US President Joe Biden announced on Friday July 7 the delivery of cluster munitions to Ukraine. Weapons yet prohibited by the Oslo Convention.
Joe Biden’s announcement was quickly criticized by the international community. The US president said he made a “very difficult” decision by validating the delivery of cluster munitions to Ukraine. They are prohibited in a number of countries, notably European, signatories of the Oslo Convention, but neither the United States, nor Ukraine, nor Russia and nor China are parties to it.
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Cluster munitions are bombs, a kind of hollow shell, which themselves contain other smaller bombs. They can thus disperse several hundred small explosive charges. When dropped by plane or fired from a cannon, they open in the air, releasing the small bombs which explode on hitting the ground. These weapons do a lot of damage since they cover a very large perimeter, sometimes more than 30,000m². For these same reasons, they are also very imprecise.
Some of the small bombs do not explode when dropped, either because the ground is too soft or because they are defective. This is the case for 40% of them, according to the NGO Handicap International. Consequently, they risk exploding at the slightest manipulation and constitute a great danger for civilians, especially children, especially since some of these munitions can take decades to explode.
“Pity”
They can thus make entire areas uninhabitable in the countries in which they are used. This is the case in Laos, bombarded for nine years, between 1964 and 1973, and whose territory is today full of tens of millions of submunitions. This is why the Oslo Convention, signed in 2008, prohibits the use, manufacture, trade and storage of cluster munitions.
Shortly after Joe Biden’s announcement, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen on Sunday warned Ukraine against the use of these cluster munitions, citing “the painful experience“from his country where American airdrops in the 1970s killed or maimed tens of thousands of people.” Out of pity for the Ukrainian people, I call on the American president, as supplier, and the Ukrainian president, as recipient, not to use cluster bombs in the war because the real victims will be the Ukrainians“, did he declare.
After 30 years of civil war that ended in 1998, Cambodia remains one of the most heavily mined countries in the world. Around 20,000 Cambodians have been killed over the past four decades after stepping on mines or unexploded ordnance. Clearance work continues to this day, with the government pledging to clear all mines and unexploded ordnance by 2025.
Some countries still make them
If the United States can announce their delivery today, it is because they did not sign this famous Oslo Convention of 2008, like 59 other countries. In concrete terms, this treaty, which entered into force in August 2010, was signed by 119 States in December 2008 and prohibits the use, manufacture, trade and storage of cluster munitions. It also includes obligations to States Parties such as victim assistance and clearance of contaminated areas.
Although the country no longer produces cluster munitions, Washington still has very large stocks of them: three million, according to Handicap International. Today, 16 countries continue to manufacture them in the world, including Israel, China and Russia, which has also frequently used them in Ukraine. On the other hand, Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom, which have signed and apply the 2010 Convention, have recently destroyed all their stocks.
According to the association, since 2010, these cluster bombs have been used many times in conflicts in Syria, Yemen, Libya and Sudan in recent years. This is not the first time that kyiv has used them in turn, according to the NGO Human Rights Watch. According to her, the country made use of it last year around Izium, a city in eastern Ukraine controlled by the Russians.