(Geneva) More than 1,000 people have been victims of cluster munitions in Ukraine since the invasion by Russia in 2022, according to a specialist observatory, which warns against the temptation to acquire these weapons already banned in many countries.
Since Russia invaded its neighbor in February 2022, Ukraine has recorded the highest annual number of cluster munition casualties in the world, the Cluster Munition Coalition said in its annual report on Monday.
It determined that cluster munitions had been used by forces on both sides and that these weapons had killed and injured more than 1,000 people in the country since the start of the war, mostly in 2022.
Cluster munitions can be dropped from aircraft or fired by artillery before scattering various types of small bombs over a wide area.
The report stresses that last year’s figures – around 100 victims – are probably a serious underestimate.
Loren Persi, one of the researchers responsible for the report, stressed at a press briefing that if the impact of all the cluster munition attacks claimed by the Russian media or ministries were verified, “that would represent close to 900 victims.”
Ukraine makes you think
The war in Ukraine prompted neighbouring Lithuania to begin the process of withdrawing from the Oslo Convention this year, whose signatories pledge to eliminate such weapons from their arsenal and to stop producing and selling them.
This imminent conflict “shows that it is extremely difficult to effectively replace cluster munitions and their defensive capabilities to stop a large-scale attack,” Lithuanian Deputy Defense Minister Renius Pleskys said in July.
The decision, which is due to take effect within six months if Vilnius does not reverse its decision, is “reckless” and “ignores the risks of harm to civilians,” warned Mary Wareham, deputy director of the Crisis, Conflict and Arms division at Human Rights Watch, who helped prepare the report.
“The concern now is how to contain what has happened and try to ensure that the virus does not spread further,” she said.
Neither Ukraine nor Russia are parties to the Convention.
The observer warned that the use of these weapons by countries that are not signatories to the Convention risks weakening it.
“The actions of countries that have failed to ban cluster munitions endanger civilians and threaten the integrity and universality of the international treaty banning these heinous weapons,” coalition leader Tamar Gabelnick said in a statement.
The only two other countries where new cluster munition attacks were recorded last year – Burma and Syria – are also not among the 112 states parties to the 2008 Convention.
This is also the case with the United States, which caused an uproar by deciding last year to supply cluster munitions to Kyiv.
Civilian casualties
These weapons pose a lasting threat to civilian populations, as many of them do not explode on impact, acting like mines that can explode years later.
In Ukraine, for example, agricultural land is now more contaminated with unexploded cluster munitions than with landmines, the report estimates.
Before the war began, Ukraine had not recorded any cluster munition casualties for several years. But it had 916 in 2022, accounting for nearly half of the 219 casualties recorded worldwide last year.
With both Russia and Ukraine continuing to use cluster munitions in the war, the report says it is not possible to systematically document and attribute responsibility for every attack or casualty.
Of the 219 casualties reported worldwide in 2023, 118 were caused directly by cluster munition attacks.
The other 101 victims were killed or injured by unexploded cluster munitions in Ukraine, Syria and Burma as well as six other countries: Azerbaijan, Iraq, Laos, Lebanon, Mauritania and Yemen, the report said.