to build and was home to 16 people, the youngest a one-year-old – was flattened during 15 days of intensive Israeli shelling at the beginning of the year, forcing the family to flee.

For the first five months after the war Zaid and his family lived under the caved-in bottom floor of the building. For the last five months the Zaids have lived in a tent supplied by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

Despite the recent unusually warm and dry weather, the heavens opened up for one night last week and rainwater flooded their tent as the family desperately tried to salvage belongings.

“We were awake the whole night scooping water out and trying to dig a small ditch around the tent to prevent more water flooding in but it didn’t help. The children were terrified and screaming. It was so cold,” Zaid told IPS.

However, when the winter rains begin to flood his tent on a regular basis in the near future Zaid, who is unemployed and in huge debt, will face the additional problems of having only intermittent electricity, and no running water.

“I have spent over three thousand dollars of borrowed money for a new refrigerator and stove and some other basic appliances but we have no heater and the electricity keeps cutting,” said Zaid.

Several kilometres away, near the border with Israel, mother of eight Taghreed Abu Amrayn, showed IPS her new “home”, a tent attached to the remains of her former three-storey house, as she jiggled 20-month old Safedin on her hip.

“I’m not sure how we will cope with winter as heating and electricity are a big problem and the children are always getting sick. I think the phosphorous bombs that were dropped nearby may have affected them.

“Apart from the health issues we still live in fear on a daily basis as Israel continues to bomb these areas,” Amrayn told IPS.

Nearby the Abu Amrayns, Rifat Bakri, 28, and Wissam Amoud, 27, were using improvisation to try and overcome the absence of construction material. They had “rebuilt” their former garage and mechanical workshop with cardboard boxes.

“We couldn’t just sit around, we needed to get back to work. These boxes have provided a provisional garage for the short-term but when it rains in winter they will become water-logged and I’m not sure what we will do then,” Bakri told IPS.

“This abysmal situation can’t continue. People are desperate. Enough is enough. It is time for the blockade to be ended and for humanity to return to Gaza,” Bailey told IPS.

Excerpt:

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Mar 11 2009 (IPS)

Leading advocates for lifting the nearly 50-year-old U.S. trade embargo against Cuba are hailing Congress's approval Tuesday of a general appropriations bill that eases – albeit in a mostly symbolic way – several restrictions on travel and sales to the Caribbean nation.

The bill, which was signed by President Barack Obama Wednesday, denies funding to the U.S. Treasury Department to enforce two restrictions, including travel to Cuba by Cuban-Americans, imposed by former President George W. Bush.

The bill also provides for a general license for travel by U.S. companies and individuals to Cuba for the purpose of selling U.S. agricultural and medical goods.

A Bush-imposed regulation had required that businesses wishing to sell their products in Cuba had to apply for a specific license to go there on a case-by-case basis, a cumbersome and sometimes protracted process that discouraged many companies from going through the process.

"For the first time in almost a decade, Congress is acting to loosen the Cuba embargo and send these modest reforms to a president who has promised to change the policy rather than issue veto threats or keep things as they are," asserted a joint statement by several groups, including the Centre for Democracy in the Americas (CDA) and the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA).

"When we have a Congress and a president acting to make sensible changes in Cuba policy, this indicates to us that the ground has shifted and that there is momentum behind the efforts to make broader and more lasting changes in policy," said the groups, which also included the U.S.-Cuba Policy Initiative of the New America Foundation (NAF) and the Latin America Working Group here.

In a victory for peace advocates, the funding measure, called an omnibus appropriations bill, also included a provision that makes permanent what had been a provisional ban on nearly all cluster-bomb exports from the United States, bringing Washington one step closer toward compliance with a treaty signed by nearly 100 nations in December that would ban cluster munitions altogether.

The cluster-bomb provision states that U.S.-made cluster munitions can be exported only if less than one percent of their sub-munitions are duds and if the recipient country formally agrees not to use the weapon "where civilians are known to be present."

U.S.-origin cluster bombs were most recently used by Israel in its 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon where dud rates were reportedly as high as 40 percent, and hundreds of civilians and de-miners have since been killed or maimed by unexploded munitions, according to the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines (USCBL).

The easing of the Cuba embargo comes a month before Obama's much-anticipated attendance at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad where he will meet all of the hemisphere's leaders except Cuban President Raul Castro.

Before he travels to the Summit, Obama is widely expected to follow through on campaign promises to use his executive authority to lift two of the most controversial measures imposed by Bush, which limited the freedom of Cuban-Americans to visit their families in Cuba to once every three years, and their ability to send remittances to their families on the island.

Anti-embargo activists, which not only include groups focused primarily on Cuba, but also major U.S. business associations, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and human rights groups, such as Amnesty International, hope that he will go further than that, possibly by broadening the authority of the Treasury Department to issue general licenses for a wider range of travel to Cuba, including educational and cultural travel.

While hard-line anti-Castro forces based primarily in southern Florida and New Jersey, still strongly oppose any easing of the embargo, there appears to be a growing consensus in Washington – signaled in part by the approval of the omnibus bill in favour of moving toward normalisation, not only as a means to encourage reform by the Communist government, but also to remove an impediment to closer ties with the rest of Latin America, virtually all of which have urged Washington to lift the embargo.

On Tuesday, for example, the Inter-American Dialogue (IAD), a hemispheric think tank based in Washington, called U.S. efforts to isolate and sanction Cuba "an anachronism that serves mainly to isolate the United States from the rest of the hemisphere."

"Nothing would better demonstrate the new administration's intention to pursue a fresh approach to Latin America than making a quick start to dismantle the web of restrictions that the United States has imposed on Cuba," said IAD, which is co-chaired by former U.S. Trade Representative Carla Hills and former Chilean President Ricardo Lagos. "A policy shift on Cuba, which carries great symbolic weight in the region, would be a powerful signal that Washington will be more responsive to Latin America views."

While the IAD report was directed primarily at Obama, majorities in Congress supported increased ties with Havana over the past eight years but were consistently thwarted by Bush's veto threats.

It is in that context that Congress approved the three Cuba-related provisions.

Two of the three are mainly symbolic. Thus, Cuban-Americans will still be permitted to visit their families once every three years, but the Treasury Department, which is charged with enforcing the embargo, will not be permitted to prosecute those who wish to travel more often, because no funds will be appropriated for that purpose.

Similarly, U.S. food and medical companies that export goods to Cuba will still be required under law to receive payment in cash before their shipments leave U.S. ports. But, under the new provision, Treasury will not be able to prosecute companies that receive cash on actual delivery.

The third provision – permitting Treasury to issue a general license for agricultural and medical businesses wishing to export goods to Cuba rather than forcing companies to approve requests on a case-by-case basis – does mark a real change in the underlying law, according to Jake Colvin, vice president of the National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC), an association of major U.S. multinational corporations which strongly supports lifting the embargo.

"This will make travel to Cuba for a whole class of businesspeople much easier, and it will take the burden off Treasury to go through these applications so it can focus more on tracking al Qaeda and other more serious transactions," he told IPS.

All of the anti-embargo groups, including the NFTC's Colvin, said the fact that Congress took the first step toward easing the embargo should make it easier for Obama himself to go beyond his campaign promises to ease restrictions on Cuban-American travel and remittances.

"This debate shows how significantly the U.S. political climate has changed on Cuba," said Sarah Stephens, CDA's director. "I believe there is momentum in Congress to make travel available for all, but the president need not wait for legislation to seize the initiative," she said.

*Jim Lobe's blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/.

Excerpt:

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 4 2008 (IPS)

When the United Nations talks of "Israeli-occupied territories", the conventional definition is that these disputed lands include the West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights – all of them annexed after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

PTAB submunitions piled up near Bagram, Afghanistan 2002. Part of a munition dump containing 60,000 tonnes of unexploded ordnance. Credit: John Rodsted

For all intents and purposes, says one Arab diplomat stretching the U.N. definition further, these heavily-mined border villages are also "Israeli-occupied territories".

"The devastating military legacy left behind by Israel lives on in these Lebanese villages, parts of which remain uninhabitable because of cluster munitions and unexploded ordnance," he adds.

But he is not sure how a new treaty banning cluster bombs, which was signed by 94 nations in the Norwegian capital of Oslo on Thursday, will help resolve the problem of "occupied territories" inside Lebanon.

The United Nations says that "millions" of cluster munitions – in which hundreds of small 'bomblets' are packed together – were dropped on more than 48 million square metres of Lebanese territory in July and August 2006, killing and injuring over 300 civilians.

And hundreds of thousands of munitions failed to explode on impact and remained on the ground, on rooftops, and in agricultural areas, killing mostly civilians.

In Laos, clearance operations have been going on for over 30 years after a conflict there left 75 million unexploded cluster bomblets strewn across the country, according to the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP).

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that exactly 11 years ago, governments, international organisations, parliamentarians and civil society gathered for the historic signing of the landmine convention which banned those anti-personnel weapons.

"That treaty added a new chapter to international humanitarian law, disarmament and non-proliferation, and is a prime example of how a shared sense of conviction and determination can translate into concrete measures that save lives and livelihoods," he said in a statement read at the signing ceremony by Sergio Duarte, the U.N. High Representative for Disarmament Affairs.

He said the new Convention on Cluster Munitions will not only prohibit the future use and proliferation of cluster weapons but also promote their very obsolescence.

"Moreover, the Convention's far reaching provisions on victim assistance and clearance will improve the lives of survivors, families and communities that have been affected by cluster munitions," he added.

The signing of the CCM is also a historic victory for the progressive governments and non- governmental organisations (NGOs) that made it happen, says William D. Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the Washington-based New America Foundation.

"While there is still much work to do – like getting major players like the United States, Russia and China on board – the treaty sets a norm against selling or using these weapons that will be hard to roll back," he said.

But it is a hopeful sign, Hartung told IPS, "that President-elect Barack Obama has agreed to reconsider current U.S. policy with an eye towards possibly joining the cluster bomb ban."

"And even short of signing on, there is much that the United States can do, from stopping exports, to curbing their use, to spending more to help clean up unexploded 'bomblets' that could approach de facto support for the ban," he said.

The most important thing now is for activists and political leaders to view this as an historic first step that will be followed by vigorous efforts to get the major powers on board, Hartung added.

The CCM was adopted by 107 countries at a conference in Dublin, Ireland, in May this year, and comes into force six months after 30 states ratify it. The legally-binding treaty prohibits the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of cluster munitions.

According to the United Nations, at least 15 countries, and a number of non-state actors, mostly military groups, have used cluster munitions in at least 32 countries or territories. A total of 34 countries have produced more than 200 types of cluster munitions while billions of these are said to be stockpiled in 75 countries.

Jayantha Dhanapala, a former U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs, told IPS that the signing of the Convention by so many states eliminates an entire category of weapons and "is another major triumph for disarmament achieved through a unique coalition of civil society groups and nation states".

"It is an indictment of the established framework for the negotiation of international disarmament treaties and on the major powers whose obstructionism has failed to stop the powerful groundswell of international public opinion," he added.

"We have more mountains to climb especially with regard to the elimination of nuclear weapons and this victory, which includes victim assistance as an important element, should be an encouragement," added Dhanapala.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 25 2008 (IPS)

As the European Union launches a probe into the conflict between Georgian and Russian troops in the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia last August – with much of the blame now being cast on Georgia for firing the first shots – thousands of civilians remain displaced and homeless at the start of winter.

UNHCR distributes aid to displaced families. Credit: UNHCR/Y. Mechitov/August 2008

Most of those who fled the bombing and shelling have returned to the “buffer zone” – the area adjacent to South Ossetia’s administrative border – but their living conditions are inadequate to endure sub-zero temperatures.

“The humanitarian crisis and essential needs remain very grave,” Giorgi Gogia, Caucasus researcher for Human Rights Watch (HRW) in Tbilisi, told IPS.

In a Nov. 18 report, Amnesty International expressed similar concerns about “the speed with which badly damaged houses can be made sufficiently habitable as winter approaches.”

An estimated 35,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) are living in collective centres run by the Georgian government. UNHCR expects more people to seek emergency shelter because “they ran out of resources, they can no longer afford to rent a place,” said Mahecic.

Human rights groups have called the Georgian government to take greater responsibility for the returnees’ well-being – something officials say they are already doing.

“The Georgian government is now putting together a strong package of support, building shelters for the winter, to be prepared. We hope we will have sustained and continuous support,” Irakli Alasania, Georgia’s ambassador to the United Nations, told IPS.

As temperatures plunge, UNHCR has launched a “winterisation programme” that includes distributing firewood and warm bedding. The agency is also working to repair damaged houses before winter, said Mahecic.

Food supplies are another critical issue, as many of the returnees are small farmers who are now unable to support their families.

“Most of the harvest had been lost when the territory was under Russian occupation. People won’t be able to collect their harvest,” Gogia said. “Since they were not able to collect the harvest, whatever kind of crops they collect, it must be enough for the fall -but in winter the need will increase.”

The security situation remains precarious, with HRW reporting recent incidents in territories adjacent to the administrative border. These areas are “pretty much no-man’s lands and people cannot go back,” said Gogia.

“The security situation along the de facto border dividing South Ossetia from the rest of Georgia remains extremely tense. Up to 25,000 ethnic Georgians continue to be unable to return to their homes in South Ossetia,” said Amnesty International.

“Some 10,000 seeking to return to homes in the former ‘buffer zone’ have been prevented from doing so on account of reported lawlessness and pillaging by militias loyal to South Ossetia” said Amnesty.

On Aug. 8, Georgian troops tried to take control of the Georgian breakaway region of South Ossetia, de facto independent since 1992, by engaging in heavy fighting in the regional capital Tskhinvali.

Russia, officially in South Ossetian territory on a peacekeeping mission, responded by launching an extensive military operation in South Ossetia and beyond. The armed clashes, which claimed mainly civilian lives, came to an end on Aug. 12, after peace brokering efforts by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose country currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU.

For the 25,000 ethnic Georgians who fled South Ossetia, “the right to safe and dignified return is still to be recognised and guaranteed”, Gogia stressed.

The majority of ethnic Georgians ran away from their villages in August after being threatened or attacked by South Ossetia militiamen who looted and burnt their houses, rights groups say.

Out of the 35,000 people who fled to North Ossetia, 2,000 remain in the Russian Federation, according to Amnesty International.

Although the Russian Foreign Ministry has said the return of displaced persons is a priority, “it’s not yet clear what is being done to implement this right and to return the displaced,” said Gogia.

“Georgia has made significant efforts to build temporary family houses. However, humanitarian needs still persist because these shelters are not enough,” he said.

Of the estimated 192,000 IDPs registered by the Georgian government in August, 80,000 have returned home, Andrej Mahecic told IPS.

UNHCR has also begun to convert unused public building into housing for the 20,000 long-term displaced.

However, UNHCR is still waiting for donors to meet the pledging request of 44.5 million dollars it made in the aftermath of the war to reach its humanitarian objectives. So far, it has received only about a third of the funds.

“We need urgently the funds for the newly displaced population in order to cover protection needs and other assistance programmes,” said Mahecic.

According to Amnesty and other rights groups, another problem is cluster bombs, which were deployed by both Georgia and Russia, resulting in numerous civilian casualties and the contamination of large areas of land with unexploded ordnance.

“Many of the [displaced farmers], after returning, could not collect their harvest because their fields were contaminated by clusters bombs posed by both Georgian and Russian troops,” Gogia said.

These unexploded ordnances are still causing civilian and official casualties. Two policemen were killed by a mine explosion in Nov. 10, according to the Georgian government.

A Convention on Cluster Munitions was adopted by 107 countries in May 2008. Neither Russia nor Georgia signed it.

Humanitarian groups are calling for a broad clearance of all unexploded munitions in the conflict areas.

Meanwhile, both sides are claiming that the provision of humanitarian relief is being hindered by border authorities.

Gogia said that Georgia recently decreed that any goods crossing from North Ossetia to South Ossetia from the Russian side are illegal. He added that Russia and South Ossetia are preventing aid from going into Georgia proper.

“We expect all the parties to honour their commitment. All people of all ethnic origins should have the possibility to return in safety and dignity,” added Mahecic.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
TOKYO, Jun 8 2008 (IPS)

A dramatic decision to join a ban on most types of inhumane weapons was announced by Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda at an international conference attended by 110 nations in Dublin at the end of May. On the last day of the conference, the Japanese government, which had wavered, said it would support the ban.

Jeffrey Kingston, director of Asian Studies at Temple University in Tokyo. Credit: Temple University

Japan had earlier asserted the world must reach a balance between security and humanitarian concerns. The Ministry of Defence and the Self-Defence Forces supported the use of cluster bombs, because they were a useful deterrent against the enemy. However, Fukuda waved aside these arguments and chose to support the treaty.

The only thing that held Japan back was how the treaty might affect military cooperation with the U.S. Japanese political leaders did not want it to result in the U.S. abandoning them.

India, Israel, Pakistan, Russia and the U.S. did not attend the 12 days of negotiations in Dublin.

"Tokyo reversed its stance opposing the treaty because it permits signatory countries to maintain military cooperation with non-member nations," said Jeffrey Kingston, director of Asian Studies at Temple University in Tokyo. As the U.S. has not signed, this is a crucial provision that helped get Japan aboard. The other crucial provision is that the treaty excludes new, high- performance cluster bombs that are believed to have a low probability of remaining unexploded."

One of the reasons nations got together to sign this treaty is that cluster bombs release thousands of shiny bomblets – many of which do not explode – and children around the world have been maimed and killed having picked-up these ticking time bombs.

"Fukuda supported the ban because it was the right thing to do and he could do so with broad domestic political support, something he has not seen much of during his tenure," Kingston told IPS. His cabinet support rate is a dismal 28 percent, the lowest level since the start of his administration last September.

Japan has indicated that it will replace its existing stockpile with the new advanced versions, so this is not a total victory for the ban movement.

"Certainly a treaty signed by 110 nations will up the ante on cluster bomb producing and using nations, but I do not think it likely will significantly modify their stance to embrace the ban," Kingston told IPS.

It stands to reason that the non-signatory nations are all in the process of modernising their stockpiles and will rely more on the high performance cluster bombs that are less likely to have an adverse impact on civilian populations in war’s aftermath, according to Kingston. "However, many less developed nations with fewer resources will continue to use the older versions and this is a tragedy for everyone."

Japan’s constitution prevents the nation from waging aggressive wars and cluster bombs are aggressive weapons dropped over an adversary’s territory, according to Andrew Horvat, a well-known academic and former representative of the Asia Foundation. Since the end of WWII, successive Japanese governments have attempted with varying degrees of success to project an image of Japan as a "nation of peace."

Supporting the anti-cluster bomb treaty goes along with such past and present policy. Japan supported the ban on land mines in 1997. The country hesitated to sign the treaty because it considered land mines a necessary part of its ammunitions. Keizo Obuchi, who was the foreign minister at the time, said the treaty was necessary and the government finally agreed. As a result, Japan then put forward a plan to support land-mine victims and was praised internationally.

"Moreover, since it is the U.S. on which Japan relies for its security, it can let the U.S. worry about whether such a treaty is realistic or helpful or playing to the grandstands," Horvat says.

Japanese political leaders are always struggling to maintain a relationship with the U.S. that neither entraps Japan into wars the nation does not wish to support, nor results in the U.S. abandoning Japan, he noted.

Weston Konishi, Hitachi international affairs fellow at the council on Foreign Relations, believes there is little Tokyo can do to pressure Washington – or Beijing and Moscow for that matter – to sign onto the treaty.

The bottom line is that political leaders probably felt that Japan’s support of the ban on such weapons did not carry risk of U.S. abandonment of the country. At the same time, the vote for banning cluster bombs gave the government the opportunity to turn toward its detractors – those who would say that Japan is a U.S. lackey – and say that in fact Japan is reasonably independent of the U.S, Horvat explained to IPS.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
DUBLIN, Jun 3 2008 (IPS)

Irish diplomats won plenty of kudos from governments across the world over the past week for brokering a ban on cluster bombs during an international conference in Dublin. It may seem ironic, then, that despite having a decades-old tradition of military neutrality, Ireland has deepened its involvement in the arms trade in recent years.

Two years ago, Michael Ahern, then the country's minister for commerce, claimed that "Ireland does not have an arms trade nor do we wish to promote one." A 2007 report by Amnesty International suggests otherwise. It cited estimates that the value of export licences issued by Ireland for goods with a military application rose from 1.3 billion euros (2 billion dollars) in 2004 to 2.4 billion euros in 2006.

Among the components for military goods manufactured by Data Device Corporation in the southern city of Cork are electronic devices fitted into Apache helicopters. Boeing, the U.S. firm that makes Apaches, has sold the helicopters to Israel, which used them during its 2006 attacks on Lebanon. Apaches are also known to have been used for carrying cluster bombs.

"We are in the arms trade and there's no trade lower than that," said Dennis Halliday, an Irish anti-war campaigner who served as assistant secretary-general of the United Nations in the 1990s.

Because of the requirements of its national constitution, Ireland is alone among the European Union's 27 countries to call a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, which the bloc's presidents and prime ministers signed in the Portuguese capital last year. The Irish poll will take place Jun. 12.

Some campaigners against the treaty are perturbed by how it effectively obliges Ireland to become even more entangled in the defence industry than it now is.

The treaty says that EU governments "shall undertake progressively to improve their military capabilities." And it empowers the Brussels-based European Defence Agency to undertake "any measure" it deems necessary to "strengthen the industrial and technological base" of Europe's arms industry.

Alexander Weiss, the EDA's director, denied last month that his agency is seeking to militarise the European Union. "We do not militarise the European Union, we are just enhancing the military capabilities of EU member states' armed forces," he said.

Opponents of the treaty say, however, that the clauses relating to the EDA are virtually identical to those proposed by arms manufacturers who lobbied the convention chaired by Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the former French president. His body drew up a proposed EU constitution, about 90 percent of which is contained in the Lisbon treaty.

Patricia McKenna, chairwoman of the People's Movement against the treaty, said the provisions allow arms companies to determine the EU's policies on defence procurement. "This is like asking the pharmaceutical industry to tell doctors what to write on their prescriptions," added McKenna, a former member of the European Parliament.

Even though Ireland is not a full member of a formal military alliance such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), it has been actively participating in the EDA's activities. Admissions by the Dublin government that representatives of Enterprise Ireland, the state's industrial development body, have taken part in EDA meetings have fuelled suspicion that firms based in Ireland are eager to win lucrative defence contracts.

The EDA has been actively promoting higher defence expenditure in Europe. In a 2006 'vision paper' it argued that EU governments "must take to heart" how the U.S. is outspending them on weapons.

Willie O'Dea, Ireland's defence minister, claimed recently that the proportion of national income spent on the military shrank from 4 percent at the beginning of this century to 1.8 percent today. Nonetheless, he acknowledged that defence expenditure is to rise under a commitment contained in the programme for government agreed last year between the ruling coalition of Fianna Fáil, a centrist party with roots in the country's struggle for independence from Britain, and the smaller Green Party.

Ireland's military spending is more than three times what the country, still known as the Celtic Tiger because of its robust economic growth since the 1990s, allocates in development aid to the world's poor.

Andy Storey, a lecturer in development studies at the University College Dublin and a board member of the international justice campaign group Action from Ireland, said that at the very least the treaty exhorts EU countries to further increase their defence budgets. It is instructive, Storey added, that while Lisbon mandates countries to boost their military capabilities, "the treaty makes no such reference to improving, say, educational or healthcare capabilities."

The provisions on military expenditure, he said, "constitute a further advance towards the militarisation of the EU."

While the government argues that Irish neutrality will be unaffected by the treaty, Storey countered: "The EU is already to some extent militarised. Under this treaty, it is adding new powers and resources to its military wing."

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
DUBLIN, May 30 2008 (IPS)

Cluster bombs should be outlawed in most of the world thanks to an agreement formally endorsed by over 100 governments in Dublin May 30.

The accord, which prohibits the use of cluster bombs and requires the destruction of stockpiles retained in arsenals within eight years, was reached despite intense opposition from the U.S., the world's top user of the weapon. Cluster bombs, in which hundreds of small bomblets are bound together, are known to slice limbs off the bodies of victims.

Although the U.S. government did not formally participate in the talks that led to the agreement, it has admitted lobbying 114 diplomats who did, in an effort to have the text watered down. U.S. President George W. Bush is believed to have personally telephoned some of those involved to make his case.

Mark Hiznay, an arms trade specialist with Human Rights Watch, said that despite the intense pressure exerted by Washington, the final agreement is "very strong." Campaigners are hoping that the accord will have a similar effect to the international landmine treaty that entered into force nine years ago. Today, Burma is believed to be the only country that still uses landmines.

"The writing is on the wall for the countries that aren't here," Hiznay told IPS. "It will become infinitely harder to use cluster munitions now."

The key sticking point in the negotiations related to whether signatories to the accord could participate in joint military operations with countries that continue to use cluster bombs.

Britain successfully lobbied for the inclusion of a clause that would allow it to fight alongside the U.S. in wars. A British diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that it sought this provision in order to "legally protect our servicemen; that was our chief concern."

Some campaigners alleged that Britain acted as a proxy for the U.S. in Dublin. Jody Williams, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, said: "How can the British government say with a straight face it is banning these munitions while at the same time vigorously promoting language allowing British soldiers to plan and execute operations where, in effect, they would be using U.S. cluster bombs?"

Others, however, applauded Britain for supporting the agreement.

Dennis Halliday, a former assistant secretary-general of the United Nations, said that Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, had proven that he could take foreign policy decisions of which the U.S. disapproves. "Gordon Brown has rejected the poodle image (of Britain towards the U.S.) and brought the United Kingdom fully behind the ban," Halliday, now an anti-war activist, added.

At least 13,000 deaths and injuries have been attributed to cluster bombs, which were first used in modern battle by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during the Second World War.

After men, who often happen across unexploded devices while undertaking farm-work, children are the population group most likely to be hurt or killed by cluster bombs.

Umarbek Pulodov was six years of age in 1992 when cluster bombs were dropped on his family's home in Shul, a village in Tajikistan. His brother and uncle were killed in the raid, while Pulodov himself was left almost blinded in one eye. He was hospitalised for a year as a result.

Children, he said, are especially vulnerable to cluster bombs because the bombs "look like toys."

The most recent large-scale usage of cluster bombs occurred during Israel's attacks on Lebanon in 2006.

During the last 72 hours of the conflict that raged in July and August of that year, Israel fired over 1,800 cluster rockets containing 1.2 million submunitions. For the two months after the official cessation of hostilities, casualties were still being recorded at the rate of three or four people killed or maimed per day.

Israel, both a manufacturer and user of cluster bombs, is among the states opposed to an international ban. Other key military powers with a similar position include Russia, China, India and Pakistan.

The Lebanon example illustrated how cluster bombs can have adverse consequences for both lives and livelihoods. Some 70 percent of families in southern Lebanon rely on agriculture as their main source of income. All of the main crops grown in the region – olives, bananas, citrus fruits, tobacco and wheat – could not be harvested as normal because the land on which they were grown were contaminated by cluster bombs.

Justin Kilcullen, director of the Irish anti-poverty group Trócaire, said that the use of cluster bombs has hurt many countries' efforts to develop their economies.

As an aid worker based in Laos, Kilcullen witnessed the ongoing effects of cluster bombs that were dropped on the south-east Asian country 30 years ago. "To this day people are still being killed and maimed," he said.

The accord reached in Dublin will be formally declared open for signature at a ceremony scheduled to take place in Oslo in December.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
UNITED NATIONS, May 28 2008 (IPS)

After more than a year of contentious negotiations, diplomats from 109 countries meeting in Dublin agreed Wednesday on a treaty that would outlaw the use, production, transfer, and stockpiling of cluster munitions, which have killed and injured thousands of civilians over the last four decades.

PTAB submunitions piled up near Bagram, Afghanistan in 2002, part of a munitions dump holding 60,000 tonnes of unexploded ordnance. Credit: John Rodsted

Six of the world's leading users and producers – Russia, China, the United States, Israel, India and Pakistan – did not attend the conference, and have said they would not sign any ban.

However, on Wednesday, in an unexpected reversal of its earlier position, Britain agreed to almost every provision in the treaty. "We have decided we will take all our types of cluster bombs out of service," British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said in London.

Human rights groups complained during the Dublin meeting that Washington had been pressuring its allies and lobbying hard behind the scenes to weaken any deal. U.S. officials have argued that a ban on clusters would prevent it from participating in humanitarian operations, because U.S. military ships carrying such munitions would be barred from the ports of countries that signed the treaty.

However, Human Rights Watch (HRW) notes that identical provisions in the treaty to ban landmines have had no such effect in the 11 years since it went into effect.

"In the end, the Americans had very little support in Dublin," said Steve Goose, arms director at HRW. "It's a big defeat for the Bush administration. This conference is going to produce a strong treaty banning cluster munitions, and there's nothing the White House can do to stop it."

Experts at HRW believe that the treaty will require the United States to remove its stockpiles of cluster munitions at several military bases around the world, a measure that Washington had strongly opposed.

According to the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC), a global network of over 250 civil society organisations from 70 different countries, cluster bombs kill and injure civilians long after a conflict has ended. One-third of all recorded casualties are children.

The weapons are designed to break open in mid-air, releasing dozens or hundreds of explosive submunitions. Their widespread dispersal makes distinguishing between military personal targets and civilians virtually impossible. Because many of the submunitions fail to explode, large numbers remain on the ground, acting as de facto landmines up to a decade after their discharge.

The CMC says that cluster munitions caused more civilian causalities in Iraq in 2003 and Kosovo in 1999 than any other weapon system. Afghanistan, Laos, Lebanon and Vietnam have also lost thousands of civilians to cluster bombs.

"We think this [treaty] will make a huge difference to people around the world and it will save many lives and limbs," said Simon Conway, CMC co-chair. "We got a very strong treaty."

The treaty process officially began in February 2007 when nations met in Oslo, Norway to draft a legally binding instrument that would ban the use of cluster munitions that cause "unacceptable harm to civilians".

The final text will be formally approved on Friday, but it remains to be seen whether key countries will come on board.

At a May 21 briefing, Stephen Mull, acting assistant secretary for political-military affairs at the U.S. State Department, insisted that the international effort is ultimately flawed because the major producers and users of cluster munitions are not going to be participating in the process.

Mull insisted that U.S. military planners are determined that cluster munitions are necessary to protect U.S. interests, and these weapons are not "something that [they're] not going to unilaterally get rid of."

However, domestic pressure has led to an unofficial moratorium on cluster munitions transfers to other countries. Under the Foreign Operations Act of 2008, cluster munitions with less than a 99 percent reliability rate may not be exported from the United States. Since technology is not yet capable of creating a cluster bomb that has a 99 percent reliability rate, the U.S is not producing new cluster munitions and sales have reached a standstill.

Marc Garlasco, a senior military analyst for Human Rights Watch who closely followed the Dublin negotiations, is optimistic that these weapons eventually will be phased out.

"There are a number of reasons why the United States is not involved in the treaty right now. The first, clearly, is that the Bush administration is a non-internationalist institution – they don't like to get involved in treaties," he told IPS.

"More importantly though, the United States has shown historically that they are very happy and willing to use cluster munitions," Garlasco said. "[But] if we can get [so many nations] on board to a very strong treaty, we will stigmatise the weapon to a point where it can never again be used."

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
NEW YORK, May 14 2008 (IPS)

On this 40th anniversary of 1968, the year that for the United States was the apogee of opposition to the war in Vietnam, two new Off Broadway plays explore divergent ways that U.S. citizens protested – and ponder the best way to contest a senseless war.

D.B. Woodside and John Cullum in "The Conscientious Objector". Credit: Theresa Squire

The gripping play about King, almost a docudrama as intensely directed by Carl Forsman, is more fascinating for bringing to light facts about the time that most people may not know – for example, that King's wife Coretta urged him to oppose the war. And that he met with then President Lyndon Johnson, who proposed to negotiate civil rights legislation in return for King's support.

The play begins in 1965, after King (D.B. Woodside) in his Nobel Peace Prize speech condemns Western nations for being "sick with militarism" and driven by racism, greed and reckless disregard for the misery that war produces. He continued to insist: "We're not gonna defeat Communism 'with bombs'."

Johnson (John Cullum) has gotten the civil rights act passed and is moving on voting rights. When King meets with him, Johnson declares, "You and me, we got pots boilin' on every burner, and I'm just, I gotta wonder why you're wantin' to divert attention to matters'a foreign policy and kick up a lotta dust and dirt that's just gonna get in our way?"

Johnson wants to trade an open housing bill for King's support of Gen. William Westmoreland's move into South Vietnam. King won't make the deal. Whitney Young (Harold Surratt), head of the cautious National Urban League, attacks him: "We cannot more strongly state our opposition to Dr. King's activities. Our major drive is for the enjoyment of civil rights by the Negro citizens of this country… We in the movement can't be dividing our energies… Not with the Vietnam we're fightin' right here in Georgia and Mississippi and Alabama!"

King's southern colleague Rev. Ralph Abernathy (Bryan Hicks) is sympathetic to Johnson: "Now you wanna make things even more difficult for him on an issue that's got nothin' to do with civil rights? That's how you're gonna repay him?"

Andrew Young (James Miles), then King's aide, later President Jimmy Carter's U.N. ambassador and mayor of Atlanta, speaks against anti-war declarations: "President Kennedy made speeches, but couldn't get anything through Congress. Johnson can."

On the other side are Coretta King (Rachel Leslie) and the radical anti-war minister, James Bevel (Jimonn Cole), who helps organise the "Spring Mobe", a mobilisation against the U.S. invasion.

Bevel says, "You like to talk about justice, Martin Luther King… but you can't talk about justice and not talk about this immoral war!" He reads him gruesome words: "Napalm has proven so effective against the Vietnamese that it has given rise to a popular marchin' song among our soldiers… 'Napalm, son, is lots of fun/Dropped in a bomb or shot from a gun/It gets the gooks when on the run/Napalm sticks to kids.' God, that's disgusting!"

King decides to send appeals to the Vietcong, the Saigon government, the leaders of Communist China and the Soviet Union, and President Johnson to end the war. He declares, "We'll have to stop proppin' up dictators who abuse their people. We'll have to stop exploitin' poor countries for their natural resources and never puttin' anything back."

"How can I be demandin' non-violence from Negroes in our cities here at home, then be standin' by while this country unleashes the forces of hell on the rest'a the world. Here's what I'm plannin' to do. I plan to ask every young man in this country who believes as I do that this war is wrong and immoral to go down to his Selective Service office and register as a conscientious objector."

That call, at New York's Riverside Church, evokes attacks from the mainstream media and politicians.

The New York Times: "Dr. King's outrageous characterisations do not justify what must be seen as slander against this nation."

The Washington Post: "Dr. King's Vietnam speech was not a sober or responsible comment on the war. He has done grave injury to his people and diminished his usefulness to his cause. It is a great tragedy."

Congressman John Ashbrook of Ohio accuses him of treason.

That riveting script eerily foretells the lack of vision and courage by politicians and the press who decades later confronted the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq.

The other play, "Something You Did", directed by Carolyn Cantor, deals with activists whose philosophy was quite opposite from King's, who sought to "bring the war home" by bringing home its violence. It is, however, of less interest, because it focuses too little on the issues that led to the killing for which Alison Mouton (Joanna Gleason) is imprisoned, and largely on her attempt to get paroled.

The rough model for Alison is Kathy Boudin, of the Weather Underground, which called itself a "fifth column" of the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army. It bombed the Pentagon, the U.S. Capitol, the New York Police Benevolent Association, the New York Board of Corrections, and offices of multinational companies. Boudin went to prison in 1984 for involvement in a Brinks armoured car robbery that left three workers dead. She was paroled, after 22 years, in 2003; her cohorts are still in prison.

Like King, the character Alison's political education was honed in the civil rights movement. A white woman, she says, "I took a Greyhound to McComb, Mississippi. In 1964… By the time I got off, three workers had already gone missing…I was threatened, taunted, spat on. And then I went out to register voters even after those workers turned up dead."

But she didn't stay with nonviolence. Alison explains, "We turned to armed struggle as a last resort…Our military was using cluster bombs…We wanted to show what a cluster bomb can do." She and others of the group set off a nail-filled bomb in Grand Central Station that killed a policeman who happened on the scene.

Alison tells the parole board that her group had been plastering walls with posters of the results of a 500-pound cluster bomb on a village in Cambodia. "And in this picture is a woman – the torso of a woman. Her right arm is missing below the elbow and I want to think of her as Venus, the Cambodian goddess of love. I love her, just as I love the soldiers who are suffering needlessly in the jungles of Vietnam…And the poster is a failure. It reaches no one…And so, out of love for this woman, for mankind, we bring the war home."

For all her dedication to civil rights, Alison's bomb ironically kills a black policeman struggling to raise a daughter alone.

In the movement against the latest U.S. war, King's model has won.

*Lucy Komisar's website is http://thekomisarscoop.com/

Excerpt:

By Mona Alami
BEIRUT, Mar 4 2008 (IPS)

Over the years, Lebanese children have faced war and bombings enough to make violence a staple in their lives. With the situation becoming increasingly volatile as Lebanese factions are gripped by a lasting and deadly discord, this vulnerable population is left at greater risk.

A teenager living by the Nahr El-Bared refugee camp Credit: Mona Alami

"I lost my daughter, brother and sister in the Qana 2006 massacres (that saw the death of nine adults and 16 children)," says Mahmoud Chalhoub, a survivor of the bombings. "My son was left for dead and surrounded by corpses on the upper floor of a house in the village, which was targeted by the Israelis all night. He told us he had tried in vain to wake up his dead friend so that he could play with her."

Soha Bsat, communication officer for UNICEF, says around one-third of the Lebanese population was displaced during the conflict that pitted Israel against Hezbollah. Many of the displaced were children. Nearly two years after the war, many families are still unable to return to their homes.

"Besides the obvious distress children might have experienced when dealing with the traumatic death of a loved one, they also had to cope with an enormous change in lifestyle and environment," says Maha Damaj, child protection officer at UNICEF.

In the village of Tayri, Abbas survived the bombing of a civilian bus by an Israeli military drone aircraft, known in Lebanon as an MK. The 10-year-old was waving his white shirt from the window, using it as a flag for safe passage when the bus was hit by a rocket that left his mother with severe injuries. "He runs for cover whenever he hears the humming of a jet plane in the distance," says his aunt, Ibtissam Cheito, as Abbas hides behind the family car.

Other repercussions of the war are increased acts of violence children face from one or both parents, and that often results from extreme poverty. Children, mostly boys, are also often forced to abandon school to help support the family financially. "One has to keep in mind that displaced families will incur more expenses than if they were living in their natural environment, which puts more pressure on children to contribute. More than 70 percent of displaced children will not go back to their former life," says Damaj.

Besides having to deal with moving into a new home and starting a new school, children must also adapt to dangerous living conditions. "Since the summer of 2006, there have been around 298 victims of mines or cluster bombs, 76 of whom are children," says Damaj. "However, this figure is relatively low compared to the actual danger."

Children have been educated to identify and avoid possible threats, but teenagers remain at risk since they are more prone to defying authority, or try testing their limits. "Loss of limbs and concussions are common injuries," says Damaj. Children who are victims of cluster bombs or landmines are treated, but rarely attend follow-up sessions, leaving them in danger of never fully recovering.

Further aggravating the plight of Lebanon's children is the unstable political situation and the increased social polarisation along confessional lines. "Kids need stability and a routine," says Damaj. Strikes, booby trapped cars, and two wars – the 2006 July war as well as the Nahr El-Bared 2007 conflict that opposed the army to a terrorist group – have disturbed the lives of children, and have become a growing source of anxiety for them.

Sami Khodr, a handsome eight-year-old, was concerned about his mother when he learned she would attend the recent commemoration Feb. 14 for former prime minister Rafik Hariri. "What will I do if they place a bomb in the crowd? I will be left all alone! Who will I live with?" he asked. Such fears illustrate that children are indeed conscious of the instability plaguing the country.

"I forbid my son to watch the news to spare him images of violence," says Nibal Khodr. Damaj says the unstable Lebanese situation binds parents into an overprotective cycle, and shapes children's view of a world where violence is the norm. For Khodr, as a mother, surviving Lebanon has become a matter of "taking life one day at a time."

*This is the first of a two-part report on childhood in Lebanon.

Excerpt:

By Neena Bhandari
SYDNEY, Feb 20 2008 (IPS)

Six-year-old Umarvek Pulodov was playing in the dining room of his home in Shul village, Tajikistan, when a cluster bomb pierced through the roof, instantly killing his brother, cousin and another relative and severely injuring him, his sister and two younger brothers.

"I lost my right eye and the bomblet tore a huge chunk of flesh from my hand and back. I can still recall that fateful day of Feb. 23, 1992, when in a fraction of a second our entire lives were changed forever," Umarvek told IPS on the phone from New Zealand’s capital, Wellington.

More than 500 delegates from 120 countries are attending a conference in Wellington to draft an international treaty banning cluster bombs.

Umarvek, who is now studying at the Institute of Foreign Languages in the Tajikistan capital Dushanbe, told IPS: "I want governments to stop using, producing or stockpiling cluster bombs, which have been killing and maiming tens of thousands of civilians and harming children like me."

Housed like peas in a pod, cluster munitions open up mid-air to scatter bomblets over a wide area, sometimes the size of two to four football fields, making it far more lethal than anti-personnel landmines.

About 170 humanitarian and mine clearance specialists have joined government delegations in Wellington for the negotiations, which it’s hoped will result in the drafting of new International Humanitarian Law (IHL). Although IHL provides for the protection of civilians during conflict, the existing IHL is clearly insufficient in the case of cluster bombs.

Since landmines were banned by an international convention in 1997, cluster bombs have become the most dangerous conventional weapon. They were first used in World War II and have since been widely used in at least 24 countries, including Laos in the 1960s, Vietnam and Cambodia, Afghanistan, Africa, Kosovo and Iraq. In 2006 Israel was widely condemned for indiscriminate use of cluster bombs in its 34-day war against the Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Even as survivors and the anti-cluster munitions lobby groups plead with the international community to ban these most dangerous weapons, some arms-producing countries are trying to water down the final text of the treaty that would ban cluster bombs.

Absent from the conference are the United States and other major weapon-producing nations, including Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Israel.

Wheelchair bound survivor, Branislav Kapetanovic, has joined a thousand protesters outside the conference, sketching chalk outlines of their bodies to represent the growing human cost of cluster munitions.

The former Serbian deminer is hoping that recounting his experience will convince reluctant governments to sign on. "I lost both my arms and both my legs. Ibecame almost blind, both my ear drums have been pierced and I have blast injuries to my lungs and my head,’’ he was quoted as saying.

Nobel Peace Prize co-Laureate Rae McGrath chided Australia for "hypocrisy of the worst kind", by claiming the moral high ground while trading away the lives of victims.

After four days of negotiations, Australia has been added to a list of the nine worst countries in the process, well behind states like Mozambique, Chad and Sierra Leone.

Australia-based international aid and landmine assistance organisation, Austcare’s Mine Action Advisor James Turton says, "It’s clear that Australia has managed to isolate itself from most other countries involved in this process, we’re hearing from an increasing number of states they’re being very obstructionist."

"The position is very clear, Australia needs to just get onboard or go home basically," Turton adds.

The Cluster Munition Coalition Australia, formed on the eve of the Wellington conference, is an expert group of about 20 organisations that have united to support the Oslo Process.

Following the failure of the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) to agree to urgent action to address the humanitarian impact of cluster munitions in November 2006, the Norwegian government announced its intention to establish a new international process to develop a treaty to ban cluster bombs.

Participants in the process cover the five world regions and include 19 producer states, 7 states that have used cluster munitions, 34 stockpilers, and representatives from 11 states affected by the weapons. There are also 20 states not party to the CCW participating in the Oslo process making it a more open and globally representative forum for addressing this issue.

National coordinator of the Australian Network to Ban Landmines, Mark Zirnsak told IPS: "As a developed nation that adheres to International Humanitarian Law, Australia has a responsibility to lead this treaty process."

Nobel Peace laureate Jody Williams agrees. "You don’t have a mini George Bush government anymore, you have a new government that has a new position in the world now and you Australian citizens should ask your government to do the right thing in this negotiation."

Austcare’s Daniel Barty told IPS, "Many countries who have not signed the landmine ban treaty refrain from using them because of the stigma attached to landmines. We are hoping that countries like the U.S. and China will not use cluster munitions for the stigma attached and their negative impact on the population."

At least 76 countries have stockpiles of more than 210 different types of cluster bombs. Unexploded cluster sub-munitions pose a grave danger to civilian populations in more than 20 countries. Their failure rate is high, leaving thousands of unexploded bomblets on the ground for years after conflicts have ended, making inquisitive children frequent victims.

As New Zealand Disarmament and Defence Minister Phil Goff says, "The legacy of unexploded cluster munitions endangers civilian lives in the same way that landmines do and the problem needs to be dealt with in a similar manner."

Since February last year governments and NGOs from around the world have been engaged in developing a legally binding international instrument by the end of 2008 that amongst other things will: Prohibit the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians.

The Wellington conference continues until Friday, when each of the government delegations will be asked to sign the final draft of the treaty to be presented at the Dublin meeting scheduled from May 19 – 30.

Excerpt:

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Dec 21 2007 (IPS)

Human-rights and humanitarian groups are hailing provisions of a major appropriations bill approved by Congress this week that bans the export of most U.S.-made cluster bombs and U.S. military aid for foreign governments that use child soldiers.

The two provisions – which were tucked into a mammoth 560-billion-dollar 2008 omnibus spending bill – marked important victories for the groups, which have made both issues a major legislative priority.

On child soldiers, the bill provides that no military aid can be provided to governments whose "…armed forces or government supported armed groups, including paramilitaries, militias, or civil defence forces… recruit or use child soldiers."

Governments that could be denied aid under the bill include Colombia – which receives several hundred million dollars’ worth of U.S. military aid each year – Chad, Sri Lanka, Sudan, and Uganda, all of which have been accused by the most recent State Department annual human rights Country Reports of recruiting children as soldiers.

As for cluster bombs, the bill bans their transfer to any foreign nation unless they have at least a 99-percent reliability rate and the importing country has pledged in writing that it will not use the weapon in civilian areas.

This ban was prompted by Israel’s planting of hundreds of thousands of cluster munitions in populated areas of southern Lebanon in the last days of its 2006 war against Hezbollah. The U.N. denounced Israel’s action – which has reportedly caused more than 200 civilian casualties since the end of the war – as "completely immoral".

"An export moratorium is a good first step," said Lora Lumpe, coordinator of the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines and a lobbyist at the Friends Committee on National Legislation. "We will work in the coming year to make the export ban permanent and to prohibit the U.S. military’s use of cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians."

The omnibus bill, which covered everything from bridge repair to financing U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, was approved by both houses of Congress earlier this week and is expected to be signed by President George W. Bush within the next few days.

The bill, which extended a 1992 ban on the export of anti-personnel landmines through 2014, also provided nearly 80 million dollars for humanitarian de-mining programmes around the world and another four million dollars for projects to protect the rights of persons with disabilities resulting from landmines, cluster munitions and other weapons.

The ban on U.S. military aid to governments that use child soldiers could have its greatest impact on Colombia, which receives far more U.S. military aid than any other Latin American country. Worldwide, it is currently Washington’s sixth biggest recipient of military aid, behind Israel, Egypt, Pakistan, Jordan, and Afghanistan.

With such a large investment, the administration is likely to resist cutting off military aid to its closest ally in the Andean region. The provision’s wording offers two major loopholes.

Under its terms, the aid could go forward if the secretary of state certifies to Congress that the government "has implemented effective measures" to demobilise child soldiers from its ranks or from those of government- supported militias, and to prevent their future recruitment. In addition, the secretary of state may waive the ban if she determines that it is in the U.S. "national interest" to do so.

In the case of Colombia, President Alvaro Uribe, who has sought to demobilise all right-wing paramilitary groups, has vowed to eliminate the use of child soldiers. But, the problem persists, according to human-rights monitors.

Despite the loopholes, rights advocates say they see passage of the ban as an important step forward. "It certainly gives the U.S. another tool to fight the use of child soldiers around the world and it also gives the Pentagon and the State Department a greater stake in doing so," said Tom Malinowski, the head of the Washington office of Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Malinowski also praised the provision on exporting cluster munitions, saying that its language "reflects the growing consensus around the world that this weapon needs to be banned."

Indeed, passage of the legislation came just two weeks after representatives of 138 governments gathered in Vienna to work out a global treaty that – like a similar 1997 agreement, the so-called Ottawa Convention on anti- personnel land mines – would prohibit the production, stockpiling, export and use of cluster munitions.

The Bush administration has so far boycotted those negotiations, which are called the "Oslo Process" after the capital of Norway where the initiative was launched earlier this year.

"With this law, Congress helps move the U.S. closer to the position of most of its NATO partners and other U.S. allies," according to Ken Rutherford, co- founder of the Landmine Survivors Network.

The U.S. exports cluster bombs – munitions that, when exploded, saturate a specific target area with hundreds of sub-munitions, "bomblets" – to 28 countries, including Egypt, Indonesia, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, as well as Israel.

Washington has a stockpile of nearly one billion sub-munitions, according to HRW. One system widely used and exported by the U.S. is the M26 rocket, which is fired by the Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS). One MLRS volley launches 12 M26 rockets that eject nearly 8,000 sub-munitions over a 200 x 400 metre area in which any living thing exposed at the time of fire would almost certainly be killed or gravely wounded.

Moreover, the M26 rocket, like many other kinds of cluster munitions, has a failure rate of 16 percent. Thus, one volley could result in more than 1,000 "duds" or unexploded sub-munitions – which, due to their size and bright colouring, may be attractive to children – littering the area long after the volley has been fired or hostilities have ceased.

Such unexploded munitions have caused thousands of civilian casualties in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, Laos, Lebanon, and Vietnam, as well as southern Lebanon, in recent years.

"This law recognises the need to prevent cluster bombs from being used in civilian-populated areas," said Colby Goodman, who directs the Child Soldiers and Arms Transfers programme at the U.S. section of Amnesty International (AIUSA). "Congress has taken an important step to protect innocent lives and to demonstrate respect for international humanitarian law," according to AIUSA.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
TYRE, Lebanon, Dec 18 2007 (IPS)

Kamel Mohammed was pruning lemon trees last winter when his red electric saw detonated an unexploded cluster bomb, blasting shrapnel all over his body. After an operation to remove the metal shards from his chest, Mohammed, a 44-year-old father from the nearby Palestinian refugee camp of Rashidieh in south Lebanon, went straight back to work cultivating fields and chopping wood for coal.

Not so lucky was his neighbour and fellow family man, Ahmad Huwaidi, 36, killed instantly when the remaining explosives in an old metal rocket he was cutting to sell ignited from the heat. But this is family business now. Ahmad's older brother Salim says he has no choice but to continue selling scrap metal and labour in fields for about ten dollars a day – always looking out for unexploded ordnance, and detonating live munitions he finds in his path.

An unprecedented hundreds of thousands of cluster bombs were scattered throughout south Lebanon's rural towns, agricultural fields and valleys by Israel in the final days of last year's summer conflict. There have been 26 fatalities since the conflict's end, and 196 wounded.

"After the war stopped people here thought it was like the old days, that they could deal with the bombs and move them, that they could carry them safely," says Marwan Mansour, a Palestinian from Rashidieh working with Danish charity Dan Church Aid (DCA) in the camps to raise awareness about unexploded ordnance. "We have a number of casualties from here."

Cluster bomb strikes surround Rashidieh, 15 kilometres north of the Israeli border, between acres of lush citrus and banana plantations and the Mediterranean Sea. Isolated in squalid, overcrowded quarters due to a national construction ban, Palestinians chafe under harsh Lebanese laws that prohibit them from employment in over 70 professions, including strict restrictions driving taxicabs, which many labourers turned to after the cluster bombs fell.

Since heightened tensions triggered by the fighting between the Lebanese army and extremist group Fatah al-Islam in the northern Nahr el-Bared refugee camp last summer, the army has clamped down on Rashidieh's security checkpoint and perimeter. However, with the Fatah party in control, the poverty stricken camp remains one of Lebanon's calmest.

Many of Rashidieh's 25,000 residents – originally from the northern farming region of pre-1948 Palestine – grew up accustomed to seeing weapons on the streets, and suffered intense Israeli bombardment in 1982. This time the camp was mostly spared from bombing, and opened its doors as a safe haven for the hundreds of Shia refugees fleeing north and west from surrounding Lebanese villages.

Abu Ali Ahmad is a Rashidieh legend, having reportedly detonated thousands of cluster bombs single-handedly after the conflict ended in August 2006. He says he initially offered his services to landowners for free, wanting to help using his skills gained from experience in Palestinian training camps in the 1970s. When the overwhelming task inevitably became full-time, he and others from the camp were paid a few dollars for disarming each dangerous sub-munition.

But his efforts have been curbed after a controversial incident. Twelve-year-old Hammoudi Moussa's legs were torn off by a cluster bomb blast while riding a motorbike with his father Samir on the conflict's last weekend last year. Samir sayss they ran over the bomb while delivering food to a rural village, but many Rashidieh residents say he was transporting live cluster bombs.

Since then Tyre's Mine Action Coordination Centre – staffed by the Lebanese army and the United Nations – has clamped down on freelancers like Abu Ali Ahmad, and expanded operations for clearance by the army, charity organisations, commercial groups and UN peacekeepers with a goal to finish the job by December 2008.

The Lebanese army is also running a national awareness campaign, but since it is barred from entering the Palestinian camps, the DCA is charged with filling the gap. "Through interactive presentations we give the message – 'Don't touch, Don't approach, Report', says Noe Falk Nielson, DCA's energetic Mine Risk Education (MRE) coordinator in charge of three mixed Palestinian and Lebanese teams.

"We try and give the appropriate message to groups of people," Nielson says about the contrast of rural Rashidieh to Lebanon's largest camp outside Sidon, Ein el-Hilweh, whose 70,000 Palestinians are crowded into two square kilometres in impoverished conditions, with tense rival armed factions in their midst.

"The direct risk especially for kids in Ein el-Hilweh is the ammunition kind," says Nielson, whose team and school children months earlier were accidentally caught in the crossfire between militia Jund el-Sham and Fatah at the UNRWA school compound. "We are teaching about unexploded ordnance – which includes cluster bombs and landmines, and of course abandoned ammunition," he says.

"The thing about the Palestinian camps is you need them to trust the trainer," says Nielson. "People trust people they know from the community, it is important."

Hussein Charary, a soft-spoken MRE facilitator from Rashidieh, often warns audiences about his own experience. "After the fighting in 1982 we were playing with bullets and I was injured – as well as my friend. Bullets were all over the street," he says.

In anticipation of the Lebanese army's mandatory February deadline calling for international charities like DCA to transfer their MRE programs to national organisations – which leaves the Palestinian camps with none – some of Nielson's Palestinian team members have planned to launch the first Palestinian awareness group. Having met with army officials and DCA management to discuss viability and funding, they've decided to start their first year under the organisation's umbrella, and grow from there.

"The Palestinian camps need more MRE – especially the children," says team member Helana Abdullah. "There are bombs in the camps, and children don't know the dangers, and play with them. Also, children work with scrap metal – many work, we have child labour here – so they have to be aware." Her colleague Ahmad Hamid agrees, adding, "We have the experience and the network. And we can't just do an MRE visit once – we need to follow up."

As for the field labourers of Rashidieh who brave deadly munitions daily just to make a living, a localised MRE program would illustrate recognition of the critical dangers they face, and the resilience to work for a better life.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
WASHINGTON, Nov 8 2007 (IPS)

As anti-cluster bomb advocates rallied in 40 cities around the world on Monday as part of a Global Day of Action, the United States delegation to a U.N. conference in Geneva this week announced a reversal of its longstanding opposition to negotiations on cluster munitions.

A shepherd in southern Lebanon is brought to the hospital after losing a foot and some fingers in a cluster bomb accident. Credit: John Rodsted/Norwegian People's Aid

Yet the U.S. delegation did not clarify what its stance would be on restricting or banning the use of cluster munitions. "While we have taken no position yet as to the outcome of negotiations on this topic, we did determine that we should support the initiation of a negotiation on cluster munitions within the CCW framework," Bettauer said.

For the past 40 years, cluster bombs have killed and maimed thousands of civilians, as numerous bomblets from any wartime barrage of cluster bombs often remain unexploded for years, or even decades. In Laos, which was heavily bombed by the U.S. during the Vietnam War, 12,000 civilians have been killed or injured since the last bomb was dropped in 1973.

Only two percent of cluster bomb casualties worldwide are military personnel, according to a recent report by Handicap International. The other 98 percent are civilian victims.

Cluster bomblets' unique shape and colourful appearance also make them attractive to children.

In Lebanon, a target of cluster bombing during the Israeli-Hezbollah war of 2006, community workers have even created special games and activities to teach children about cluster bombs, said Bassam Chamoun, who directs cluster bomb awareness campaigns in southern Lebanon.

The U.S. delegation's call for negotiations at this week's CCW review conference lies in stark contrast with its role at the 2006 conference, where it was "the most steadfast opponent" of moving forward on the topic, according to Thomas Nash of the Cluster Munitions Coalition, a network of 200 civilian protection groups and a co-sponsor of the Global Day of Action.

Rights advocates note that the U.S.'s renewed interest in initiating negotiations within the CCW forum has emerged concurrently – but perhaps not coincidentally – with the growing momentum of a separate, parallel international negotiating track known as the Oslo Process.

In February 2007, representatives from 46 states gathered in Oslo for a summit on cluster bombs organised by the Norwegian government. Participating countries have met twice since then, in Brussels and Belgrade, and the number of governments committed to taking part in the Oslo Process to ban the production, stockpiling, and use of cluster munitions by the end of 2008 has risen to 84 – over one-third of the world's governments.

By opposing the Oslo Process, and instead underlining its commitment to the CCW, the U.S. "is trying to gain control of the situation again," according to Lora Lumpe of the Friends Committee on National Legislation.

Whereas the CCW forum is dominated by the U.S., China and Russia – all major producers of cluster munitions – many participants active in the Oslo Process are countries that have been bombed, such as Afghanistan, Lebanon, Serbia and Laos.

"The Oslo Process arose out of the frustration of many states that the CCW process was not addressing the humanitarian crisis presented by cluster munitions," said Ed Kenny, senior programme officer at Handicap International. "When you have a setup that requires consensus with superpowers, you keep hitting brick walls."

The U.S. is a major supplier of cluster munitions, with a stockpile of close to one billion bomblets.

Legislation pending in the U.S. Congress known as the "Cluster Munitions Civilian Protection Act of 2007" would prohibit the use, sale and transfer of U.S.-made cluster munitions with bomblets that have a failure rate of more than one percent. Current failure rates of cluster bombs from U.S. stockpiles – some of which date back to the Vietnam era – may be as high as 23 percent.

During Monday's Global Day of Action, the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines called for bipartisan support for the legislation at a rally on Capitol Hill featuring Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Jody Williams and Congressman Jim Moran.

Still, many advocates believe that the Oslo Process offers the most proactive approach to eliminating the use of cluster bombs and of protecting civilian lives, due to its roadmap.

The Oslo timeline for completing a treaty binding under international law has already been set. Representatives from participating countries will meet again next month in Vienna, the treaty will be developed at a conference in May 2008, and organisers hope to have it signed and completed by December 2008.

In contrast, a "mandate to negotiate" is the most forceful outcome that could be hoped for from the CCW review meeting this week, according to Kenny. This outcome, promoted by the U.S. delegation, in essence would mean agreeing to continue talks, albeit in a negotiations setting.

Unlike the CCW, which some advocates have described as using a "go-slow approach", "the Oslo Process is pretty much unstoppable," said Nash, speaking to IPS from Geneva. Indeed, for many participating governments and rights activists, U.S. opposition to the Oslo Process is no longer a concern.

"If you can manage to get most of the world on board with a norm – a basic moral practice – then you make it increasingly difficult for other countries not to adhere to it," Nash said. "If you create that standard, and it's strong enough, it quickly becomes the standard by which other countries will be judged."

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
BRUSSELS, Oct 29 2007 (IPS)

The U.S. is leading efforts to resist a complete ban on cluster bombs, human rights activists have complained.

But a conference called by European governments in Brussels Tuesday is regarded as a step towards an international agreement on eliminating cluster weapons – in which hundreds of small 'bomblets' are packed together.

Although an accord appears likely to be reached during 2008, activists are concerned over diplomatic manoeuvres by Washington to ensure that it will not be too stringent.

Representatives of the U.S., the world's number one user of cluster munitions, have been holding bilateral discussions with some European governments recently in a bid to water down any potential accord. The Bush administration has observer status at the Brussels conference, though it is a Europe-led initiative.

In February this year, a number of governments and humanitarian organisations joined forces in Oslo to urge that a legally binding international accord on banning these weapons should be finalised in 2008.

"Almost 90 countries have joined the Oslo process," said Stan Brabant from Handicap International, one of the groups most vociferous in opposing cluster bombs.

"We believe it is a very strong process, that it's unstoppable," he told IPS. "Have the U.S. efforts been successful? So far, not really. But we shall keep a very close eye on what they are doing."

Branislav Kapetanovic, a former member of the Serbian army, lost his arms and legs in an accident in November 2000 while he was trying to clear cluster bombs dropped by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) the previous year. His hearing was also damaged, and he was blinded for several months.

"These weapons are monstrous, and they cannot be controlled," he said. "A total ban is the only way to go. No exceptions, no excuses."

Cluster bombs were the focus of international attention again during the war in Lebanon last year. In the last 72 hours of that conflict, the Israeli defence forces used about four million cluster sub-munitions.

The weapon has a long history.

Cluster bombs were first used by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany during the Second World War. In the intervening six decades, they have been found in at least 25 countries.

Over these years, some 5,500 people are officially known to have been killed, and 7,300 maimed by these bombs. But the real death toll is believed to be considerably higher. Virtually all of the confirmed victims were civilians.

Because cluster bombs can lie undetected long after they have been discharged, they are known to continue killing even when a war is over.

In Iraq, a minimum of 50 million sub-munitions have been used in U.S.-led operations between 1991 and 2006. About 3,000 casualties have been identified because of these weapons.

Within Europe, Britain, Germany and France have sought that the future agreement should provide exceptions for their weapons.

Britain, which dropped 755 cluster bombs on Serbia in 1999, was condemned for its stance by members of the European Parliament (MEPs) last week when they approved a formal resolution calling for a total ban on cluster bombs.

"Diplomatic moves by the UK government and others to suggest there are 'dumb' and 'smart' cluster munitions must be given short shrift," said British Liberal MEP Liz Lynne. "They all kill and maim."

Belgium, Norway, Hungary and Austria, on the other hand, have all taken steps to eliminate cluster bombs by introducing moratoria or bans on them.

Mark Hiznay, a specialist in arms issues with Human Rights Watch, said that Russia has also been opposed to international prohibition. Russia has been accused of explicitly targeting civilians in the breakaway republic of Chechnya with cluster bombs.

"Russia has articulated the view that these weapons are critical for it, now that it has downsized the military," he said, adding that Russia has used cluster bombs "extensively both overseas – in Afghanistan – and on its own territory in Chechnya."

Hiznay said that cluster bombs are a relic of the Cold War, and Russia should deem them obsolete now that the Soviet Union has been dissolved. This view, he said, is widely shared by military officers.

When arguments are made in favour of cluster bombs, "the military is not able to keep a straight face," he said. "These weapons are 20 to 30 years old, so they would have to get rid of them anyway."

The bombs which Israel dropped on Lebanon last year were made in the 1970s, and their failure rate was "predictably high", Hiznay said.

In the month after the Aug. 14 2006 ceasefire in Lebanon, cluster bombs caused an average of three casualties each day. Two casualties were caused each day on average for the remainder of the year. Many of the victims were simply walking through their village.

Excerpt:

By Daniela Estrada
SANTIAGO, Oct 26 2007 (IPS)

After a seven year wait, community radio stations in Chile are celebrating a draft law that would regulate and promote their activities, which the government of President Michelle Bachelet has sent to Congress. But they remain aware of the hurdles that still lie ahead.

The draft law "was what we were longing for," Alberto Cancino, the head of the National Association of Community Radio Stations (ANARCICH), made up of 200 such broadcasters, told IPS.

Under the current law, the government may grant broadcasting concessions to two kinds of radio stations: commercial ones and "minimum coverage" or community stations.

At present, close to 400 community radio permits have been granted to cultural, sporting and neighbourhood centres, churches, universities, educational institutions, municipal governments and companies.

They are hampered by three problems: they have a maximum power of one watt, which limits their range to a two-block radius; the concessions are only for three years; and they are not allowed to broadcast advertising of any kind.

In 2000, ANARCICH approached the government of then President Ricardo Lagos (2000-2006), who belongs to the same centre-left Coalition for Democracy as Bachelet, to raise the issue of reforming the telecommunications law of 1982, in order to provide "a friendlier, more fair and non-discriminatory" framework for community radio, Cancino said.

At the time the authorities did not respond to their proposal. Seven years later, the Bachelet administration called on ANARCICH and the Association of Radio Broadcasters of Chile (ARCHI) to draw up the draft law in conjunction with the ministries concerned.

The draft law creating community and citizen radio broadcasting services was presented publicly by Bachelet on Oct. 12, and submitted to Congress five days later.

"Up to now, the law only distinguished between commercial radio stations and minimum coverage stations, which doesn’t reflect the social and community values needed to develop radio broadcasting at the community and local levels," said government spokesman Ricardo Lagos Weber.

The draft law would allow community radio stations a maximum power of 25 watts, with antennas up to 18 metres tall, which depending on location would allow coverage ranging from an entire municipality to a whole region. In exceptional cases, such as border zones or remote areas, up to 40 watts may be permitted.

According to the draft law, concessions would be awarded for 15 years, through public tender, to civil society and community organisations – in other words, not-for-profit private legal entities. That would exclude municipalities and limited companies. On expiry of the concession, the operator would have a preferential right of renewal.

Finally, the draft law states that community radio stations would be able to mention local companies or services within their broadcasting area in order to cover their costs, and may also enter into agreements for cultural, community, sporting and public interest broadcasting. Cancino summarises the three main features of the draft law as: granting concessions only to civil society organisations, expanding the broadcasting range of the radio stations, and allowing them to become self-financing by permitting commercials.

However, not everybody in the community radio sector is completely satisfied with the proposal.

The Chilean delegate to the World Association of Community Radio Stations (AMARC), Oscar Aguilera, said it was a positive step because "it’s the first time a draft law proposes a different communications model, and legally recognises the specific nature of community radio stations."

However, he disagrees with some aspects. "We are concerned that the concept of community media should be identified with spatial limits, because there are communities that transcend the boundaries of a municipality, neighbourhood or population," he told IPS.

He also criticised the fact that the draft law has made no provision for "the revolution that, in a couple of years, digital radio will bring. This draft was thought out for analogic technology," which may limit the future potential of these media outlets, he said.

But no doubt the most controversial provision, which has met with opposition from the private sector, is the permission for radio stations owned by civil society organisations to finance themselves by advertising, albeit in a restricted form.

More than 1,000 private broadcasters are affiliated to ARCHI, which approves of the draft law except for this provision, which it sees as unfair competition, Cancino said.

Two rightwing opposition members of Congress have expressed fears that the radio stations might become political tools, since the government is in charge of granting the concessions of the airwaves.

Cancino dismissed such fears as groundless, and defended the role of community radio stations as social communicators. "We have achieved participation by sectors of civil society – mainly young people – who feel discriminated against by the mass media," he said.

He said that advertisers on community radio stations would mainly be small local businesses, although he made it clear that, ultimately, "everyone has the right to compete."

Although the draft law enjoys considerable across-the-board approbation, ANARCICH is planning a practical strategy to bring everyone on board. "We must make it clear that community radio stations don’t want to go commercial, and that the possibility of financing ourselves will not distract us from our goals," he said.

If the advertising mentions are not approved in Congress, community radio broadcasters are open to the provision of a state fund, for instance, so that they can operate.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
TYRE, Lebanon, Oct 15 2007 (IPS)

The explosion ripped through the tiny garden in rural south Lebanon, hurling Naemah Ghazi to the ground. The shrapnel from the bomb sliced through her legs, and she rapidly lost consciousness. "There was a lot of blood," her mother Khadija recalls. "All her body was bleeding."

Naemah, 48, lived quietly with her mother in the border town Blida since her father passed away nearly 30 years ago. She was still a teenager when she gave up a future of marriage and kids to take care of her mother full time.

On the morning of Sep. 11, Naemah was out picking vegetables for the evening meal when the bomb – an Israeli-made M85 cluster munition with a 'self-destruct' mechanism, buried a mere ten metres from her back door – exploded under her feet.

Naemah was rushed to Sidon's Labib Medical Centre two hours drive away. The doctors amputated her right leg just below the knee, but saved the other within a construct of metal rods.

A month later, Naemah is still in hospital; small and frail on her white metal bed. She is on painkillers and antibiotics, and has become depressed, says hospital supervisor, Shadi Hanouni. The wounds on her left leg are infected, and nurses change her dressings every five hours.

Blida is a small and poor town. Most residents rely on tobacco and olive harvests, and money sent by relatives abroad to keep financially afloat. Occupied until 2000 by Israel and its local proxy army, the SLA, it was one of the first targets for cluster munition strikes last summer.

Cluster bombs in Blida have injured town leader Suleiman Majdi, and Naemah's six-year-old nephew Abbas Yousef Abbas, along with three other children he was playing with. All have survived, but barely – Majdi and Abbas bear deep scars across their stomachs and limbs.

Lebanon has a devastating cluster bomb problem. Hit hard during the final days of last summer's conflict with Israel, hundreds of thousands of unexploded munitions are strewn throughout the south's rural towns and fertile fields and valleys. Although there have been 255 civilian and de-mining casualties to date, official requests for Israel's cluster bomb strike data have gone unanswered.

"The reality of the situation is we simply don't know how many there are, and we will never know until the Israelis tell us how many they fired," says Chris Clark, the United Nations programme manager for the Mine Action Coordination Centre (MACC), the official body tasked with coordinating munitions clearance with the Lebanese Army in the south.

So far the clearance teams working under the MACC have destroyed over 131,000 cluster bombs. While U.S. munitions manufactured in the 1970s and 1980s are the majority found and destroyed, Israeli M85 cluster munition strikes have been discovered mostly in fields and towns like Blida along the Blue Line, the UN demarcated border between Israel and Lebanon.

Stockpiled by the U.S., Britain and Germany among others, the M85 cluster bomb is shaped like a miniature tin can with a white ribbon on top that spins to load the bomb once it's airborne. While older versions have a single fuse, the current model is equipped with a second; a 'safety' fuse that detonates automatically if the initial one fails.

"For some years there has been a humanitarian concern about the post-conflict problems caused by the use of cluster bombs – it goes back to Kosovo and the use of them there," says Clark. "In an attempt to mitigate that, the Israelis took the basic nucleus of the (U.S.-made) M77 and M42 design, smartened it up a bit and added a self-destruct mechanism."

Its manufacturers cite the contemporary M85's failure rate at less than one percent – results that countries like Britain hold up for justifying their continued use. However, independent studies since conducted in 'real' – as opposed to laboratory – conditions have determined the figure to be more like 5 to 10 percent.

Clark seconds this finding. "What we have established here (in Lebanon) is that the average failure rate is at least 6 percent. So for the users of this system to continue to use them on a basis that they have a negligible failure rate is clearly foolish."

The push to ban cluster munitions worldwide by 2008 was kicked off in Oslo earlier this year. Spearheaded by the Britain-based Cluster Munition Coalition representing hundreds of civil society groups, the conferences have successfully recruited 80 countries – including producers, users and stockpilers – to sign on so far.

But top weapons manufacturers and exporters – the U.S., China and Russia – are staying away, and Britain, although a participant, is fighting hard for the exclusion of the M85 from the ban. "They've been arguing this for several months now," says Thomas Nash, coordinator for the CMC. "Although it is proven they do not work, and are a huge danger to the civilian population."

With the next meeting due this December in Vienna, tobacco and olive harvesters in Blida, and throughout the south of Lebanon, continue to harvest their crops in fear. "Blida was the place where the first civilians were injured," says Nash when told about Naemah. "The symmetry post-conflict is just tragic."

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
TYRE, Lebanon, Aug 8 2007 (IPS)

"Mine action is a male dominated sector, but it doesn't have to be," declares Christina Bennike, the dynamic head of Danish charity Dan Church Aid (DCA) in south Lebanon. "I really felt it would be important to address this from the beginning, then it would be natural instead of something different or unique."

Neamat Kassab - cluster bombs clearer. Credit: Rick Bajornas

"We've had the first integrated teams in Lebanon and it's working out well," Bennike told IPS on phone. "They understand they are here to do a job, and return the land to the people."

Bennike has also brought two female supervisors from Kosovo on board to lead the mixed BAC teams, something unprecedented in Lebanon's traditional mine action community.

An estimated four million cluster bombs were dropped over south Lebanon by Israel during last summer's conflict, with roughly one million that didn't explode strewn throughout villages, gardens, roads, fields and valleys.

"What we are finding here is unprecedented," says Tekimiti Gilbert, chief of operations for the United Nations Mine Action Centre (UNMACC), the official body tasked with coordinating cluster bomb clearance in south Lebanon. "And see where they were dropped – in the villages and around built up areas. South Lebanon as you know is the size of a postage stamp. To have that number of cluster bombs falling in such a small area is just unbelievable."

So far BAC teams fanned out across the south have cleared over 120,000 cluster bombs from Lebanese soil. Many of the searchers are from contaminated towns, who were under Israeli bombardment last summer.

Neamat Khassab, a 22-year-old, found her village of Siddiqine, near Qana, devastated by Israel's bombing campaign. She is now a searcher for DCA clearing residential houses and gardens in the rural town centre of Soultaniye.

She is the only female in the team and works fast with quiet confidence as her yellow metal detector skims the ground. "These guys are like my family," she smiles, pointing towards her team mates. "Of course when I started I was a little bit afraid, but when I got to know them I felt at home."

Terrain and weather are the biggest factors in the gruelling work of a searcher. The winter cold is bracing, and heavy rains drive cluster bombs underground, or entangle them in growing vegetation come spring. The hot summer sun dries out the soil, making it difficult to dig bombs out. The heat is almost unbearable for a searcher wearing a heavy helmet and vest, and dehydration is their biggest enemy.

Cluster bomb strikes on banana, olive and citrus plantations can be hidden in the bush, or entangled in the branches up above. The threat of snake, spider and scorpion bites is very real. And this is just the physical side. Mentally a searcher must stay focused for the entire day of work, because to let the mind wander could be treacherous.

Most searchers train up to a month. "Having a mixed team keeps a balance within the teams," says Chris Fielding, operations manager for DCA. "At the moment the women are performing as well as the men – no problems." He adds, "I believe these girls can carry a stretcher 100, 200 metres if needed, they go through the same physical training as the guys…they pretty much get their hair and nails dirty and it's something they live with quite well."

For women, there is the added pressure of defying traditional gender roles. Some have dropped out of training because of family pressure about the danger of the task, while a few others don't tell their families what they do for work.

Moussa Chaalan, the fiancé of DCA medic Heba Daher, says that many men he knows think a woman's place is in the home, in the kitchen. However, he adds, "not all of them; because of the economic situation men and women both have to work."

In Lebanon's dismal economy, the average salary in the south is around 200 dollars a month. Demining organisations are offering searchers the substantially higher wage of 750 to 850 dollars a month. "A lot of women come to demining by necessity," says Christina Bennike. "It is work and they don't have family support, and this is the last option for them. It's not a natural choice."

Batoul Milije, a divorced mother working to support her 12-year-old son, is a searcher on Soultaniye's pastoral outskirts where a teenage boy was killed by a cluster bomb at the end of last year. "I never had to work like this," she says. "I told the guys – I'm like a guy, I'm going to be tough." She adds with a sigh, "I'm the only one for my son."

There have been few injuries among demining teams, who take safety very seriously. The last place women got injured removing cluster bombs was in Kosovo. Two lost their legs.

"That is one concern you have when you hire females," explains Bennike. "The downside is that the recovery period for a female injured in the field is much slower, and the social ramifications are much different for a handicapped or a female amputee than for a male. Her position in society is much lower."

A condemnation of cluster munitions has gained momentum this year, with the mass dumping of munitions over Lebanon cited as a good reason for a total ban on the deadly weapons.

In Lebanon, the UNMACC has been asked by the army to stay an extra year and coordinate clearance until the end of 2008, given the reality that it will take this long to comb through all towns, gardens and agricultural fields for residual bombs.

Excerpt:

By Ángel Páez
LIMA, May 25 2007 (IPS)

Peru's proposal to make Latin America the world's first cluster munitions-free region received broad support from the countries that took part in this week's intergovernmental conference on a future global treaty against the weapons in Lima, said local authorities.

The Wednesday through Friday meeting was a success, with 22 additional nations joining the process of drafting an international convention to ban cluster bombs, which began in February in Oslo, Norway and is to conclude in late 2008, said Peruvian Deputy Defence Minister Fabián Novak.

That brings the total number of countries involved in the process to 68. The convention would be similar to the Mine Ban Treaty, which bans anti-personnel land mines.

"We have taken sure steps towards a legal instrument aimed at protecting human beings, which would prohibit the use, production and storage of cluster munitions," Novak told IPS. "That is demonstrated by the increase in the number of nations that have adhered to the process that began in Oslo."

"At the next regional meeting, in Costa Rica, a sister country that backs Peru's proposal, we will build a consensus to turn Latin America into the first region free of cluster bombs," he said.

The next international meeting on the draft treaty will be held in December in Vienna, Austria.

The conference in Lima was organised at Peru's initiative, to follow up on the "Oslo process".

However, authorities here failed to mention that the Peruvian air force has fighter planes that carry cluster munitions: 18 Sukhoi-25 with Russian-made RBK-500 cluster bombs and 12 Mirage-2000 with Spanish-made BME-300 bombs.

Military sources said most of the cluster munitions were acquired to destroy air strips, not for use in inhabited areas.

Cluster bombs are dropped in a canister that splits open in mid-air, scattering hundreds of soda-can-size bomblets over wide areas. The bombs can be either air-dropped or ground-launched, and are difficult to target accurately. Between five and 30 percent of the bomblets do not explode on impact, posing a risk to civilians for years to come

According to Handicap International, 400 million people live in affected areas where they are at risk from unexploded cluster bomblets, and 98 percent of victims are civilians, many of whom are children, who sometimes mistake the bomblets for toys.

Eradicating cluster munitions from the region will be an uphill task.

Argentina, one of the Latin American nations that manufactures and stores cluster bombs, backed a proposal by Australia, Finland, France and Poland to include an exception in the international convention for countries that produce bombs with a self-destruct mechanism.

The Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC), made up of 200 organisations pushing for a total ban, is vigorously opposed to the proposed exceptions.

Director of the Human Rights Watch Arms Division Steve Goose told IPS that trusting the self-destruct mechanisms of cluster bombs is akin to believing that it makes them less lethal, which he said is absolutely false.

Self-destruct mechanisms do not reduce the risk of mortal harm to civilians, which has been proven by studies in the field, said Goose.

The CMC reports that 34 countries continue to produce cluster munitions, another 25 have used them in armed conflicts, and 75 have stockpiles that pose a threat to humanity.

CMC coordinator Thomas Nash also praised the interest of Latin American nations in freeing the region of cluster bombs, but warned that a major effort would be needed, because a big producer country like Brazil, for example, had disappointedly failed to take part in the conference in Lima.

Nash said activists were shocked by the position taken by Brazil, which initially said it would participate but suddenly backed out. He said the CMC had decided to forge closer relations with Brazilian non-governmental organisations in order to get the Brazilian government to listen to the people's clamour for the need to ban cluster bombs.

This is a question involving millions of human lives, not a business issue, said Grethe Østern of the Norwegian People's Aid organisation.

The Norwegian activist, who is also co-chair of the CMC, said that during the Lima conference, there were attempts to weaken the agreement reached in Oslo, where 46 governments decided to finish drafting the global treaty by the end of 2008.

Although it has been demonstrated that cluster bombs with self-destruct mechanisms did no work in the conflicts in Iraq and Lebanon, countries like Argentina, Australia, Finland and Poland have surprisingly proposed exceptions for this kind of explosive, Østern remarked to IPS.

The organisers of the Lima conference also mentioned attempts by Japan and the United Kingdom to create a current of opinion in favour of approving a lengthy transition time before the global convention banning the munitions goes into effect.

A small group of producer countries came to Lima more concerned about finding out about the future of their explosives than about contributing to freeing the world of these weapons, said Simon Conway, director of Landmine Action.

In addition, the United States, which is not taking part in the process, wants cluster bombs to be discussed within the framework of the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW). But during the debates in Lima, most of the participating nations rejected that proposition, arguing that the CCW is ineffective and burdened by red tape.

U.S. Nobel Peace Prize-winner Jody Williams remarked to IPS that she was not surprised that countries that produce and use cluster bombs are the very countries that are applying pressure for the question to be discussed under the CCW.

Williams, who headed up the movement that led to the signing of the Mine Ban Treaty against land mines, said that in November 2006, the countries that form part of the CCW rejected an initiative to launch negotiations aimed at banning cluster munitions.

So, she asked, "what can we expect" from that forum? Besides, noted the activist, the countries most heavily affected by cluster bombs do not form part of the CCW.

But she added that after the Lima conference she had the conviction that a large number of countries are convinced of the need to eradicate these munitions "from the face of the earth."

Deputy Minister Novak said discrepancies were normal, but that in the end, what prevailed was agreement on the need to eliminate cluster bombs. "We are closer rather than farther from achieving a global treaty," he said.

"Was progress made in Lima?" IPS asked Nash, who responded "yes," but added that this time more pressure from powerful nations was felt. Although the United States was not present, it made its presence felt through other countries, he said.

Excerpt:

By Ángel Páez
LIMA, May 23 2007 (IPS)

A future international treaty to ban cluster munitions should prohibit financial institutions from investing in companies that manufacture the weapons, Thomas Nash, coordinator of the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC), told IPS in the Peruvian capital.

Nash said the draft treaty being discussed Wednesday through Friday in Lima, Peru refers specifically to a ban on financing for cluster munitions manufacturers.

"Belgium has not only banned the production of cluster bombs, but also adopted a law in March that bans banks and investment funds operating in that country from investing in companies that make these munitions. All countries should follow Belgium's lead," said Nash in a civil society forum held Tuesday in Lima, ahead of the intergovernmental conference that opened Wednesday.

Cutting off the flow of money to manufacturers of cluster munitions would without a doubt discourage production, said Nash, who added that the international banking community should listen to the world's clamour.

The government officials meeting in Lima this week are following up on a February agreement reached by 47 countries in Oslo, Norway to finish drafting a global treaty next year aimed at eradicating cluster munitions.

At least 30 additional governments will sign the Oslo agreement in Lima, Nash told IPS. Some of these new adherents, like Argentina, Britain, Canada, Chile, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, produce cluster bombs. Another manufacturer, Brazil, excused itself from participating in the conference.

Cluster bombs are dropped in a canister that splits open in mid-air, scattering hundreds of soda-can-size bomblets over wide areas. The bombs can be either air-dropped or ground-launched.

Critics say cluster munitions are difficult to target accurately, and between five and 30 percent of the bomblets do not explode on impact, remaining in or on the ground and posing a risk to civilians, sometimes for years to come

According to Handicap International, 400 million people live in affected areas where they are at risk from unexploded cluster bomblets.

The six biggest producers of cluster bombs – Lockheed Martin, EADS, Thales, GenCorp, Textron and Raytheon – received 12.6 billion dollars in financing from 68 financial institutions between 2004 and 2007, according to the report "Explosive Investments: Financial Institutions and Cluster Munitions" by Netwerk Vlaanderen, a Belgian organisation that monitors arms trade funding and promotes sustainable investment.

The U.S.-based Textron, whose CBU-105 bombs were used by the U.S. army in Iraq, received a 1.25 billion dollar credit facility in 2005, arranged by Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, which provided 120 million dollars each. A total of 19 banks – including Bank of America, Britain's Barclays, Germany's Deutsche Bank and Switzerland's UBS – are now taking part in the credit arrangement.

In March 2003, U.S. forces dropped cluster bombs in the Iraqi region of Hilla, south of Baghdad, killing at least 33 civilians and injuring 109, according to a report by the New York-based Human Rights Watch.

And although the Vietnam war ended more than 30 years ago, cluster bombs continue to cause severe damages to the civilian population in that southeast Asian country.

The CMC reports that 34 countries continue to produce cluster munitions, another 25 have used them in armed conflicts, and 75 have stockpiles that pose a threat to humanity.

Handicap International activist Anne Villeneuve said that 98 percent of victims of cluster munitions are civilians, the great majority of whom are poor, and many of whom are children.

Although Handicap International has compiled information on 13,308 confirmed casualties from cluster submunitions, it estimates that the total number of deaths from these weapons ranges between 55,000 and 100,000.

U.S. activist Jody Williams, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for leading the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which concluded that year with the signing of a global treaty, was in Lima to deliver a message of support from herself and another five Nobel laureates: Guatemalan indigenous activist Rigoberta Menchú, Iranian lawyer and human rights activist Shirin Ebadi, Northern Irish peace activists Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan, and Wangari Maathai, an environmental and political activist from Kenya.

The Nobel Women's Initiative statement says that "Arms control and disarmament are not esoteric issues that only a few ‘experts' are capable of handling – generally in negotiations behind closed doors. Any discussion related to weapons must not be based solely on military considerations, but must include the humanitarian perspective as well."

Cluster bombs "have become synonymous with civilian casualties," the Nobel Peace Prize-winners stated.

Williams said cluster bombs are an even bigger problem than land mines, because their effect is more lethal, and argued that institutions that finance the producers are as responsible as the manufacturers themselves for the fatal consequences of the weapons.

"While so many of the world's arms cause so much human misery, cluster munitions deserve to be singled out as an especially pernicious weapon of ill repute," Williams said.

She added that the United States alone has millions of stockpiled cluster munitions.

Since 1999, the areas where the largest numbers of cluster bombs have been used are Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo and Lebanon, and in every case, the large majority of victims have been civilians, said Villeneuve.

The Ottawa Treaty or Mine Ban Treaty should have brought a de facto cut-off of investment in factories producing land mines, but that does not seem to be happening, because there are banks that invest in the manufacturers, even if they come from countries that have banned land mines, said Villeneuve.

That is why the cluster munitions treaty must explicitly prohibit investment in companies that manufacture these weapons, she asserted.

Nash said "we have achieved a world practically free of land mines; now we are trying to clean the world of cluster bombs. And that is not an impossible dream."

Excerpt:

By Dahr Jamail
SRIFA, Southern Lebanon, Apr 26 2007 (IPS)

Close to a million unexploded bombs are estimated to litter southern Lebanon, according to UN forces engaged in the hazardous task of removing them.

The United Nations Interim Force In Lebanon (UNIFIL) was created by the Security Council in 1978 to confirm an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon and restore international peace and security. After the war last year it has a new job on its hands.

Following the July-August war between Israel and the Hezbollah in Lebanon, UNIFIL enhanced its force and took on new tasks such as monitoring the cessation of hostilities and removing untold numbers of unexploded missiles, mines and cluster bombs.

Most of these lie in southern Lebanon, which took the brunt of bombings from Israeli warplanes.

Lebanon has a population of four million, close to half of it in capital Beirut. Given the population distribution, there could be almost as many unexploded bombs as there are people in southern Lebanon.

"Between 10-40 percent of the cluster bombs do not explode on impact," a lieutenant who gave his name as Verbeke, with the Belgian contingent of UNIFIL, told IPS at the site of a 500kg unexploded bomb in Srifa, a little town near the border. "Sometimes they get stuck in trees or bushes, and there are Lebanese people being injured or killed by them nearly every single day."

Israeli warplanes roared overhead as he spoke, in clear violation of the ceasefire agreement brokered between Lebanon and Israel.

Verbeke pointed to one of his Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) teams in action. The fuse of the 500kg bomb was removed and detonated, leaving the weapon harmless. It was then loaded onto a UN truck, and carried to a detonation site, to be exploded there out of harm's way.

Lebanese living nearby are grateful for such efforts.

"The UN is doing great work here," Wissam Mousawi, a construction worker who lives near the site of this unexploded bomb told IPS. "They are really fantastic."

But this was just one small success. According to the Belgians as many as 800,000 unexploded ordnance (UXO), and possibly more, still remain. Meanwhile, scores of Lebanese civilians have died from contacting cluster bombs. More than 200 have been wounded, most of them severely.

"We are clearing approximately 50 square metres of land per day," the chief of the Beligian engineers detachment who gave his name as Lt. Col. Watteeuw told IPS back at their base. "The UN Mine Action Coordination Centre manages 60 de-mining teams working throughout the south. Many are UNIFIL teams, but most are private contracting companies."

When asked if they had received any information to assist in locating the munitions from Israel, Watteeuw said, "That's a good question, but you would have to go 20km south of here (into Israel) to obtain that information."

He estimates it would take "probably more than three to five years" to clear southern Lebanon of what he estimates to be 900 air and artillery strike areas. But that would still only be the flat areas, and not include hills and other areas where munitions have yet to be found.

Watteeuw said his teams are finding hundreds of thousands of unexploded cluster bombs, along with smaller numbers of grenades, artillery rounds, anti-personnel mines, anti-tank mines and bombs of all varieties.

Thus far, civilian contractor teams have cleared approximately 110,000 UXO, and UNIFIL teams like the Belgian teams the colonel oversees, approximately 25,000.

"In Belgium we've cleared 100 tonnes of UXO on average every year since World War I," he added. "So this could take a long time."

Teams from China, France, Italy, Finland, Ireland, Turkey and Spain are also engaged in clearing unexploded bombs.

Much of the population in the south relies on tobacco, vegetable and fruit farms to make their living. With UXO littering countless fields, many are unable to work.

Local people in affected areas continue to be anxious about further Israeli aggression against them, even as they re thankful to the UN.

"I think it's a good thing for UNIFIL to help us get our land back," Mohammed Kundoulay, a 17-year-old secondary school student in the area told IPS. "We need this help now after the Israelis conducted terrorism against us."

Kundoulay hid with his family in their home during the first 10 days of the war before fleeing to Beirut.

Anther student, Jaffar Assaf, told IPS that the UN de-mining teams were doing a great job, but was angry at what he called double standards.

"We hope the UN maintain their criteria in helping us now and help to defend us from Israel," he said. "In reality, the UN should be in Israel to defend us from them, since they were the ones who invaded Lebanon, not vice versa."

UNIFIL maintains a presence in southern Lebanon, and not in Israel, although the forces carry out helicopter patrols over the tense border area.

Excerpt: