Nations push to ban cluster bombs

Kean Wong:
In Ireland, representatives of more than 100 nations gathered to finalize a treaty on banning cluster bombs. Victims of the deadly weapon were also there to testify. Although the world's top users of these weapons did not attend, a conference organizer is optimistic about influencing the international community to implement the ban.

Protesters with first-hand experience of what cluster bombs can do to the human body greet delegates at an international gathering to ban such weapons.

More than 100 nations are taking part in a conference in Dublin to finalize a treaty.

The world's top users, stockpilers and producers of cluster bombs including the U.S., Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Israel, are not among them.

Campaigners say that doesn't mean the so-called Oslo Process is toothless.

[Thomas Nash, Clusters Munitions Coalition]:
"The U.S. Russia, and China might not be here today but they will be influenced by the decisions that are made at this conference. We know from history that when a weapon is stigmatized by the general moral consensus of the international community it doesn't get used."

Cluster bombs are dropped from aircraft, opening up in mid air to scatter hundreds of smaller bomblets over a wide area. Many fail to explode when they hit the ground.

More than 13,000 deaths or injuries world-wide are positively attributed to the weapons. Most of the victims are in Laos, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Lebanon.

Naema Ghazi, who lives in the south Lebanese village of Bleeda, knows what it's like.

The United Nations reckons Israel dropped about a million bomblets in this area in the final hours of the war triggered by Hezbollah's capture of two soldiers in 2006.

[Naema Ghazi, Cluster Bomb Victim]: (Arabic):
"I was coming back from the fields. I stepped on the ground and I don't know how it exploded. I knew immediately that I'd lost my leg. It was hanging on by just one vein. My mother saw it and started
screaming."

There's optimism that the Dublin conference will end with a ban on cluster weapons but that's not without opposition. Some European nations don't want to ban all such munitions. There is also pressure for a transitional period and the removal of a clause in the treaty proposals barring signatories from joint operations with countries which use the weapons.

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[minerofblood]

@monimstarfox they're banning weapons that cannot 'determine friend or foe' anti personal mines etc, cluster bombs are intentionally made for have a fail rate to become a mine field.

[minerofblood]

they have a 10% fail detention rate, look at prime examples such as vietnam, theres cluster bombs everywhere, these weapons cannot determine friend or foe, cluster bombs are designed to have these fail det rate, because enemy knows when they have done an airstrike and would think 'cluster bombing in that region' we can't use it, as its a minefield effectively.

[GraffitiBombing247]

save the cluster bombs - you wanna save lives??? nuke ameriKKKa and you will save millions of lives for years to come - and secure the future of the world including constant peace!!

god FUCK ameriKKKa!!!!

[monimstarfox]

this is what happens when a weapon works to damn well but then again in the aftermath the area bombed turns into a minefield. Work more on banning nukes then conventional weapons

[Wezzyisabeast]

war is war cilvilans will get hurt during war it's a fact.

[Wezzyisabeast]

wow they ban cluster bombs but not nukes which are 500X which are more deadly....

[bumaximous45]

Cluster Bombs are desigined for ground artillory they are highly effective

[gairero]

wrong.

[Marrecharmed14]

Idiot! it kills civilians, watch the video! wanna kill troops? drop a normal bomb

[Marrecharmed14]

You guys are really dumb, aren't u? If the US makes up rules about not using cluster bombs, then atleast they won't use them! And Z3R0DARKN3SS : "Not like our enemy follow those rules..." Is our "enemy" civlian mothers and children? So do you mean that is saddam gets to use nukes it's ok for the US to nuke orphanges in Iraq?