Cluster Munitions

Debate between Martin Caton and John Stanley

Wednesday 9th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Martin Caton (Gower) (Lab)]

I have sought this debate because I am very concerned at current moves within the UN convention on certain conventional weapons to adopt a new protocol that would ban some older and less sophisticated cluster munitions, but allow continued use of some weapons that are the most dangerous to civilians. This would be a major step backwards, as it would effectively undermine the convention on cluster munitions that prohibits ownership, manufacture and transfer of all cluster weapons, because they all kill and maim civilian children, women and men when they are used. Some 111 states have now joined this treaty, which requires a complete ban.

However, before I rehearse my argument on that issue, it might help if I take a step back and look at what cluster munitions are, what they do and whom they do it to, and describe how the convention on cluster munitions was achieved and what has happened since to take its provisions forward. Cluster munitions are air-dropped or ground-launched shells that eject multiple smaller sub-munitions or bomblets. Some have been developed for use against runways, armour and even electrical transmission systems to locate a specific type of target. However, their primary purpose in most circumstances in which they are used is to kill people—ostensibly enemy combatants, but in practice many others as well.

Cluster bombs can contain variable numbers of sub-munitions, but most often that means very large numbers. Each sub-munition contains explosives, a copper cone, a pre-stressed fragmentation sheath and an incendiary sponge. The main bomb breaks open in mid-air and the bomblets are released, effectively carpet-bombing an area the size of two or three football fields. Anybody within that area—military or civilian—is likely to be torn apart. Tragically, in conflict after conflict, because of where they have been used, many of the victims of that weaponry—even at the time of attack—have been innocent children, women and men who were non-combatants.

However, that is only the first part of the story. There is a longer-term impact, because many of the bomblets do not work properly. They fail to explode on immediate impact and are left on the ground after the end of hostilities, to be trodden on by farmers returning to their fields, pulled up when families are cleaning rubble from their damaged homes, or even picked up as playthings by children attracted by their shape and shine. They remain lethal.

Cluster weapons date back to the second world war, but were used most extensively by the United States in the Vietnam war, where villages were carpet-bombed with cluster munitions. In fact, in Vietnam the US sometimes employed cluster bombs that were designed not to explode on impact. They were called area denial ordnance, and when they were dropped they were effectively land-mining an area from the sky. That was deliberate, of course; but all too often ever since, the result of using cluster munitions has not been too different.

Revulsion at what cluster munitions were doing to the ordinary people of Vietnam led in the early 1970s to calls for an international treaty. In 1974, Algeria, Austria, Egypt, Lebanon, Mali, Mauritania, Mexico, Norway, Sudan, Sweden, Switzerland, Venezuela and Yugoslavia jointly put forward a document that included a section headed “Anti-personnel fragmentation weapons”. It said:

“Anti-personnel cluster warheads or other devices with many bomblets, which act through the ejection of a greater number of small-calibred fragments or pellets to be prohibited for use”.

Sadly, that initiative got nowhere at that time and the people of Vietnam are still living with the aftermath of that mass cluster bombing, 40 years later. Even now, every year, hundreds of Vietnamese civilians are killed or injured by American sub-munitions from cluster bombs dropped all that time ago. Some 22 countries have been affected by cluster munition contamination, with particular problems of unexploded ordnance in Indo-China, Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon.

[Sir John Stanley (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

Having visited southern Lebanon myself shortly after the ceasefire took place and after the Israelis had carried out a massive sowing of cluster munitions, I can say to the hon. Gentleman that he is absolutely right to point out the terrible dangers to men, women and children from these awful weapons, which are primarily used with the aim of, and have the effect of, killing and maiming civilians.

[Martin Caton]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that contribution. He is absolutely right, and I shall say a little about what happened in Lebanon.

In 2006, the charity Handicap International produced a report documenting more than 10,000 known civilian casualties from cluster munitions, but it believed that the true figure could be as much as 10 times as high as that. What there can be no doubt about is that cluster munitions have caused excessive and disproportionate harm to civilians in every conflict in which they have been used over the past 40 years. People across the world realised this, especially when they saw on their television screens the use of millions of these weapons by the state of Israel against Lebanon and the consequences for its people. Sixty per cent. of Israeli cluster strikes were in built-up areas, with the inevitable impact on innocent human life. At the end of the conflict it was estimated that there could have been as many as a million unexploded cluster sub-munitions littering roads, schools, wells, houses, gardens and fields, taking their toll on the Lebanese population. A clean-up operation continues, in which the UK Department for International Development is playing a valuable and important role, but that, we should not forget, is a diversion of development aid money from other humanitarian projects.

At the end of that conflict, cluster munitions, as an issue, had gone up the political agenda across the face of the planet. Civil society was brilliantly organised by the Cluster Munition Coalition of more than 350 organisations in more than 100 countries. They found politicians who were willing to listen, ready to be convinced and prepared to act. From 2000 until 2007 attempts had been made to negotiate on cluster munitions at the UN convention on certain conventional weapons, and this had been blocked every time by the United States and others. When in 2006 a mandate to negotiate an instrument on cluster munitions, proposed by 27 states, was again prevented, Norway and the other countries involved decided to go outside the UN to move the issue forward.

That was the start of what became known as the Oslo process, starting with a conference in that city in February 2007. In doing that, Norway was following the example of Canada, which had used the same approach in securing the landmine treaty 10 years earlier. The Oslo process was quite remarkable. By getting people and their Governments to address the impact of cluster munitions, we saw quite radical changes of position over about a year, not least in this country.

On 23 November 2006, I secured an Adjournment debate in the Chamber on cluster munitions in which I urged the then Labour Government to play a leading role in the Oslo process and to take the initiative by announcing the UK’s intention to renounce all cluster munitions. The then Minister of State, Ministry of Defence who responded described cluster munitions as

“lawful weapons that provide a unique capability against certain types of legitimate target”,

and went on to say:

“Our military commanders judge the degree of force to employ to achieve the mission, subject always to strict compliance with international humanitarian law. We believe that that is a sufficiently adequate body of law. It puts considerable constraints on the use of cluster munitions.”

He added that

“a total ban on the use of all types of sub-munition would have an adverse impact on the UK’s operational effectiveness.”—[Official Report, 23 November 2006; Vol. 453, c. 802.]