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Humanitarian Mine Action

"Just do it"

© Mohammed Zaatari

According to the UN, Israel dropped more than a million cluster bomblets in southern Lebanon during the 34-day war and 40 per cent failed to explode. Read more about cluster munition campaigns at www.stopclustermunitions.org .

To be honest, I was already thinking something similar this morning when walking in the wind and in 15 degrees Celsius to the conference venue. A bit of a more whining version of it that I am not sharing. Need to be seen as a tough campaigner.

Half frozen I walk in the Nobel Peace institute and am standing in front of the photo exhibition of children, men and women mutilated beyond belief by a “yellow killer” as cluster bombs are called in Serbia. Then watching a movie in which a man is explaining that he was seeing hundreds in the sky, making their way towards the city of Nis on their tiny parachutes.

• Can you imagine just looking up in the sky and you see the bombs on tiny parachutes instead of clouds, waiting for them to hit the ground and knowing that when they do they will take their deadly crop? Of civilians? Inside a city? In the 21st century?

The turnout at the event was amazing and reassuring. More than 100 people, among them “legends” in the demining world already from the Nobel Award winning International Campaign to Ban Landmines struggle. So it is easy. It was done before. It can be done again. Weapons that mainly harm civilians need to be banned. Full stop.

Why would any government need to think twice about this?

I have been working on cluster bombs since 2004 and I still find myself taking notes because the speeches and presentations are so good. Taking notes and thinking: this is just so obvious. Why would any government need to think twice about this? We, civil society, need to make them do it. Just make them ban the bloody weapon.

When reading the notes through I find: Obsolete weapon. Inaccurate. Indiscriminate. 98% success rate against civilians. Major part children. Up to 40% failure rate when used in battle. De facto landmines when they do not explode. Billions in stockpiles. Wars are moving into populated areas.

And then imagining horrors if the stockpiled cluster bombs are used. Another humanitarian catastrophe in the waiting room. Just do it. Just ban them.

All the data is on our side. No data showing any great military utility is on the side of the governments. And tomorrow the governments will start discussing the issue on possible prohibition of the weapons. 48 states invited by the Norwegian government for a meeting to start a negotiating process prohibiting use, production and stockpiling of cluster bombs. Good ones vs. not so good ones. As the really bad ones were left at home (states that have no interest in banning the weapons were not even invited). And not so good ones will try to persuade the good ones that it is a complex issue, that it cannot be done in a hurry (the Norwegians want the treaty concluded by 2008), that after 5 years of discussions the Conference on Conventional Weapons (CCW) is still a good forum to continue in. How many good ones? How many bad ones? Or will they “Just do it”?

To be seen tomorrow...