Cluster Bombs--news/video.

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Short film documenting the lethal effects of the use of cluster munitions worldwide, with commentary, new statistics and analysis from military experts at Human Rights Watch. Footage shows how cluster munitions have endangered civilian populations from the Vietnam era through current conflicts in Iraq and Lebanon.

This video was made possible by a grant from Changing Ideas, London. Special thanks to Irin for additional footage.
Original Music by QDepartment. © 2007 Human Rights Watch

(Run time 05:47)


http://hrw.org/campaigns/clusters/video2.htm

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US open to negotiations on cluster bombs but no ban

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June 18, 2007
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19292776/

GENEVA - The United States supports launching negotiations on a global treaty to reduce civilian casualties from cluster bombs, but does not back a ban on the weapons, a U.S. official said on Monday.

Momentum has been building to prohibit cluster bombs, blamed for thousands of civilians casualties around the world, but states which are major producers of the weapons have resisted calls to halt their use.

The U.S. position was announced at the start of week-long talks in Geneva on the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), ratified by some 100 countries. It came after the Bush administration carried out an internal review of the issue.

"It was determined that the United States should support the initiation of a negotiation on cluster munitions within the framework of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons," Ronald Bettauer, head of the U.S. delegation, told reporters.

Cluster bombs are air- or ground-launched canisters holding up to 650 munitions, which often fail to explode on impact. Designed for use against infantry and tanks, they sink into the ground or lie on the surface and become virtual landmines.

Israel's use of cluster bombs in its month-long war against Islamist Hezbollah militia in southern Lebanon last year brought a sense of urgency to halting their firing against military targets located in heavily populated areas, aid agencies say.

The United States does not support a total ban on cluster bombs because it believes they have military utility, however it is willing to examine ways of mitigating the humanitarian impacts, a U.S. spokeswoman in Geneva said. This would include looking at improving their reliability, accuracy and visibility.

The United States had previously argued that existing international humanitarian law, combined with certain provisions of the CCW's protocol on explosive remnants of war, covered concerns raised by the use of cluster munitions.

The Sankei Shimbun, a Tokyo daily, reported earlier this month that Japan would back moves for a global ban but would suggest a delay in implementing curbs so as to give countries time to develop alternative weapons.

Nearly 70 countries pledged support in May for a declaration calling for an international ban by 2008, but the United States, Russia and China -- the world's military giants -- were not among them.

Japan had also been declining to back the declaration, saying it needed such weapons for self defence.

A high-level meeting to review the CCW will be held in November in Geneva.

(c) Reuters 2007. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.

[accuracy]

Tackling Tajikistan's cluster bombs

By Natalia Antelava
BBC News, Rashd Valley, Tajikistan

16 June 2007
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6757535.stm

High above the mulberry orchards and rolling hills of the Rashd Valley, and just beneath the soaring snow-covered peaks, lies the village of Chor Charokh.

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[Mine-clearing operations are tiny in comparison with the problem

Donkeys wander amid the mud huts, and women in traditional colourful headscarves shy away from visitors.

A group of small children, happily oblivious to the poverty that surrounds them, scream and laugh as they chase a dog along a stream.

None of these children were born when the government and the opposition fought for control of these mountains.

Yet, in a way, for these children the war is still on, a decade after the ceasefire.

Diligently, with his hands folded on his knees, 10-year-old Samir told us his story.

Two years ago, Samir went to cut wood in the forest and found a shiny metal ball. He had no idea, he said, that it was a cluster bomblet.

Samir only survived because he threw it a long way, but the blast shattered his knee and left him half blind.

Hundreds of others have not been so lucky.

Ten years since they were dropped, unexploded cluster munitions are still killing people here.

According to the UN, that makes Tajikistan a perfect example of why the weapon should be banned.

Lack of funds

International efforts to ban cluster bombs gained new force after last year's war between Israel and Hezbollah, when Israel dropped an estimated four million cluster bombs on southern Lebanon.

Cluster bombs are believed to be stockpiled by at least 75 countries around the world, including the US and Britain.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/43053000/jpg/_43053327_samir203.jpg
I want to become an eye doctor so that I can help others, and maybe cure myself too

Samir, aged 10

When dropped they disperse into hundreds of smaller bomblets, or sub-munitions - and that is what, according to the UN, makes them more dangerous and vicious than landmines.

"The worst thing is that you simply don't know where they are," said Andy Smith, who works for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and advises the Tajik government on mine clearance.

"At least with the landmines you can predict where they have been laid. But cluster sub-munitions spread over vast territories, and they continue to move around," he said.

"They can be shifted by snow, or roll down the hills, and unlike landmines they don't rust away but stay armed for decades."

The UNDP is among several international organisations that are trying to help Tajikistan rid itself of mines and cluster munitions.

But their effort is undermined by a lack of funds.

Working on one of the steep hills of the Rashd Valley, three men in blue uniforms are sweeping the area with bright yellow detectors - a miniscule operation considering the scale of the problem.

What makes clearance ever more difficult is that next year's snow melt is likely to send more bomblets down the hill and towards the villages.

"Yesterday we found seven sub-munitions at the bottom of just this one gulley; there are thousands of them here," Andy Smith said.

Life without work

The problem of unexploded munitions and landmines spreads far beyond the Rashd Valley.

Tajikistan's border with Afghanistan is full of landmines - a legacy of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

More recently another neighbour, Uzbekistan, mined its frontier with the country, saying it needed to prevent terrorists from crossing.

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Tajikistan could be mine-free in five years, the UN's Andy Smith says

"We don't have a record of a single terrorist being hurt by mines there, but there certainly have been plenty of civilians," said Jonmahamad Rajabov, head of the Tajik Mine Action Cell, a government agency that deals with the issue.

Landmines and unexploded munitions have not only claimed hundreds of lives here, they have also destroyed thousands of livelihoods.

In a country where jobs are scarce, losing a leg or an arm means a lifetime of unemployment - and if the victim is a breadwinner, it means poverty for the entire family too.

When a cluster bomb exploded near his house, Saygufron Abdulhayrov lost both his arms. His cousin died in the blast.

Elsewhere, he might have considered himself lucky to have survived, but in Tajikistan his injury means he now faces a lifetime without work.

The help he gets from the government is enough to buy him 20 loaves of bread a month.

"What is there for me to do? I can never find a job, I can never own a shop or do anything with my life," Saygufron said.

But even those who are not injured or dead are still victims here.

About 93% of this country is mountainous, so every inch of flat land is precious.

In the countryside, where most people eat what they grow, mines and sub-munitions are halting agricultural development.

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Their clearance, the government says, is essential for the economic revival that Tajikistan so desperately needs.

In the village of Chor Charokh, like so much of rural Tajikistan, there are hardly any men left.

Samir's father, like many others, has left to search for work in Russia. The 10-year-old, in the meantime, is making his own plans for the future.

"I want to become an eye doctor so that I can help others - and maybe," Samir added, "cure myself too".

It is not an impossible dream. Samir's vision could probably be restored, but his family does not have the money to take him to the city hospital.

Money is also needed to make this land safe to walk on and farm.

"We need more detectors, more assets, more men," the UN's Andy Smith explained.

"With the right investment we could make this country mine-safe in three years and mine-free in five. Without this investment, it could take another 100 years."

While Tajikistan desperately needs aid, the world, according to the UN, needs an international treaty banning cluster bombs, preventing this from happening elsewhere.

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SOUTH LEBANON: 100000 UNEXPLODED BOMBS

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For the first time an Israeli soldier has accepted to talk about the war in Lebanon and he has launched a warning: "My batallion has launched about 1800 rockets. Each one contained 650 bombs, it sums up to about 1.2 million cluster bombs". About 10% of the shells contained in cluster bombs have not exploded, so in southern Lebanon there are about 100,000 unexploded bombs.

They also used phosphorous and other Internationally banned weapons on civilian population.

Runtime : 18:23

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnnWg0eh8iE

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Cluster bomb kills mine clearing expert in southern Lebanon

23/08/2007
By The Associated Press
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/896781.html

A cluster bomb left over from last year's Second Lebanon War exploded in southern Lebanon on Thursday, killing a Lebanese mine clearing expert and wounding three others, security officials said.

The bomb went off in the town of Nabatiyeh as the experts were trying to dismantle it, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

The killed expert was identified as Abbas Jaber, a member of the British-based Mine Advisory Group which has been working in southern Lebanon since the IDF withdrew from southern Lebanon in May 2000.

Jaber's death brings to at least 31 the number of people killed by cluster bomb and mine explosions in Lebanon since the 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah ended in a UN-brokered cease-fire last August.

The United Nations and human rights groups accuse Israel of dropping about 4 million cluster bomblets during the summer fighting.

UN ordinance clearing experts say that up to 1 million failed to explode and now endanger civilians in the area.

© Copyright 2007 Haaretz. All rights reserved