NGOs launch campaign to end the use of Cluster Bombs by Geraldine Coughlan, BBC News BBC World News 6:59pm 13th Nov, 2003   12 November, 2003    Non-governmental organisations from around the world are launching a campaign against cluster bombs. NGOs estimate that at least 92 countries are threatened by the presence of unexploded bombs.    Thursday's campaign launch at The Hague takes place ahead of negotiations in Geneva on a new protocol to the UN Convention on Conventional Weapons. Eighty groups are involved in the Cluster Munition Coalition, including Landmine Action and Human Rights Watch.    'Indefinite ban'    The groups are calling on governments to deal with the problem of unexploded bombs. They say abandoned mortars, rockets and cluster bomblets claim thousands of lives during and long after armed conflict. Afghanistan, northern Iraq and Sudan are among the most affected regions.    The CMC wants an indefinite ban on cluster bombs. The coalition sees a draft protocol on conventional weapons as unacceptably weak. They say they will lobby for a strong, legally binding protocol to tackle the humanitarian problems caused by unexploded bombs. The Dutch and Canadian governments are seriously backing the new campaign.    The Dutch took the lead in putting the protocol on unexploded bombs on the agenda in Geneva. They are also lobbying for international legal obligations on restrictions on the use of cluster bombs.    17 August, 2003    "Children protest over cluster bombs". (BBC World News).    Children wearing bandages covered in fake blood have marched to Downing Street in a protest against the use of cluster bombs. The members of the pressure group Children Against the War released anti-cluster balloons and performed a short play on the tragedy of a child's death from unexploded bombs.    The aim was to highlight the continuing impact on children in Iraq of unexploded cluster munitions used by British and American forces. Sunday's protest comes just days after a coroner called on the Ministry of Defence to review its use of cluster bombs following the death of a British soldier who was killed trying to make an area safe for Iraqi farmers.    The group made a long banner in Parliament Square reading "Kids Say No to Clusters", using brightly coloured hand prints. They then walked to Downing Street where a smaller group was allowed to carry placards and a banner up the door of Number 10. They delivered a letter asking Prime Minister Tony Blair to explain why it was necessary to use cluster bombs. It also demanded an immediate ban on their use and called for the government to take responsibility for clearing unexploded bombs which have already dropped.    The children were joined by other campaigners from Voices UK, and members of CND. Children Against the War's eight-year-old spokeswoman, Sonia, from London, said she was angry that children could still be maimed and killed long after the war had ended...    November 15, 2003    Cambodia. Phnom Penh. Four killed by war-era bomb. ( Published by the Age).    Four people, including three children, were killed when they accidentally detonated a war-era bomb left over from years of conflict in Cambodia, police said yesterday.    Ven Sovinn, police chief of Ang Snoul district north-west of Phnom Penh, said Li Trea, 12, Reoun Run, 13, Pork Chandara, 16, and Phin Kea, 24, died instantly when the bomb exploded late yesterday.    He said another 14-year-old girl was seriously wounded in the blast, which also killed a cow.    Ven Sovinn said the victims found the bomb in a bush near their village of Prey Svay while minding cows in a field used for fighting decades ago.    "According to witnesses, after they found the bomb in a bush they said: 'If we drop it, it will explode', and later on they heard the explosion," he said.    In September four other children and a teenager were killed when they accidentally detonated a leftover mortar shell.    After more than two decades of civil war, millions of unexploded mines and bombs litter Cambodia, although thousands have been destroyed by international mine-clearing agencies.    - AFP      Visit the related web page
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