TNS Corner
Oslo Treaty Bans Cluster Munitions Internationally

Dec 4, 2008, 16:53

Siva Sharma - TNS

Oslo - Norwegian Tamils protested in Oslo in front of the Oslo City Hall against the use of Cluster Bombs by the Sri Lanka. Oslo, 125 countries gathered to sign a landmark treaty banning use, production, transfer and stockpiling of cluster munitions.

111 countries have signed for the treaty and more countries are expected to sign the treaty while, Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre addressing the public outside Oslo City Hall after signing the CCM Treaty.

Oslo City Hall the slogan of the international campaign to ban cluster munitions was: “make it happen”. By changing the slogan to “we made it happen,” the Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, declared the success of the Oslo Process, an open and time bound diplomatic process that included States, Civil Society, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the United Nations (UN). The process began in February 2007.

Norwegian Tamils expressed support to the signing of the CCM and demonstrated against Sri Lanka's use of cluster munitions on civilians in Vanni.

Lora Lumpe, the coordinator of the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines and Cluster Bombs said the CCM was establishing a "powerful norm that cluster bombs are no longer an acceptable weapon of war.

"U.S. President-elect Barak Obama had voted against this type of weapon. Let us examine whether the new U.S. administration has a more positive stand than the outgoing," said Jens Stoltenberg, the Norwegian Prime Minister, who was the first to sign the treaty, while responding to a question from the Norwegian news agency NTB.

An official of New York-based Human Rights Watch, Steve Goose, who spoke to UN reporters on Wednesday said,

"The cluster bomb treaty will save countless lives by stigmatising a weapon that kills civilians even after fighting ends."

Goose, who is the director of the Arms Division at Human Rights Watch, expressed the hope that "President-elect Barack Obama will give the cluster ban treaty a top priority".

"We will love to see Washington, Moscow, and the others sign the treaty, but we think the ban will so stigmatise cluster bombs that even those who do not join now will be deterred from using the weapon," he said.

"But, a U.S. decision to sign would certainly signal President Barack Obama's commitment to multilateral action after the go-it-alone Bush era," he noted.

The Associated Press quoted an Australian anti-cluster bomb campaigner Daniel Barty : "Once you get half the world on board, it's hard to ignore a ban."

The United States, Russia, India, Pakistan and several Middle Eastern nations were among the countries having avoided joining the international treaty. Britain, Australia, Canada, France, Japan and Germany were among the signatories.

Cluster bomblets are packed by the hundreds into artillery shells, bombs or missiles, which scatter them over vast areas. Some fail to explode immediately. The unexploded bomblets can then lie dormant for years until they are disturbed, often by children attracted by their small size and bright colors.

Signatory states are required to promote the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM), to notify non-signatory parties of their treaty obligations, and to discourage non-signatory state parties from using cluster munitions. Signatory nations to the convention, better known as the Oslo Process, are required to dispose of their stockpiles of cluster bombs in eight years.