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The human cost of cluster bombs |
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By Katleen Maes Cluster bombs continue to hurt people and their livelihoods years
after they were dropped. |
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September
2008 Lebanon:
21-year-old Fayz is sitting in his living room, staring at the leg he cannot
use anymore because the nerves have been cut as a result of a cluster
submunition explosion. Fayz has undergone several operations and is waiting
to receive rehabilitation and psychosocial and educational support. His case
is similar to that of many young people injured in the aftermath of the 2006
conflict with Israel. Except that Fayz was injured while herding sheep in the
Western Beka’a valley almost 12 years ago. He has received no assistance to
enable him to overcome his trauma or return to school. Cluster
munitions are imprecise weapons, designed to strike a greater surface area
than many other conventional weapons by dispersing smaller, but still lethal,
submunitions. Scattered on the ground, these submunitions create a large
footprint. Within that footprint, they kill and injure both military
personnel and civilians. Even in optimal test conditions, up to a quarter of
submunitions fail to explode on impact. In real-life situations, failure
rates are consistently much higher. Cluster munitions: creating a lost generation
in Lebanon? The 2006
conflict in Lebanon drew widespread attention to the effects of cluster
munitions on civilian populations. However, it was not the first time that
Lebanon had been hit by these weapons. Prior to 2006, Israel had used cluster
munitions in Lebanon in 1978, 1982, 1996 and December 2005. According to UN
and media reports citing Israeli Defence Force (IDF) commanders,
approximately four million cluster submunitions were delivered in the
July–August conflict, most of them in the last 72 hours of the war. Overlapping
footprints, the clearance of visible cluster munitions (disturbing the
footprints) and incomplete surveying make it impossible to estimate the total
number of cluster munitions delivered, or the overall failure rate. However,
it is clear that estimated failure rates are higher than the official figure
of 5–23%. The UN Mine Action Coordination Centre in South Lebanon (MACC-SL)
estimates that between 32% and 40% fail overall. This would mean that the
recent conflict added approximately 1.5 million unexploded submunitions to
the mines and ordnance already on the ground from previous wars. As of 15
January 2007, there were at least 555 recorded cluster munitions casualties
in Lebanon, of which 122 were killed and 433 injured. Children make up 24% of
casualties; most of them, 114, are boys. A total of 338 casualties were
recorded prior to 12 July 2006, and 217 casualties were recorded between 12
July and 15 January 2007 (53 of whom were children under 18). These recorded
totals do not include up to 175 unconfirmed cluster munitions casualties
during or shortly after the conflict. Most
people left south Lebanon prior to 10 August, undoubtedly reducing the number
of civilian cluster submunitions casualties during the conflict. Due to the
nature of the conflict, the use of different types of weapons and
difficulties with data collection, it is impossible to determine how many
people were injured or killed by cluster submunitions during strikes. In the
aftermath of the war, reporting was only possible from accessible areas, and
it is also understood that most Hizbullah casualties due to cluster
submunitions are not included in the data. In the post-emergency phase, a
retroactive survey should be conducted to provide appropriate assistance to
cluster submunitions survivors as part of a larger group of people with
disabilities (PWD), and to determine the impact of cluster munitions on
civilians during conflict (to see if this weapon can rightfully be used in
war) and in its immediate aftermath. Cluster
munitions are large surface weapons. In Lebanon, they were used by Israel
against a non-regular armed force (Hizbullah) in a small but relatively
densely populated area, contaminating places where civilians need to go on a
daily basis, such as roads, farmland, gardens and homes. Most incidents
immediately after cluster munition strikes occur in or near the house, when
returnees investigate damage and try to make their homes habitable again.
Several months after the conflict, some people were still living in tents in
front of their houses because failed submunitions litter their homes. In the
longer term, a large percentage of casualties occur while farming, herding
animals or carrying out other livelihood activities. In addition to the loss
of life and the economic damage, cluster munitions exact a high psychosocial
and educational cost. People feel unsafe every step they take, the secure
bastion of the home is not always safe, schools are damaged or opened late
and many children are not free to play where they want. The 2006
conflict resulted in a soaring cluster submunition casualty rate of just over
two people per day until the end of the year. The average casualty rate in
the years prior to the conflict had slumped to a low two per year. At the
beginning of 2007, casualties dropped to an average of three a week,
according to MACC-SL. The reduction of casualties is mainly due to the
impressive clearance capacity in Lebanon, which has been able to provide a
rapid response to the emergency. It is estimated that this will take until
the end of 2007. Afterwards, pasture lands will be cleared and pre-conflict
clearance can be resumed. However, 70% of southern Lebanon’s economy is based
on agriculture, which means that cluster submunitions will continue to cause
casualties at a steady rate. Cluster munitions: between the immediate and
the long term Throughout
the conflict, Lebanon’s medical and humanitarian infrastructure, though
stretched to its limits, held up, with the assistance of a vibrant civil society
and international organisations. With nearly 15 years of experience in the
country, Handicap International (HI) scaled up its post-conflict activities.
HI prioritised equal partnership relations with long-standing local partners.
A partnership approach needs to be truly equal in order to ensure
sustainability, capacity-building and local ownership. This is crucial as
cluster submunition survivors often need life-long support. A varied,
accessible, rights-based package responding to the needs identified by the
survivors, their families and communities is a necessity to fully
(re)integrate them into society. Otherwise, there is a real risk that these
new cluster munitions victims – meaning the affected individual, their
families and communities – will end up as many mine and ERW victims before
them: one of the most impoverished groups in society, facing double
discrimination. So, rather than building new structures, HI chose to
strengthen existing ones by supplying materials and technical advice, and assisting
with coordination issues faced by local agencies. At the same time, HI has
worked to ensure the financial and physical accessibility aspects of aid and
reconstruction efforts, and trained community de-miners to assist in cluster
munitions clearance efforts. In
parallel, HI set up disability information and referral points, to respond to
the specific and general needs of PWD – medical care, physical
rehabilitation, psychosocial support, economic support and equal rights. HI
is also in charge of optimising the coordination of international aid
efforts. In partnership with the Ministry of Social Affairs and local
partners, and supported by the European Commission, a telephone platform and
online database of available local and international aid services was set up.
The issue
of the rehabilitation and reintegration of explosive remnants of war (ERW)
survivors cannot be separated from the broader context of development in the
affected country. In these efforts, non-specialist agencies would benefit from
liaising with national and international agencies dealing with cluster
munitions or mine action in general. Most countries affected by cluster
munitions have got a mine action infrastructure under UN or government
auspices, and in cooperation with national and international NGOs. These
agencies, in a first stage, need to be consulted to provide security and risk
prevention briefings to non-specialist staff. These centres, like for example
the MACC-SL and the Landmine Resource Centre, will be able to provide
up-to-date information on casualties, mine risk education (MRE) and demining,
and circulate this to all stakeholders upon request. Secondly,
development agencies should coordinate their crosscutting response with the
technical experts and community liaison staff of the specialised agencies, to
ensure complementarity of specialised and general assistance. Reconstruction
sites, for example, need to be declared mine/ERW-safe before reconstruction
starts. Education or psychosocial support programmes can include a standard
MRE module. And reconstruction planning should take accessibility
requirements for people with disabilities into account. Many large
organisations, such as UNICEF, UNDP, the ICRC and the large NGOs (like HI),
already integrate a standard mine/ERW component into their operations in
severely affected countries, even if the focus of their work is more general.
Cluster submunitions: a worldwide
generational problem Cluster
munitions have been used in 24 countries and areas, and their use is
suspected in at least a dozen more. In 2006, cluster munitions were deployed
in Iraq, Israel and Lebanon, and are thought to have been used in
Afghanistan. Apart from intermittent international protest, the issue of cluster
munitions and the humanitarian impact – just like the items themselves – lay
largely dormant until the Lebanon conflict. HI
research reveals that there are serious humanitarian problems with cluster
munitions. Unlike the initial blasts, the effects of unexploded submunitions
are more discriminate: they kill and injure almost exclusively civilians
(98%). The research recorded more than 11,000 confirmed cluster casualties.
But the real number could as high as 100,000 given that 91% casualties occurred
in countries with incomplete or no data collection mechanisms, such as Iraq. More than
half the casualty toll occurs while people go about their normal daily
business. Casualties are mostly male (84%), and nearly half of them are under
18 years of age. The number of casualties occurring while carrying out
livelihood activities shows the direct economic impact on
cluster-contaminated communities. In many of these countries, men are the
traditional breadwinners. Since adult males and boys represent the majority
of casualties, the socio-economic loss both in the immediate term and for the
future cannot be underestimated. Cluster munitions: bringing HI back to its
roots HI is
exploiting its field and research experience in the area of victim assistance
and data collection to provide a better understanding of the human cost of
cluster munitions. In mid-2006, this resulted in Belgium becoming the first
country to ban the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of cluster
munitions. But it was the Lebanon crisis that triggered a worldwide public
and media interest in the campaign. Some 350,000 people have signed HI’s
petition calling for a ban. Spurred on by the Belgian ban, resolutions for a
moratorium were tabled or passed in Australia, Austria, Denmark, France and
Norway, and calls for a moratorium were issued in European Union and UN
forums. On 5
November 2006, local members of the Cluster Munition Coalition organised the
first ‘Say No to Cluster Bombs’ day in Beirut, which was co-sponsored by HI. Hundreds
of schoolchildren attended MRE sessions and tried walking with artificial
limbs, and people signed a petition which was sent to Geneva, where the Third
Review Conference of the UN Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) was
convened the following week. At the CCW, then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan
stated: ‘Recent events show that the atrocious, inhumane effects of these
weapons … must be addressed immediately so that civilian populations can
start rebuilding their lives’. During
the conference, some states recognised that the CCW framework will not
respond to the human tragedy caused by cluster munitions, just as it could
not respond effectively to the landmine crisis ten years earlier. It has
become clear that treaty negotiations outside the UN framework are
inevitable. These will be led by Norway, which will try to extend the new
model of diplomacy created by the Mine Ban Treaty: a fast-moving multilateral
dialogue with extensive civil society input. On 22 and 23 February 2007, the
Norwegian government invited 48 states, as well as UN and civil society
groups, to Oslo to start a process towards an international ban. At the end
of the meeting, 46 governments supported a declaration for a new
international treaty and a ban by 2008. This conference was the first of a
series during 2007 (the next meeting was scheduled for May 2007, in Lima,
Peru). The declaration states that a legally binding international instrument
will be agreed by 2008 that will ‘prohibit the use, production, transfer and
stockpiling of cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians,
and establish a framework for cooperation and assistance that ensures
adequate provision of care and rehabilitation to survivors and their
communities, clearance of contaminated areas, risk education and destruction
of stockpiles of prohibited cluster munitions’. The cluster bomb treaty was
approved by more than 100 countries in May 2008. Cluster munitions: a call for action Within
this legal framework, HI will be part of a treaty drafting committee. Drawing
lessons from the Mine Ban Treaty, it is important that affected individuals,
their families and communities are provided with an efficient and accessible
rights-based assistance package, based on a twin-track approach which takes
account of the specific requirements of survivors and the general development
needs of the affected society. The international community is required to
commit adequate material and technical resources, while acknowledging that
the final responsibility in achieving appropriate assistance lies with the
national governments themselves. Through
continued research into the human impact of cluster munitions, HI will ensure
that the plight of casualties, as well as the economic, social and
psychological cost of these weapons, is fully acknowledged and documented,
not only in Lebanon but in all affected countries. The research results will
be disseminated to support national campaigns and to feed relevant
information back into field operations. In addition, HI will work closely
with national campaigns and build their capacity. The human
cost of cluster munitions cannot be seen as old news – these weapons are
spreading through new conflicts, destroying lives, disrupting communities and
denying vulnerable populations access to the resources needed for economic
recovery for generations to come. Katleen
Maes is Victim Assistance Coordinator for Handicap International in Brussels.
This article first appeared on the Human Practice Network
website. Resources Fatal
Footprint: The Global Human Impact of Cluster Munitions Handicap International’s Aid
Coordination Platform Handicap International’s Campaign Against
Cluster Munitions The International Campaign to Ban Landmines Human Right Watch’s
resource library on cluster munitions |
ã2008
– Khaled Diab. Unless otherwise stated, all the content on this website is the
copyright of Khaled Diab.