Nearly 100 countries met on Dec. 3 and 4 in Oslo. Ten years after the Ottawa Treaty banning anti-personnel mines, a new convention related to cluster munitions was signed in the Norwegian capital to ban their usage, production, stockpiling and transfer.

Cluster bombs can be launched by planes or fired by artillery

Cluster bombs have been massively used in all recent conflicts from Kosovo and South Ossetia through to Iraq and South Lebanon. They are shells that spread explosive engines over wide spaces. In five to 40% of cases, the engines don’t explode and can remain active for decades.

According to Handicap International, since 1965, over 440 million cluster munitions have been dropped, killing and mutilating hundreds of thousands of people. In 98% of cases, the victims are civilians, stresses the NGO in a report.

Faced with this alarming observation, Norway has decided to break out of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) which it deemed inefficient to lead the battle against cluster munitions.

A diplomatic conference in Dublin on May 30, 2008, favoured a convention banning cluster munitions, forcing member countries to destroy their stockpiles within eight years.

Children mistake cluster bombs for toy balls

Stigmatising users of cluster-bombs

Despite the fact that the main users and producers of cluster munitions (USA, Russia, China, Israel …) still refuse to sign the convention, “this ban is a victory that deserves to be celebrated,” says Sophie Couturier, spokeswoman for Handicap International.

Pascal Rapillard, advisor to the director of the Geneva Centre for Humanitarian Demining, calls the text ‘preventive.’ For Dayla Farran, spokeswoman for the UN Mine Action Coordination Centre in Lebanon, it is a ‘dissuasive text’ “which will change behaviour.

”The convention will probably have a strong impact because several European countries, like France and the UK which produce and stockpile cluster munitions, signed it,” she says.

But it will be more than just a dissuasive measure. "No country will want to use a forbidden weapon because it will automatically be stigmatised by the international community," says Couturier. The convention can potentially be as important as the Ottawa Treaty, which was signed by 112 countries in 1997. Ten years later, 158 countries had ratified it.

The contagion effect also can also be seen in some of the measures that some countries have taken on the national level. “Certain countries renounced unilaterally to anti-personnel mines,” notes Rapillard. “Others, like the US, have enforced a moratorium on the production and exportation of these arms.”

International pressure is also starting to bear fruit. In a surprise last-minute announcement, Afghanistan decided to sign the Oslo convention on Dec 3. The government of President Hamid Karzai distinguished itself from its American ally by reminding that the country paid a heavy tribute to the scourge of cluster munitions that cover the ground.

In Kosovo, 80% of victims are under-18. Both cluster bombs and food parcels are yellow

Military and economic stakes

The refusal of certain countries to sign the convention is narrowly linked to important military and economic stakes. "Cluster munitions are a sign of power, a way of imposing terror,” says Couturier.

In regional conflicts, they are also a way to “allow oneself to use a weapon used by the neighbouring enemy,” says Rapillard.

But the stakes are also economic. The armies of cluster munition producing-countries keep drawing from their vast arsenal of cluster munitions which do not conform to new standards that require self-destruction and self-guiding systems. Modernising stockpiles, an expansive task, is not a priority.

These stakes have come to define the definition of cluster munitions itself. According to the Convention text, cluster munitions "means a conventional munition that is designed to disperse or release explosive submunitions each weighing less than 20 kilograms… It does not mean… each munition [that] contains fewer than ten explosive submunitions."

Thanks to this definition, France – which has committed 90% of its cluster munition stockpiles - will be able to keep its 5, 500 Bonus shells (which contain two submunitions each) and its 100 Apaches missiles (containing 50-kilogram submunitions).

Changing behaviour

A number of non-member countries have already visibly changed their behaviour. According to Peter Herby, head of the Mines-Arms unit of the ICRC, “Countries are changing their policies. The US is replacing existing stockpiles with more reliable and self-destructive submunitions."

Barack Obama’s election to the White House on Nov 4 could help move the banning debate forward. "Barack Obama’s position has been changing,” says Couturier, “which contrasts sharply with the Bush administration.”

More recently during the war between South Ossetia and Georgia, the two countries turned to cluster bombs. Human Rights Watch revealed in August, much to Moscow’s embarrassment, that the Russian army used cluster arms in Georgia.

On Sept 1, the NGO also said that Georgia had admitted to using cluster bombs in the conflict with Ossetia. But Russia keeps denying the facts, an attitude that shows the stigmatisation potential of this kind of weapons.

The convention signed in Oslo paves a new way for international humanitarian law. The road toward a comprehensive ban is still long but in Oslo, close to 100 countries took the first step.