As Common Dreams reported earlier this month, the refusal of countries including Russia, Ukraine, and the United States to end the use and transfer of cluster munitions caused nearly 1,000 civilian casualties last year.
“Countries that have not banned cluster munitions should heed the call of the United Nations secretary-general and join the convention without delay,” Wareham asserted.
A youth contingent of the advocacy group Mine Action Fellows, members of which attended the Geneva meeting, said in a statement that “while we have much to celebrate, we cannot ignore the harm done by states not party and the escalation in deaths from cluster munitions.”
“Producing, using, and transferring cluster munitions by any actor, under any circumstance is unacceptable,” the group added. “We call for an immediate stop to the transfer and use of this indiscriminate weapon.”
The remarks from Wareham and Mine Action Fellows came as the Biden administration is reportedly close to approving the shipment of longer-range ballistic missiles armed with cluster munitions to Ukrainian forces defending their country from a 19-month Russian invasion. This, after the U.S. began sending 155mm artillery shells to Kyiv earlier this summer. Russian and Ukrainian forces have both killed and wounded soldiers and civilians with cluster bombs during the war.
Earlier this month, the U.S. also started sending Ukraine depleted uranium munitions, which have been linked to birth defects, miscarriages, and cancers after their use by U.S. forces in Iraq and Yugoslavia.
Multiple congressional efforts to prohibit the export of U.S. cluster munitions to any country have failed to advance. Earlier this summer, the Republican-controlled House Rules Committee voted down a resolution proposed by Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.), while backing a new one led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.)—whose controversial sponsorship doomed the measure.
The latest effort to thwart the transfer of cluster bombs is an amendment spearheaded by Jacobs and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), with Reps. Jesús “Chuy” García (D-Ill.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), Andrea Salinas (D-Ore.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), and Jill Tokuda (D-Hawaii) as co-sponsors.
“Sending cluster munitions anywhere in the world makes the United States complicit in the unavoidable and inevitable civilian harm that follows,” Jacobs told The Intercept on Thursday. “No amount of guardrails or promised precautions are enough because these weapons are unpredictable and maim and kill indiscriminately—potentially years after their intended use.”
Claiming that the U.S. “has a strong reputation for upholding human rights around the world,” Jacobs added that “that message is muddied when we’re willing to send these weapons that are infamous for the carnage they cause.”
Since the end of the Vietnam War, unexploded cluster munitions—which can look like inviting toys to children who find them—have killed approximately 20,000 civilians in Laos, where the U.S. dropped more bombs than all sides in World War II combined. The U.S. dropped as many as 270 million cluster bombs on Laos, and less than 1% of the unexploded bomblets have been cleared since. They are still killing civilians to this day.
“sending cluster munitions anywhere in the world makes the united states complicit in the unavoidable and inevitable civilian harm that follows,”
last time i checked the americans are hardly concerned about “civilian harm”, hence the war in ukraine, not to mention their filthy past.
they’ve never cared about human life at all, they’re the only country in the universe to have used all three kinds of weapons of mass destruction
they exterminated 10% of the total population of laos with air raids and it never even made the news hehehe
americans cared so little that seemingly an explanation about a “fight for democracy and freedom” wasn’t even required. apparently nobody #stoodwithlaos as hundreds of thousands were being slaughtered indiscriminately.
kazetová munícia je svinstvo. inak všetky zbrane zabíjajú. skúste zakázať všetky!!! alebo ak chce niekto vojnu tak nech ide on sám bojovať a nie posiela na smrť iných. myslí, že by bolo hneď po vojne ak by mali ísť do zákopov politici, ktorí tie vojny rozdúchavajú.