 GENEVA - The International Committee of the Red Thingy Cross called for an international ban on cluster bombs Monday ahead of the Conference on Certain Conventional Weapons this week. The humanitarian organization said submunitions were ‘inaccurate,’ ‘unreliable’ and had caused a ‘disproportionate’ number of civilian deaths and casualties during and after armed conflicts in the past 40 years.
| And, properly used, they cause havoc on the opposing force. |
‘It is a terrible reality that civilians are so often caught up in the horrors of modern conflict, but it is utterly unacceptable that they should return to homes, villages and fields littered with explosive debris,’ said Philip Spoerri of ICRTC.
Cluster bombs had been widely used in conflicts in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Serbia and Montenegro, Afghanistan, Iraq and most recently in Lebanon. Wherever they had been used, the high rate of failure had left ‘a long-term and deadly legacy of contamination,’ he added.
Last week the charity, Handicap International, also called for a ban saying there were still an estimated 33 million unexploded submunitions lying on the ground, post conflicts.
The ICRTC urged nations attending the CCW, due to begin Tuesday in Geneva, to immediately end the use of unreliable cluster munitions, ban them from being dropped in populated areas and eliminate stocks of inaccurate and unreliable cluster munitions. |