Congress Takes Action on Cluster Bombs, Child Soldiers
WASHINGTON — Human-rights and humanitarian groups are hailing provisions of a major appropriations bill approved by Congress this week that bans the export of most U.S.-made cluster bombs and U.S. military aid for foreign governments that use child soldiers.The two provisions — which were tucked into a mammoth 560-billion-dollar 2008 omnibus spending bill — marked important victories for the groups, which have made both issues a major legislative priority.
On child soldiers, the bill provides that no military aid can be provided to governments whose “…armed forces or government supported armed groups, including paramilitaries, militias, or civil defense forces… recruit or use child soldiers.”
Governments that could be denied aid under the bill include Colombia — which receives several hundred million dollars’ worth of U.S. military aid each year — Chad, Sri Lanka, Sudan, and Uganda, all of which have been accused by the most recent State Department annual human rights Country Reports of recruiting children as soldiers.
As for cluster bombs, the bill bans their transfer to any foreign nation unless they have at least a 99-percent reliability rate and the importing country has pledged in writing that it will not use the weapon in civilian areas.
This ban was prompted by Israel’s planting of hundreds of thousands of cluster munitions in populated areas of southern Lebanon in the last days of its 2006 war against Hezbollah. The U.N. denounced Israel’s action — which has reportedly caused more than 200 civilian casualties since the end of the war — as “completely immoral”.
“An export moratorium is a good first step,” said Lora Lumpe, coordinator of the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines and a lobbyist at the Friends Committee on National Legislation. “We will work in the coming year to make the export ban permanent and to prohibit the U.S. military’s use of cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians.”
The omnibus bill, which covered everything from bridge repair to financing U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, was approved by both houses of Congress earlier this week and is expected to be signed by President George W. Bush within the next few days.
The bill, which extended a 1992 ban on the export of anti-personnel landmines through 2014, also provided nearly 80 million dollars for humanitarian de-mining programs around the world and another four million dollars for projects to protect the rights of persons with disabilities resulting from landmines, cluster munitions and other weapons.
The ban on U.S. military aid to governments that use child soldiers could have its greatest impact on Colombia, which receives far more U.S. military aid than any other Latin American country. Worldwide, it is currently Washington’s sixth biggest recipient of military aid, behind Israel, Egypt, Pakistan, Jordan, and Afghanistan.
With such a large investment, the administration is likely to resist cutting off military aid to its closest ally in the Andean region. The provision’s wording offers two major loopholes.
Under its terms, the aid could go forward if the secretary of state certifies to Congress that the government “has implemented effective measures” to demobilize child soldiers from its ranks or from those of government- supported militias, and to prevent their future recruitment. In addition, the secretary of state may waive the ban if she determines that it is in the U.S. “national interest” to do so.
In the case of Colombia, President Alvaro Uribe, who has sought to demobilise all right-wing paramilitary groups, has vowed to eliminate the use of child soldiers. But, the problem persists, according to human-rights monitors.
Despite the loopholes, rights advocates say they see passage of the ban as an important step forward. “It certainly gives the U.S. another tool to fight the use of child soldiers around the world and it also gives the Pentagon and the State Department a greater stake in doing so,” said Tom Malinowski, the head of the Washington office of Human Rights Watch (HRW).
Malinowski also praised the provision on exporting cluster munitions, saying that its language “reflects the growing consensus around the world that this weapon needs to be banned.”
Indeed, passage of the legislation came just two weeks after representatives of 138 governments gathered in Vienna to work out a global treaty that — like a similar 1997 agreement, the so-called Ottawa Convention on anti- personnel land mines — would prohibit the production, stockpiling, export and use of cluster munitions.
The Bush administration has so far boycotted those negotiations, which are called the “Oslo Process” after the capital of Norway where the initiative was launched earlier this year.
“With this law, Congress helps move the U.S. closer to the position of most of its NATO partners and other U.S. allies,” according to Ken Rutherford, co- founder of the Landmine Survivors Network.
The U.S. exports cluster bombs — munitions that, when exploded, saturate a specific target area with hundreds of sub-munitions, “bomblets” — to 28 countries, including Egypt, Indonesia, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, as well as Israel.
Washington has a stockpile of nearly one billion sub-munitions, according to HRW. One system widely used and exported by the U.S. is the M26 rocket, which is fired by the Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS). One MLRS volley launches 12 M26 rockets that eject nearly 8,000 sub-munitions over a 200 x 400 meter area in which any living thing exposed at the time of fire would almost certainly be killed or gravely wounded.
Moreover, the M26 rocket, like many other kinds of cluster munitions, has a failure rate of 16 percent. Thus, one volley could result in more than 1,000 “duds” or unexploded sub-munitions — which, due to their size and bright colouring, may be attractive to children — littering the area long after the volley has been fired or hostilities have ceased.
Such unexploded munitions have caused thousands of civilian casualties in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, Laos, Lebanon, and Vietnam, as well as southern Lebanon, in recent years.
“This law recognizes the need to prevent cluster bombs from being used in civilian-populated areas,” said Colby Goodman, who directs the Child Soldiers and Arms Transfers program at the U.S. section of Amnesty International (AIUSA). “Congress has taken an important step to protect innocent lives and to demonstrate respect for international humanitarian law,” according to AIUSA.
Copyright © 2007 IPS-Inter Press Service.
Cluster bombs should have been outlawed a long time ago. Their legacy shows how inhuman and immoral they are.
Now, just get the US military to sign the agreement.
Well this brightens my solstice,As Lora said “An export moratorium is a good first step”.Maybe some day we will live in a world without landmines and cluster bombs.Thankyou to Ms. Lumpe F.C.N.L. and all the N.G.O.s and .orgs working on arms control. Peace on Earth and in the Heavens
What about actual protection for child soldiers! Omar Khadr was 15 years old when he was picked up by the US and tortured.
“In addition, the secretary of state may waive the ban if she determines that it is in the U.S. “national interest” to do so.”
So the legislation is binding unless Condi does not wish to feel bound by it. These feelgood provisions have been stuck onto the appropriations bill like UNICEF stickers so we can all pretend we are nice people at Christmastime. These efforts to tweak our practice of dropping explosives on 200 x 400 meter populations of human beings in some slightly more humanitarian direction are a bit ludicrous.
The Friends Committee on National Legislation says “We will work … to prohibit the U.S. military’s use of cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians.” I wonder what weapons the FCNL considers cause “acceptable harm to civilians.”
The degree of dishonesty and moral evasion on the part of everyone in Washington just makes me sick. Having a clause that allows the Secretary of State to declare an exception if it’s in the national interest is a loophole large enough to drop a billion cluster bombs through. This is no ban at all. I wonder how much the cluster-bomb makers profit from their obscene creations and how much of it is diverted into the campaign coffers of our elected “representatives.”
Isn’t it true that Congress ALREADY banned the use against civilians of US-exported cluster bombs yet the Israelis went ahead and dropped literally over a million on the civilians of south Lebanon? Wow! We really punished the Israelis for it, didn’t we?
Doubtless Israel will take over the production and spread of these child killing devices.
Hey, making something illegal has not stopped ANYBODY, EVER–especially the US government–from doing it.
And doing it IMPUNELY.
Just WHO is going to enforce this?
Most of the soldiers that the Bush regime send over seas to do their bidding are, for the most part, children themselves.
Before they’re even giving the instruction necessary to survive in the world during peacetime, they’re shipped to war straight outta high school and sometimes before graduation!
Childhood does not always end at the age of 17 or 18. It’s obvious it lasts much longer in some people. G.W. Bush is just a perfect example.
True enough.
Though I do worry about Omar Khadr - I don’t think it is legal to do to a 15 year old American boy what you guys did to him.
Condi will publicly speak in favour of what ever Cheney attempts to implement or do as long as she holds her permission. If Condi wishes to speak out publicly against government policy, she better be looking for a new job since Cheney will definitely be giving her the pink slip.
BTW - did you see Condi on TV on Thursday? You can always tell if she likes the question or not (blue bar that says “video”).
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20071220/bush_praise_071220/20071220/
What are 17yr and 18yr-olds smoking . If are not sufficiently literate enough to realize that when they sign up they are considered as expendable cannon fodder useful only to ensure that
american oil companies will be granted full access to Iraqi oil prodution , refining and profits
Any recruit who picks up a rifle knowing he may have to use it to kill someone for any reason other than protecting Americans in America from invasion deserves death . He/She is the invader.
If it takes ten years and sixty thousand deaths as was required to bring an end to war in Vietnam ( or was it also an occupation ? )then so be it .
Let the entire generation of gullible gun-toting , flag-waving , macho-men ( and women ) be purged from American society and let the more gentle Americans look after things that are more constructive and definitely cheaper like socialized health-care , education , child-care
Much ado about nothing!! Sham sham SHAME!!
While it is a great thing that Uganda’s use of child soldiers (by both its national army and rebel troops), has been highlighted and condemned, this legislation must be translated into practical reality. The provision in the bill which allows the law to be selectively implemented in many ways neutralizes its effect, as many have pointed out.
The committment of the United States to peace must be challenged by its citizens, who have been party to America’s imperialist terrorism on a global level. The current conflict in Northern Uganda is one such example, with the United States offering to back a military resolution.
Please visit exposeugandasgenocide.blogspot.com for more on the N. Ugandan conflict.
-Xpose Uganda Coalition
Although this legislation “looks” like a step in the right direction there is a problem. Although the USA would not sell such weapons to regimes that use child soldiers it will continue to sell them to countries that do not use child soldiers, but those regimes may have connections to the international arms trade. The weapons can then be resold and resold again until they end up in the hands of regimes that could care less about the deaths of civilians, and who DO use child soldiers. The only solution is to BAN these weapons from being sold or manufactured altogether. Stockpiles of these weapons should be destroyed with international witnesses.
The thing to do, in my opinion, is refurbish the old clusterbombs into “seedbombs” by loading them with seed balls ( http://tinyurl.com/24gtes ) and putting them to work on re-greening the world’s deserts.
Does this mean the Pentagon is going to pull its recruiters out of American high schools? Someone who gives a kid a beer, a dirty magazine or a pat on the behind goes to prison, but one who lures them to their death or maiming at the hands of a government that fails to give wounded veterans adequate care and lies to them about educational benefits gets a government salary and bonuses.