Making Latin America cluster bomb free

Mohamed, a cluster bomb victim

the entire WORLD should be cluster bomb free, but it's a start...

Peru's proposal to make Latin America the world's first cluster munitions-free region received broad support from the countries that took part in this week's intergovernmental conference on a future global treaty against the weapons in Lima, said local authorities.

The Wednesday through Friday meeting was a success, with 22 additional nations joining the process of drafting an international convention to ban cluster bombs, which began in February in Oslo, Norway and is to conclude in late 2008, said Peruvian Deputy Defence Minister Fabián Novak.

That brings the total number of countries involved in the process to 68. The convention would be similar to the Mine Ban Treaty, which bans anti-personnel land mines.

"We have taken sure steps towards a legal instrument aimed at protecting human beings, which would prohibit the use, production and storage of cluster munitions," Novak told IPS. "That is demonstrated by the increase in the number of nations that have adhered to the process that began in Oslo."

"At the next regional meeting, in Costa Rica, a sister country that backs Peru's proposal, we will build a consensus to turn Latin America into the first region free of cluster bombs," he said.

[...]

Cluster bombs are dropped in a canister that splits open in mid-air, scattering hundreds of soda-can-size bomblets over wide areas. The bombs can be either air-dropped or ground-launched, and are difficult to target accurately. Between five and 30 percent of the bomblets do not explode on impact, posing a risk to civilians for years to come.

cluster bombs and land mines are horrible weapons, right up there with nukes as things that only someone with a truly demented view of the world could dream up... of course they will continue to exist, but that doesn't mean they can't be forbidden and eradicated to the maximum extent possible...

unfortunately, i learned something i didn't know, and, as one who lives part-time in argentina, was distressed to find out, particularly since argentina is proposing an exception for themselves...

Argentina, one of the Latin American nations that manufactures and stores cluster bombs, backed a proposal by Australia, Finland, France and Poland to include an exception in the international convention for countries that produce bombs with a self-destruct mechanism.

The Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC), made up of 200 organisations pushing for a total ban, is vigorously opposed to the proposed exceptions.

Director of the Human Rights Watch Arms Division Steve Goose told IPS that trusting the self-destruct mechanisms of cluster bombs is akin to believing that it makes them less lethal, which he said is absolutely false.

and, of course, my own country could hardly be expected to support such a rational initiative...

[T]he United States, which is not taking part in the process, wants cluster bombs to be discussed within the framework of the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW). But during the debates in Lima, most of the participating nations rejected that proposition, arguing that the CCW is ineffective and burdened by red tape.

U.S. Nobel Peace Prize-winner Jody Williams remarked to IPS that she was not surprised that countries that produce and use cluster bombs are the very countries that are applying pressure for the question to be discussed under the CCW.

Williams, who headed up the movement that led to the signing of the Mine Ban Treaty against land mines, said that in November 2006, the countries that form part of the CCW rejected an initiative to launch negotiations aimed at banning cluster munitions.

So, she asked, "what can we expect" from that forum? Besides, noted the activist, the countries most heavily affected by cluster bombs do not form part of the CCW.

yep, "what can we expect...?" damn little, for sure...

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