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Report Details Ongoing Civilian Harm From Banned Cluster Bombs
"The Convention on Cluster Munitions provides a vital framework for ending the immediate and long-term harm and suffering caused by these abhorrent weapons," said one of the treaty's architects.
Sep 09, 2024
The overwhelming majority of cluster bomb casualties last year were civilians, with children making up nearly half of those killed or maimed by remnants of the internationally banned munitions, a report published Monday revealed.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) published its annual Cluster Munition Monitor report, which "details the policy and practice of all countries with respect to the international treaty that prohibits cluster munitions and requires destruction of stockpiles, clearance of areas contaminated by cluster munition remnants, and victim assistance."
That treaty, the landmark Convention on Cluster Munitions, has been ratified by 112 nations. However, numerous countries that are not parties to the agreement—including Myanmar, Russia, Syria, Ukraine, and the United States—continued to use or sell cluster bombs.
"Cluster munitions can be fired from the ground by artillery, rockets, missiles, or mortars, or dropped by aircraft," HRW explained. "They typically open in the air, dispersing multiple submunitions or bomblets over a wide area. Many submunitions fail to explode on initial impact, leaving unexploded duds that can indiscriminately injure and kill like landmines for years, until they are found and destroyed."
The results have been devastating. According to the report, 93% of cluster munition casualties reported by the monitor last year were civilians, while children made up 47% of those killed or wounded by cluster bomb remnants. Children are particularly vulnerable to unexploded cluster bomblets, which are often mistaken for toys.
According to the report, the following countries suffered more than 1,000 cluster bomb casualties in 2023: Laos (7,810), Syria (4,445), Iraq (3,201), Vietnam (2,135), and Ukraine (1,213).
HRW noted that "Russia has used stocks of old cluster munitions and newly developed models in Ukraine since 2022" and that "between July 2023 and April 2024, U.S. President Joe Biden approved five transfers to Ukraine of U.S. cluster munitions delivered by 155mm artillery projectiles and by ballistic missiles."
Meanwhile, unexploded cluster munitions dropped by the United States during the Vietnam War are still killing and maiming people, mostly children. In Laos, where the U.S. dropped more bombs than all sides in World War II combined, as many as 270 million cluster munitions were sprinkled over the country. Unexploded bomblets have killed an estimated 20,000 Laotians since the end of the war. It is believed that less than 1% of unexploded cluster munitions have been cleared in Laos.
The report highlighted some promising developments:
In December 2023, the convention reached a major milestone when Peru completed the destruction of its stockpiled cluster munitions, as it was the last state party with declared stocks to complete this obligation. Bulgaria, Slovakia, and South Africa announced the completion of the destruction of their respective cluster munition stocks in September 2023. These developments mean that member countries have collectively now destroyed 100% of their declared cluster munition stocks, destroying 1.49 million cluster munitions and 179 million submunitions.
However, there were also setbacks, such as legislation in Lithuania approving the Baltic nation's withdrawal from the cluster bomb treaty.
"Lithuania's ill-considered move to leave the Convention on Cluster Munitions stains its otherwise excellent reputation on humanitarian disarmament and ignores the risks of civilian harm," said HRW deputy crisis, conflict, and arms director Mary Wareham, who edited the new report. "It's not too late for Lithuania to heed calls to stop its planned withdrawal."
Speaking more broadly of the new report, Wareham—a joint recipient of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for her work with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines—said that "the Convention on Cluster Munitions provides a vital framework for ending the immediate and long-term harm and suffering caused by these abhorrent weapons."
"All countries should join and adhere to the convention if they are serious about protecting civilians from these weapons in the face of rising conflict," Wareham added.
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The Pratasevich Case Is an Urgent Reminder That Europe Fails to Protect Exiles
The operation to detain Raman Pratasevich is a call to action to protect journalists, dissidents and people seeking protection in Europe—at all costs.
May 25, 2021
It was just a few minutes before the Ryanair jet was set to cross into Lithuanian airspace when it diverted suddenly towards Minsk, the capital of Belarus.
A sliver of time and space, of international and national jurisdictions, that decided the fate of one of the passengers: Raman Pratasevich, 26, journalist and co-founder of NEXTA, a popular and influential Belarusian opposition Telegram channel which rose to prominence in the wake of last year's tumultuous presidential elections.
"The death penalty awaits me here," Pratasevich reportedly said as he was taken off the plane in Minsk, back into the clutches of a system that put him on a terrorism watchlist for his journalism. Pratasevich's girlfriend, Russian student Sofia Sapega, was also detained.
Details are still emerging about how the Belarusian authorities managed to get the plane to land in Minsk, though Ryanair has now called it a case of "state-sponsored hijacking." Pratasevich is now in custody, and faces up to 15 years in prison over charges of "organising mass riots", "disorder" and "raising social hostility to law enforcement."
Since election fraud and police violence brought people out on Belarusian city streets last year, NEXTA, now with some 1.2 million subscribers, has documented the country's post-election mobilisation in detail, rising to become one of its foremost information sources--and political factors. The authorities have since declared the channel "extremist". In March this year, the outlet released a film exposing the luxurious and wealthy lifestyle of president Alyaksandr Lukashenka, which, three days later, had already garnered three million views online.
NEXTA was founded by Pratasevich, who now runs a different Telegram channel, and fellow Belarusian journalist, Stsiapan Putsila, and is run from neighbouring Poland, alluding to the extreme difficulty of conducting journalism, or political activity, in Belarus. At least three demonstrators were killed in the aftermath of Belarus' August 2020 election, with 6,700 people detained, and hundreds, if not thousands, of people deliberately tortured or injured by the police. Ensuing criminal investigations have followed many participants of the protest wave, forcing them to leave their country and seek new lives outside Belarus. Pratasevich had, for example, been granted asylum in Lithuania.
"The Protasevich case is part of Lukashenka's general policy of restricting the media landscape," said Vadim Mojeiko, from the Belarusian Institute of Strategic Studies, who highlights recent changes to the country's law on mass media and last week's police raid on TUT.by, a major independent news outlet, over alleged 'tax evasion'. "Many journalists and bloggers are already behind bars, and now the danger is felt by those who are abroad or even flying over Belarus or Russia," he said.
"Protecting those who have already received asylum in Europe, as well as EU citizens, is a minimum task for European countries."
Indeed, European states are supposed to be 'safe havens' for journalists, exiles and dissidents from authoritarian regimes. Values of political pluralism and freedom of speech, rights-based protection for persons fleeing dangerous situations, together with supposedly neutral law enforcement and migration services are meant, in principle, to protect persons at risk from the long arm of their home country's security services.
But a steady stream of harassment and attacks, extraditions, deportations and kidnappings against those fleeing authoritarian states has put that idea under serious strain in recent years--as well as raising questions about how European states are reacting to transnational repression. The European Union may now have its own version of the Magnitsky Act, which imposes asset freezes and travel bans on individuals and entities suspected of human rights violations, but it is yet to stop repression in EU states. And while the Pratasevich case is clearly unprecedented--grounding an EU plane with EU citizens with a fighter jet is new territory--it points to the huge challenge of how states can respond to these acts.
Earlier this year, for example, an Azerbaijani blogger, Mahammad Mirzali, was beaten and stabbed in broad daylight in Nantes, France--in an attack he connected directly to his criticism of the Azerbaijani authorities. Meanwhile, since March, five Chechen exiles seeking asylum in France and Germany have been deported to Russia, where they face likely torture and fabricated criminal investigations.
"What would the EU be doing if Pratasevich were a prominent French journalist?" asked John Heathershaw, professor of politics at the University of Exeter, who researches how authoritarian states target dissidents abroad.
He pointed to the situation of Sharofiddin Gadoev, a Tajik political refugee and Dutch resident. In February 2019, Gadoev, a businessman and exile, was arrested by Russian officials in Moscow and forced onto a plane to Tajikistan, where he faced politically motivated prosecution.
Several weeks after Gadoev was "rendered" to Tajikistan, Heathershaw noted, the Netherlands "successfully demanded his return"--an example, he says, of "what the European Union should do" in the Pratasevich case.
"More broadly, we need to see recognition that anti-immigrant policies within the EU, encourage countries like Tajikistan and Belarus that they can get away with this without a vehement response," said Heathershaw. "They do it because they see Western countries as weak."
"Protecting those who have already received asylum in Europe, as well as EU citizens, is a minimum task for European countries," said Mojeiko. "If regimes like Lukashenka are able to hijack the planes of European airlines with impunity, then this will also be a signal to Putin and other authoritarian leaders that they can do more in relation to European countries they dislike."
"The EU needs to stop treating Belarus like a state with due process and recognise it as a kleptocracy where a cabal of Lukashenka's people keep control of wealth production, both legal and illegal, through vicious means," said Heathershaw. "If they do not step up with a flight ban to and from Belarus, and for the country's airline, then they will have failed."
More practically, it appears that this dramatic case has not only put Belarus back on the political agenda--it's also become a tragic reminder of the potentially extreme risks that journalists and exiles face even after they leave their homes.
"Expressions of 'deep concern' will not be enough," said Mojeiko. "Real action is necessary."
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Federal Judge Blocks Trump Order Targeting Lawyers Supporting ICC Afghan War Crimes Probe
"National security concerns must not become a talisman used to ward off inconvenient claims, a 'label' used to 'cover a multitude of sins.'"
Jan 04, 2021
A federal judge in New York on Monday issued an injunction against President Donald Trump's June executive order sanctioning human rights lawyers cooperating with an International Criminal Court investigtion of alleged U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan.
U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla in Manhattan issued a preliminary injunction (pdf) barring the Trump administration from targeting four law professors with criminal or civil penalties for supporting the work of the ICC in its investigation of alleged extrajudicial killing, torture, rape, and other potential war crimes committed by military and CIA personnel and allied forces during the ongoing 19-year war in Afghanistan--the longest campaign of the so-called War on Terror.
"The executive order is misguided and unconstitutional, violating our fundamental rights to free speech."
--James Goldston,
Open Society Justice Initiative
"The court is mindful of the government's interest in defending its foreign policy prerogatives and maximizing the efficacy of its policy tools," Failla wrote. "Nevertheless, national security concerns must not become a talisman used to ward off inconvenient claims, a 'label' used to 'cover a multitude of sins.'"
The ruling came in a case filed last October by the Open Society Justice Initiative and professors Diane Marie Amann, Margaret deGuzman, Gabor Rona, and Milena Sterio, who argued that Trump's order violates their constitutional rights.
Failla determined that Trump's order unconstitutionally prohibits free speech "so as to induce [ICC officials] to desist from their investigation of U.S. and allied personnel."
James Goldston, executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative, welcomed Failla's decision, saying in a statement that the injunction "affirms what we have said from the start: the executive order is misguided and unconstitutional, violating our fundamental rights to free speech."
\u201c\ud83d\udce2 Win! Thanks to @OSFJustice for leading challenge to Trump admin's dangerous effort to interfere with #ICC work. Now, @Transition46 @JoeBiden must rescind the Executive Order, which still threatens a broad swathe of HR lawyers, ICC staff, advocates, victims- & int'l justice.\u201d— Katherine Gallagher (@Katherine Gallagher) 1609818622
The lawsuit came a month after Trump imposed sanctions targeting Fatou Bensouda and Phakiso Mochochoko, the ICC's chief prosecutor and prosecution jurisdiction division director, respectively, in retaliation for their scrutinty of U.S. wartime conduct.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared at the time that "the United States has never ratified the Rome Statute that created the court, and we will not tolerate its illegitimate attempts to subject Americans to its jurisdiction."
In April 2019, the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber II announced it would not grant a request by Bensouda to open an investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, including deliberate attacks on civilians and child soldier conscription by Taliban militants, torture and sexual violence by members of Afghan National Security Forces, and torture of prisoners held in U.S. military and secret CIA prisons in Afghanistan, Poland, Romania, and Lithuania.
The decision was condemned by human rights advocates, many of whom accused the ICC of bowing to intense pressure from the Trump administration after it barred Bensouda, a Gambian national, from entering the United States. The administration threatened further retaliation, including travel bans and economic sanctions, against the ICC.
In December 2019, the ICC convened a three-day hearing in The Hague, Netherlands at which prosecutors and Afghan victims of alleged U.S. and Afghan government torture pleaded with court officials to reverse their April decision and conduct a war crimes probe. The ICC unanimously ruled in March 2020 that the investigation could proceed. Pompeo condemned the decision, calling the ICC "an unaccountable political institution masquerading as a legal body."
In July 2020, top Trump officials were further incensed after prominent Canadian jurist William Schabas submitted a request to the ICC to investigate senior U.S. and Israeli officials for alleged war crimes committed against the Palestinian people.
Looking ahead to Trump's January 20 departure from the White House, Goldston asserted that "rather than spending time defending an order in direct conflict with Washington's historic support for international justice, the incoming administration should rescind it on day one."
According toReuters, the incoming Biden administration may consider lifting sanctions against the ICC officials, pending an evaluation of the role of sanctions in U.S. foreign policy.
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