Inexcusable EU action?

Caroline Lucas MEP makes the case for a total EU ban on cluster munitions.

Cluster bombs are deadly, nasty, vindictive weapons. When they work perfectly, they destroy military infrastructure, level buildings and kill thousands of troops.

When they are used on civilian targets, as they were by Israel in the recent Lebanon conflict, the infrastructure destroyed tends to be homes, schools and hospitals and those killed,  indiscriminately, tend to be civilians.

The reality is that all the “bomblets” released in a cluster don’t explode, as deigned, at once, resulting in the target zone – often a village, or a residential area – being littered with explosive devices.

Yet though the unexploded bomblets showered on towns and villages by cluster bomb use have exactly the same effect as landmines – to kill and injure people trying to rebuild their lives after conflict – their use, manufacture and stockpiling is not expressly prohibited in international law.

Though it has been argued that their indiscriminate nature places them in breach of the Geneva Conventions, this is disputed by the UK, US and Israel – the very states that manufacture, sell and use most of the world’s cluster bombs.

And they certainly are not prohibited by the Ottowa Convention banning landmines themselves.

This is a terrible anomaly of international law - an anomaly that is causing the continued deaths of thousands for the
foreseeable future.

Civilians are still dying at the hands of cluster bomblets in Vietnam, more than 30 years after the end of war there.

But world leaders meeting in Geneva this month (November 7-17) to review the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), which governs international law relating to indiscriminate conventional weapons, have a rare chance to ban them once and for all.

They must rise to the challenge of doing so – public opinion, especially after the devastation to civilians and their homes, farms, schools and workplaces during the recent Israel-Lebanon conflict, firmly supports a complete ban.

Jan Egeland, the UN’s most senior official for humanitarian affairs, described the effects of cluster bombs in Lebanon as “shocking and immoral.”

There can be no moral justification for using cluster bombs or any indiscriminate and imprecise weapons in the 21st century.

Doing so offers little or no military advantage – and the law must be brought into line with public opinion and the status of landmines.

States such as the UK, US and Israel claim their stockpile, manufacture and use is perfectly legal, and morally justified – even when doing so results in the daily death of innocent children in former battle zones.

But this just is not good enough. The ongoing Geneva review of the CCW treaty gives all signatories a chance to ban their use for ever.

It is vital that the EU argues strongly for this position – and leads by example and decommissions all stockpiles of cluster bombs.

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