Landmines and Cluster Munitions

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I begin with an experience from 1998 when I was in Cambodia, on a bus going through a village beside a river. Looking out of the window, I spied some faded hazard tape wrapped roughly round a small lump in the road. Getting closer, about as far away as that Dispatch Box is from me now, I realised that it was a small bomb—a cartoon-style cylinder with fins on the end, its head buried in the road. That was not a landmine or a cluster munition. In some ways, it was less dangerous than either for being more visible and more obvious. But it was a reminder that the deadly legacy of war often lingers decades after the conflict ends, and that weapons—particularly the highly portable weapons that we are discussing today—cannot, once let loose on the world, be contained to one place.

That small bomb, I suspect, had been washed to that location by a flood, and landmines can easily be moved that way or by land movement. Yet, as the Mines Advisory Group’s excellent briefing highlights, they were also often moved by deliberate human action. Licit and illicit global trade means that a return to landmines in Europe would rapidly mean their spread to other regions—and within regions where they can easily be moved, either as a complete device or as a source of explosives for improvised devices. At a giant scale, their presence or threat means that farmers cannot go safely into their fields, children cannot play without risk of maiming or death, and often women cannot collect essential water supplies in safety.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, for securing today’s important debate, rich as it has been in varied views, and hope that we will hear shortly from the Minister that Britain, a leading figure in both the 1997 anti-personnel mine ban convention and the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions, will continue to support them and make every diplomatic effort to see them upheld and advanced around the world.