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Arguments for restricting cluster weapons: Humanitarian protection versus “military necessity”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 January 2010
Extract
Concerned about the terrible toll of land-mine injuries around the world, six organizations issued a call in October 1992 for an international ban on the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of antipersonnel mines. Other organizations have taken up the call, and the campaign is already having a big impact. One result of the pressure will be the convening, pursuant to a request by France, of a review conference on the 1980 Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May be Deemed to be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects. This renewed interest in controlling indiscriminate and excessively injurious weapons should not be confined to mines but should extend to other classes of modern antipersonnel weapons as well.
- Type
- Prohibitions and Restrictions on the Use of Certain Weapons
- Information
- International Review of the Red Cross (1961 - 1997) , Volume 34 , Issue 299: Special: Prohibitions and Restrictions on the Use of Certain Weapons , April 1994 , pp. 183 - 193
- Copyright
- Copyright © International Committee of the Red Cross 1994
Footnotes
1
The author wishes to thank Dr. Julian Perry Robinson and Richard Huthrie for their helpful comments on drafts of this article.
References
2 Arms Project of Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights, Landmines: A Deadly Legacy, New York, Human Rights Watch, 1993, Appendix 1, pp. 361–362.Google Scholar
3 Ibid.
4 Protocol III to the 1980 Convention places severe restrictions on attacks on military objectives located within a concentration of civilians and, in particular, prohibits completely any attacks by air on such objectives. This provision is intended to prevent huge concentrations of civilians being wiped out by fire: the emphasis is on the prevention of indiscriminate effects. Some delegations at the U.N. Conference which adopted the Convention wished also to protect combatants against the cruel burns caused by incendiaries (in the original Swedish proposal, the use of incendiary weapons would have been prohibited completely, except for illuminating devices and incendiary projectiles used exclusively against aircraft or armoured vehicles; see Blix, H., “Current Efforts to Prohibit the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons”, Instant Research on Peace and Violence, 1974, Vol. 4, No. 1, p. 27 Google Scholar). The Conference drafted and sent to the U.N. General Assembly a resolution inviting all governments “to continue the consideration of the question of protection of combatants against incendiary weapons” with a view to taking up the matter at a review conference on the Convention. Sandoz, Y., “Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons”, International Review of the Red Cross. No. 220, 01–02 1981, pp. 13–14, 17.Google Scholar
5 Doswald-Beck, L., ed., Blinding Weapons: Reports of the Meetings of Experts Convened by the International Committee of the Red Cross on Battlefield Laser Weapons: 1989–1991. Geneva, ICRC, 1993.Google Scholar
6 Doswald-Beck, L. and Cauderay, G. C., “The Development of New Anti-personnel Weapons”, International Review of the Red Cross, No. 279, 11–12 1990, pp. 565–577.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid. A resolution was adopted by the U.N. Conference in 1979 which, inter alia, appealed to all governments “to exercise the utmost care in the development of smallcalibre weapon systems, so as to avoid an unnecessary escalation of the injurious effects of such systems” ( Sandoz, , op cit., p. 33).Google Scholar
9 These estimates are from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute report Antipersonnel Weapons, London, Taylor & Francis, 1978, p. 161 Google Scholar. They are based on the assumption that a single bomblet has an effective casualty radius of 5 to 10 m, so that effective delivery against personnel would be one bomblet per 100 square metres.
10 Prokosch, E., “Antipersonnel Weapons”, International Social Science Journal, 1976, Vol. 28, No. 2, p. 341.Google Scholar
11 Document CDDN/IV/201, with addenda and corrigenda, reproduced in ICRC Conference of Government Experts on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons (Second Session—Lugano, 28.1-26.2.1976): Report, Geneva, ICRC, 1976. Annex A.21, p. 199.Google Scholar
12 Article 7 of Protocol II merely enjoins the parties to a conflict to “endeavour” to record the location of mines and minefields which are not pre-planned
13 Jane's Weapon Systems: 1987–88, London, Jane's, pp. 822–823.Google Scholar
14 Ibid., pp. 128–129.
15 Factors which need to be taken into account in assessing the potential indiscriminate effects of a weapon include its area coverage in relation to the areas of likely targets and their proximity to civilians; variations in area coverage and accuracy according to the mode of attack (high-altitude bombing from high-speed aircraft is likely to be less accurate and result in a greater area coverage than low-level bombing from low-speed aircraft); and increases in area coverage when multiple quantities of weapons are used in an attack.
16 As indicated in the report of the 1976 ICRC Conference of Government Experts on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons (paragraph 70, p. 120), the Swedish proposal to ban the use of anti-personnel cluster weapons was based both on their indiscriminate effects and on the risk of multiple injury, constituting unnecessary suffering. This latter point was challenged by other experts at the Conference.
17 Arkin, W. M., Durrant, D. and Cherni, M., On Impact: Modern Warfare and the Environment: A Case Study of the Gulf War, Washington, Greenpeace, 1991, Appendix A, pp. 3–4.Google Scholar
18 Rockeye bomblets were the most prevalent forms of unexploded ordnance in Kuwait after the war, according to an official of a company clearing mines there ( Landmines: A Deadly Legacy, p. 53 Google Scholar). According to information presentad at the ICRC Symposium on Anti-personnel Mines (Montreux, 21–23 April 1993), the Rockeye bomblets dropped in Kuwait had several different fusing systems which could not be distinguished externally, and the only safe method of disposal was in situ demolition.
19 As the ICRC stated in a report presented to the Twenty-first International Conference of the Red Cross in 1969, belligerents should abstain from using weapons whose harmful effects are beyond the control, in time or space, of those employing them ( Sandoz, , op. cit., p. 5 Google Scholar). Under Article 51(4) of Protocol I additional to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, attacks which are prohibited as indiscriminate include “those which employ a method or means of combat the effects of which cannot be limited as required by this Protocol”. Protocol II to the 1980 Convention attempts to give protection against long-term effects of land-mines by providing for recording and publication of the location of mines and minefields.
20 For example, in Xieng Khouang province, one of the most heavily bombed areas of northern Laos, anti-personnel bomblets were reported to be the most commonly encountered type of unexploded munition after the U.S.-Indochina war. In 1979 the U.S.S.R. initiated an aid programme to clear unexploded munitions from farm land in Xien Khouang province. Over 18 months some 5,000,000 hectares were cleared of 12,700 explosive remnants of many types, with CBU-24 bomblets predominating. (E. S. Martin and M. Hiebert, “Explosive Remnants of the Second Indochina War in Viet Nam and Laos”, in A. H. Westing, ed., Explosive Remnants of War: Mitigating the Environmental Effects, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, London and Philadelphia, Taylor & Francis, 1985, pp. 44–47).
William M. Arkin, Director of Military Research of Greenpeace International, has estimated that a minimum of 24,000,000 bomblets and mines were dropped from cluster weapons (artillery, rockets, and cluster bombs) during the 1991 Gulf War. As Arkin has pointed out, estimates of rates of unexploded munitions vary from 2 to 34 claimed by manufacturers to 10 to 2% observed on the ground. A rate of 5%, credible to most experts, would mean that this short war left over a million unexploded munitions. (These figures are from a paper presented by W. M. Arkin at the public session of the NGO Conference on Anti-personnel Mines held in London on 24 May 1993.)
According to information presented at the ICRC Symposium on Anti-personnel Mines in April 1993, one of the companies engaged in explosive ordnance disposal in Kuwait after the 1991 war cleared over 100,000 unexploded submunitions. The company also cleared over 130,000 anti-tank mines and 230,000 anti-personnel mines from conventionally laid Iraqi barrier minefields in Kuwait.
21 As the ICRC noted in a working paper for the group of governmental experts preparing the review conference, “in many respects this Convention has not achieved its aim, not only because it has been insufficiently ratified or implemented, but also because in many ways it does not provide the means needed to prevent the excessive damage that is actually being caused in armed conflicts, the majority of which are non-international. In particular, the Convention relies too extensively on regulating behaviour in relation to the use of certain weapons, which is frequently difficult to enforce, rather than altogether prohibiting the use of certain types of weapons. Further, no parallel measures have been taken in the disarmament context, which are nevertheless proposed in the preamble of the Convention”, Report of the International Committee of the Red Cross for the Review Conference of the 1980 United Nations Convention …, Geneva, ICRC, 02 1994, p. 1.Google Scholar
A step in the direction of enhancing the universality of the Convention would be the adoption by consensus of a U.N. General Assembly resolution affirming that the provisions of the Convention and its Protocols are expressions of customary international law, and urging all combatants in both international and non-international armed conflicts to observe them
22 Landmines: A Deadly Legacy, pp. 145, 298–299.Google Scholar
23 During the 1991 Gulf war, a British army spokesman described the use of the MLRS against Iraqi artillery and said that the allies were attacking Iraq's “will to resist” as much as their weaponry ( Branigin, William, “Iraqi Losses ‘Horrendous,’ Official Says”, Washington Post, 20 02 1991 Google Scholar). After the war, a U.S. defence publication reported that according to captured Iraqi soldiers, a volley of bomblet-filled MLRS rockets directed against Iraqi artillery “shut down the operation” of the artillery, “partially because of the destruction it caused and partially because of its devastating psychological effects” (“‘Steel Rain’ Shut Down Iraqi Artillery”, Armed Forces Journal International, 05 1991, p. 37 Google Scholar). From a humanitarian perspective, it is doubtful that the inherent damage to civilian life posed by the deployment of a volley of 7,700 bomblets can be justified by the hope of frightening the enemy.