Celebrating the Convention on Cluster Munitions becoming international law

Cambodians are no strangers when it comes to the plight caused by explosive remnants of war (ERW) such as landmines and cluster munitions. So when the Convention on Cluster Munitions became an international law on 1 August, many turned out to celebrate.

Some 1,000 people, including students, Buddhist monks, and landmine survivors, got together at the Reflection Centre of Meta Karun in Siem Reap province on 2 August to applaud the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) becoming an international law.

The event called on the Royal Government of Cambodia to sign and ratify the treaty to join global efforts to ban cluster bombs.Organizers said the gathering aimed to build the momentum in the lead up to the First Meeting of States Parties of the CCM in Vientiane, Lao PDR – another country still suffering from the cluster bombs also – in November this year.

“I would like to ask our government to give us big hope by signing and ratifying this treaty so that we can go to the meeting in Laos with good news,” said Kosal Song, a female survivor of landmines. An International Campaign to Ban Landmine ambassador, she works at Jesuit Refugee Service/Cambodia which organised the event in Siem Reap.

Cluster bombs have killed and injured thousands of civilians during the last 40 years and continue to do so today. They cause widespread harm on impact and yet remain dangerous, killing and injuring civilians long after a conflict has ended.

In Cambodia, cluster munitions were used during the Viet Nam War when the United States war planes dropped millions of sub-munitions. Although the extent of contamination has yet to be fully documented, there are an estimated 1.9 million to 5.8 million cluster munitions remnants in the country.

The Cambodian people know firsthand the devastating legacy of cluster munitions. Beside their ability to kill and maim people indiscriminately, the destruction they can cause is also affecting livelihoods, productivity and human development in the long-term. The victims are mostly civilians.

According to the Cluster Munitions Coalition (CMC), a platform of civil society organisations, one third of all recorded cluster munitions casualties are children.UNDP has been at the forefront of global efforts to ban cluster munitions and continue to advocate for all countries to adhere to the Convention and its principles.

In Cambodia, UNDP is working alongside the Cambodian Campaign to Ban Landmines and Cluster Munitions to encourage the Government of Cambodia to sign and ratify the Convention without delay.

The Convention was created and opened for signature in December 2008 in Oslo to prevent any future use of cluster munitions and to assist those countries and communities that have been affected by cluster munitions.The convention, which has now been signed by 108 countries and ratified by more than 35 countries, prohibits state parties to use, produce, transfer, and stockpile cluster munitions.

Participants of the event included students, teachers, Buddhist monks, representatives of Christian charity organisations, survivors of landmines and cluster bombs, tourists, diplomats, representatives of the Cambodian Mine Action Authority (CMAA), Cambodian Mine Action Centre, UNDP, ICRC, Handicap International, and Jesuit Refugee Service. They were greeted with a “Cluster Bomb Dance” performed by Cambodian artists, Wheel Chair Dancing Band, to reinforce the message about banning the cluster munitions. The dancers – some of whom played the role of farmers while others imitated planes dropping cluster bombs – were portraying the sufferings inflicted by the weapons on people’s lives, and therefore they must be banned.

Kosal Song said that, before the State Party meeting in Laos, her campaign plans more activities to collect signatures to support the cause.“These signatures will be brought by the survivors to the meeting in Laos to show the world that we are joining together to ban cluster bombs and we are waiting to see their good action plan to help survivors to get a better life,” she said.