There is alarming news. And there is even more alarming news because it does not generate alarm. This is what has happened before the announcement that the United States will send cluster bombs in the new arms package to Ukraine. Neither Europe nor NATO have criticized the decision despite the fact that it violates international humanitarian law.
What are cluster bombs and what do they mean? Why is it relevant to talk about them?
Any weapon, used in a war context, has serious impacts – many of them not initially foreseen – in terms of human lives. But there are weapons that, due to their characteristics and typology, cause indiscriminate impacts on the civilian population in a special way. It is not for nothing that, since 1980, there has been the Convention on the Prohibitions or Restrictions of Certain Conventional Weapons that can be considered excessively harmful or with indiscriminate effects (CCW), an annex to the historic Geneva Conventions, which among other weapons includes antipersonnel mines. or cluster bombs.
Cluster bombs are bombs that contain many small bombs. When launched, they release dozens or hundreds of explosive charges, generically and indiscriminately affecting a large area. In addition, a significant part of these munitions do not explode and, as happened with mines, they remain dormant, being able to explode years later, even though the conflict has ended. So we already know for sure something about these cluster bombs that are going to be sent to Ukraine: they will cause death and damage when used and they will cause death and damage in the future. Also about the civilian population of Ukraine.
For this reason, the exculpatory statements, without going any further than those of the NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, in the sense that these bombs are going to be used as a defense and not as an attack, show a serious ignorance of what the bombs are. cluster and what are its consequences.
Aware of its legacy of death and destruction, precisely twenty years ago in 2023, the Campaign for the abolition of cluster bombs (the Cluster Munition Coalition) was launched. And, as a result of this work by international civil society, and the initial impulse of the United Nations, in 2008 the Convention on Cluster Munitions was adopted, which entered into force in 2010 and currently has the signature of 123 states. Although there are powers and producing countries that have refused to join it, the Convention is international law, a benchmark for humanitarian disarmament, and has achieved a considerable reduction in the use of cluster bombs and their impact on human lives.
International organizations and European countries have rightly criticized Russia's attack on Ukraine and its constant violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, including precisely the use of cluster bombs. . It is not at all coherent to have criticized it and, now, to make it easier for them to be used.
Even for those who approve the shipment of arms there should be red lines: the use – and the re-legitimization – of a particularly cruel weapon and one that international humanitarian law prohibits.
In this sense, the silence of the European countries is downright scandalous. Especially because according to Article 21 of the Convention, to which they are signatories, "each State Party (...) will make every effort to discourage States not Party to this Convention from using cluster munitions."
