Two-Thirds Of World's Countries For Cluster Bomb Ban: NGOs
Waverly de Bruijn
Dear GAPW colleagues and friends,
Please see the news article below about the process towards a ban on cluster munitions. GAPW covered this issue as part of its conventional weapons coverage during the UN First Committee on Disarmament and International Security this past October. Those three weekly reports and the final version for 2007 are available at http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/political/1com/FCM.html under “Conventional Weapons.”
Warmly,
Waverly
Waverly de Bruijn
Coordinator
Global Action to Prevent War
675 Third Avenue, Suite 315
New York, NY 10017
Tel: +1 (212) 818-1815
Fax: +1 (212) 818-1857
Two-Thirds Of World’s Countries For Cluster Bomb Ban: NGOs
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=3236682&C=europe
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, VIENNA
A record 138 countries back a proposed international treaty banning cluster munitions which is due to be signed next year, organizers said Dec. 7 after the end of a three-day summit in Vienna.
“More than two-thirds of the world’s countries are supporting the ban,” said Thomas Nash, coordinator of the Cluster Munitions Coalition (CMC), a network of some 200 civil society organizations which organized the meeting.
“That is remarkable progress. We have more confidence than ever before that there will be a strong and comprehensive treaty,” he told a press conference.
Cluster munitions release bomblets that can explode years after being dropped.
Stephen Goose, an executive director at the U.S.-based nongovernmental organization Human Rights Watch and co-chair of the conference, said “only four past users of cluster munitions were not here: the U.S., Israel, Russia and Eritrea.”
Delegates from 23 of the 34 countries producing cluster munitions attended the talks, which also drew representatives from 55 of the 75 countries that stockpile the weapons, he added.
Support for a ban was especially strong among African countries and a regional meeting was expected in March, Nash said.
The Vienna conference was part of a Norwegian initiative known as the Oslo Process launched in February when states agreed to conclude an international ban treaty to be signed by the end of 2008.
“It’s going to be a powerful mixture of disarmament and humanitarian law with victims’ assistance, clearance, risk education: all provisions that are going to be even better than in the convention on landmines,” Goose said.
No figures are available on how many people have been maimed or killed by cluster munitions, but the NGO Handicap International estimates about 98 percent of victims are civilians and 40 percent of them children.
The CMC is calling for a total ban on all cluster munitions that cause unacceptable damage to human beings but “a handful or a dozen [countries] or so said they can’t accept a total ban. Some want a transition period,” Goose said.
Opponents of a total ban include Britain, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Slovakia and Switzerland, the coalition said.
Some states say cluster bombs equipped with self-destruct mechanism should be excluded from the ban but Handicap International argues the failure rate of these systems is much higher than producers claim.
Two more conferences on cluster munitions are planned next year in Wellington, in New Zealand and in Dublin in May, ahead of the planned signature of the treaty at the end of the year.