Thursday, June 26, 2008

Convention on Cluster Munitions

Since EPIC guest blogger Marla Bertagnolli of CIVIC posted her blog about the dangers of cluster bombs to innocent civilians, 111 nations have adopted a treaty that limits the production and use of these weapons. What countries were not part of the agreement you ask? Sadly, none of the major producers and users of cluster bombs. These nations include Russia, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, and you guessed it, the United States of America.

Never the less, the Washington Post reports that: "Advocates of the ban said they hope the agreement, which was supported by rich nations and poor from Scandinavia to Africa, will have the same effect as the 1997 ban on land mines, reducing use (of cluster bombs) even among non-signatory countries."

The treaty is set to be signed by the respective participant nations this
December.

Photo Caption: Men walk by cluster bombs in Najaf, Iraq in 2003. Getty Images
at

1 comment:

The Ground Truth Blog is a forum for those who care about the plight of innocent Iraqis. All opinions expressed in this blog are those of the EPIC community, and not necessarily those of the Education for Peace in Iraq Center (EPIC). We embrace the democratic spirit of civil discourse, but reserve the right to remove any content that we find to be unacceptable, including anything that: (1) abuses, harasses, or threatens a person or persons; (2) knowingly falsifies information or defames or misrepresents another person; (3) Violates any obligation of confidentiality; (4) Violates the privacy of any third party; (5) Contains editorial content that has been commissioned and paid for by a third party and/or contains paid advertising links and/or SPAM; (6) infringes upon any copyright, trademark, trade secret or patent of any third party (all quotes and excerpts must be properly attributed to the original author). For details on fair use, see the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Legal Guide for Bloggers).