98 percent of cluster bomb victims are civilians: report

Yahoo News
Nov. 02, 2006

Civilians make up 98 percent of the tens of thousands of victims of cluster bombs in the 30 years since their introduction during the Vietnam war, according to an NGO report.

Cluster munitions are imprecise weapons, designed to strike a large surface area, and have killed or maimed 104,000 people since then, said Angelo Simonazzi, director general of Handicap International which carried out the study.

"For 30 years governments have failed to address the disproportionate, long-term harm these weapons cause to civilian populations," he told reporters in Brussels as the report was published.

The study, which was financed by the Norwegian government, is the first to document the impact of cluster munitions on people in all 24 countries and regions known to be affected by these weapons, the charity said.

Cluster bombs or shells, which release several hundred smaller bomblets when they explode, "pose an unacceptable danger to civilians both during and long after a conflict," said the charity.

The bomblets often fail to explode as they are spread over an area at least the size of several football pitches, creating a highly lethal footprint, added the charity which is collecting signatures calling for the weapons to be banned.

Males were most at risk to injury or death from cluster bombs and boys under the age of 18 in particular bore a heavy burden because they were often injured by submunitions while tending animals or collecting wood or water.

Handicap International's Stan Brabant called on governments to go further than "eloquent verbal protests" against cluster bombs and to "negotiate a new treaty to prevent the proliferation and to stop further use of the billions of cluster submunitions currently stockpiled".

However Simonazzi said that there was "little hope" that a UN meeting next week on conventional arms in Geneva would lead to government action.

"We are far from a consensus," he said. "Only an awareness campaign like the one that led to the prohibition of antipersonnel mines with the 1996 Ottawa convention could advance the cause."

Hoping to raise pressure on governments to act, Handicap International is leading a petition to ban cluster bombs and has already over 300,000 signatures.

Belgium was the first country to make the use of cluster bombs "illegal" with a law that went into force in June, according to Simonazzi.

Earlier this year, the European Parliament backed a resolution against the use of such weapons, Handicap International Belgium's spokeswoman Hildegarde Vansintjan said.

In about 20 countries, including Britain, France and Germany, debate about the use of cluster bombs has gained momentum.

The war between Israel and Hezbollah militants was the most recent conflict to see the use of cluster bombs.

Quoting from UN figures, Simonazzi said that 1.2 to 1.6 million of the four million submunitions Israel dropped on Lebanon during the conflict have not exploded.

Cluster bombs were also used by Hezbollah against civilian areas in northern Israel, according to US ONG Human Rights Watch.