| Previous Section | Back to Table of Contents | Lords Hansard Home Page |
It is only fair at the outset to commend the Government's role in this matter during the past three months. Until then, like many other Governments, they still tended to fend off the pressure to ban such munitions but at Oslo they shifted the British position significantly. I pay tribute to the Minister's role in bringing about that shift. Since that meeting, by announcing their intention not to use what are called dumb cluster munitions—those which do not self-destruct—the Government have set an example for other countries which, it must be hoped, will be followed. Having gained the initiative in that way, they need to keep it, not get lost in a rearguard action to protect the use of what are, in a rather Orwellian phrase, known as smart munitions. It would be good to hear from the Minister how the Government intend to proceed.
Cluster munitions are only one of the more recent in a long line of developments in military technology that made the 20th century unprecedented in world history for the multiplication of the killing power of weapons. Like many other of those developments, they can impact disastrously on civilian populations and have done so. That was seen in Lebanon last summer and previously in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Vietnam. That list is not exhaustive.
As warfare changes from high-intensity clashes between the armed forces of sovereign states to what General Sir Rupert Smith has called “war among the peoples”, the risk—indeed, the certainty—of increased civilian casualties for the use of such munitions can only continue to grow. That prospect is surely unacceptable to any country, such as ours, which is a signatory of the Geneva Conventions. Other noble Lords, much more knowledgeable than I on matters legal, have referred to those conventions. They prescribe proportionality: attacks must balance military advantage with civilian impact. They prescribe distinction: attacks must distinguish between military and civilian objects. They prohibit indiscriminate attacks. They require feasible precautions to avoid civilian injury. It is frankly not easy to see how a number of recent uses of such munitions can be said to have met any of those criteria. Perhaps the Minister will comment on that.
Appalling though the record of the 20th century was in the development of lethal technologies, it was not without some achievements in banning them. That should encourage those campaigning for a ban on cluster munitions. Poison gas was banned after the horrors of the First World War, and all forms of chemical weapons were banned at the end of the century, as were biological weapons; so, more recently, were landmines. Moreover, moves to ban categories of weapons or munitions have proved to be particularly successful when the humanitarian and legal arguments against them were matched by the utilitarian doubts of military practitioners about their usefulness on the battlefield. That is precisely what is now happening with cluster munitions. Others with much more experience than I have of the military arguments will speak later in the debate and will provide solid evidence of the narrowing of that gap. That should give the campaign even greater encouragement and credibility.
It is clear, of course, that the campaign will be faced with the all too familiar “half a loaf or no bread” arguments. These will come in two forms. The first, as has already been noted, is the distinction between dumb and smart cluster munitions. No doubt attempts will be made to limit any ban to the former. I question whether that distinction holds water, particularly given the evidence of the dumbness even of smart munitions and the changing nature of warfare towards wars among the peoples. The second will be the quandary of whether to proceed even if some perhaps militarily very important countries refuse to sign up to any international legal instrument. I trust that we will not abandon or seek to undermine the objective of a ban on all cluster munitions without exception, even if it may prove necessary to proceed in stages, with dumb munitions being banned first. We really must not accept that smart cluster munitions are somehow okay. I am sure we will have to accept less than global membership in the early stages of any ban, as we have in the ban on landmines, but there must be plenty of naming and shaming and of compelling the recalcitrants to explain and defend their position; we must not simply allow them to get away with it as unavoidable.
In our debate on Trident renewal a few months ago, I asked the Government to give us an overall picture of British policies on arms control and disarmament. What we have at the moment is a thing of shreds and patches: a little arms trade treaty here, a little nuclear non-proliferation there and a step forward now on cluster munitions. We lack an overall view and a broad strategy for achieving our objectives. What are we doing to get the whole European Union to sign up to those objectives? What are we doing to get the European Union to throw its not inconsiderable weight in international negotiations behind them? How much use are we making of our relationship with the United States, which, under the present Administration, is often the back marker on these matters? Are we and the European Union beginning to establish a dialogue in these fields with China, which looks set fair to be an awkward customer in the future? Our debate today needs to be part of a mosaic, not just a one-off episode.
12.28 pm
Baroness D'Souza: My Lords, I cannot say how welcome the debate is, and my thanks go to the noble Lord, Lord Elton, for introducing it. I, too, thank the Government for having withdrawn most of the cluster munitions held by the Ministry of Defence, and for their support for the beginnings of what seems to be an unstoppable international movement to ban cluster munitions altogether.
The immediate and longer-term destructive consequences of cluster munitions have been well aired in your Lordships’ House. I shall focus briefly today on the inherent contradiction between military and humanitarian or development action, with some reference to Afghanistan. That country is still littered with unexploded ordnance from more than a quarter of a century of war. Before the efforts to liberate Afghanistan in 2001, it was estimated that about 724 million square metres were affected by unexploded landmines, with 344 million square metres classified as high priority land for clearance. At the same time, the military, including UK forces, have been involved in reconstruction through the provincial reconstruction teams and hearts-and-minds programmes.
Cluster bombs, more than any other kind of armament, are designed to harm individuals and to create no-go areas, which may be, and often are, agricultural lands in areas populated by civilians. In the past decade, the UK and other NATO countries have further blurred the distinction between military and humanitarian action. The two approaches may be incompatible and cluster munitions play a significant role in this ambiguity.
The efforts to protect people from violent threat, such as that posed by the Taliban, are an essential part of the Armed Forces’ task in Afghanistan and thus incorporate a shared agenda from both humanitarian and military actors, which is a subject of much debate, especially within the UN. There are arguments on both sides. There are the integrationists, who favour less duplication of effort and better informed and more strategic approaches to operations, and those who believe that an integrated approach subordinates humanitarian principles to the political and/or military priorities of a mission. Insufficient research on the humanitarian outcomes of each approach means that the jury remains out on this issue. However, the need to agree on cores issues of responsibility and competence remains. Whatever methods are proven to be more effective, there is no possible advantage that the use of cluster bombs will bring to crises such as that in Afghanistan.
If one of the main military objectives in a given conflict is to win the confidence of villagers in order to dissuade them from supporting and/or joining insurgents, this cannot be achieved if at the same time armed forces are maiming and killing civilians with cluster bombs and reducing access to fields and vital planting seasons. Anything achieved in terms of medical attention, rebuilding of schools and other development work is immediately undermined. Similarly, provincial reconstruction teams now working in many areas of Afghanistan, no matter how successful in the reconstruction aspects of their work, will negate any advances if cluster munitions are further deployed or remain uncleared. In a recent survey cited in a report by the ODI’s Humanitarian Policy Group, rural Afghans define security not just as the cessation of armed attacks but as being free of physical violence or threat of attack and having access to essential services such as healthcare, education and economic opportunities.
If it is agreed that one of the key roles of the military is the protection of civilians from deliberate harm, cluster munitions should be immediately outlawed—there is no question about that. If it is also acknowledged from experience the world over that the most effective weapon against terrorism or insurgency is intelligence, which is usually gained from local populations, one could say that the use of cluster bombs severely reduces the chances of any such co-operation. I am still struck by the words of President Bush at the start of the 2001 war to eradicate al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan in what our Prime Minister subsequently referred to as a “military-humanitarian coalition”. President Bush said:
“As we strike military targets, we'll also drop food, medicine and supplies to the starving and suffering men and women and children of Afghanistan”,
The subsequent blowing up of clearly identified food warehouses by insurgents demonstrates that the provision of aid was perceived as neither neutral nor humanitarian.
Finally, it must be said that the failure to clear those 28 countries in the world which have had or still have millions of unexploded ordnance is in the eyes of experts such as the HALO Trust director, Guy Willoughby, more due to a lack of political will than to financial or technical constraints. It is pointed out that following World War II a landmine programme cleared millions of landmines by 1950 despite scarce technical resources and far less understanding of the technical issues involved. Today, it has taken 10 years to clear a much smaller number of mines in countries, including Croatia, Bosnia, Angola, Mozambique, Cambodia and Vietnam. The movement towards an outright ban on cluster munitions must be achieved, as must clearance programmes which should be given the highest priority.
12.33 pm
Baroness Turner of Camden: My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Elton, for introducing this debate. I have long been opposed to the use of cluster bombs. I can recall that before the start of the Iraq war when it was clear that the Government intended to go ahead with the proposed invasion, the noble Lord, Lord Elton, made a plea that there should be a commitment from the Government that they would not use cluster bombs. I supported him, but the Government refused to make any such commitment. Whenever the issue has been raised, the answer has been given that for a variety of reasons a ban was simply not possible. One reason given was that they were needed as protection for our troops; another was that, otherwise, it would be necessary to use much more destructive high-explosive bombs. It was also claimed that they were used in a lawful way.
It is now gratifying to learn that the Government are changing their stance. UN conferences have been discussing a ban on cluster weapons for more than five years, without making any progress. But now, as we have heard, at a conference sponsored by the Norwegians in Oslo last February, it appears that our Government have subscribed to a declaration of intent to establish a ban in 2008 of,
Of course, that is a very welcome development, although any damage to civilians should be regarded as unacceptable. It is not before time.
As is well known, these anti-personnel weapons are designed to kill and injure people. It cannot honestly be claimed for them, particularly nowadays, that they have a genuine, military purpose. As noble Lords have pointed out, the type of conflicts we are involved in now are quite different from those that took place many years ago. The bombs contain many small submunitions which are designed to explode on impact. They have a high failure rate and remain as a continuing danger to people, often long after hostilities have ceased. They were used in Vietnam and continued to cause deaths and injuries long after the war there had ended. The same is true in the Balkans, where they were used in the war over Kosovo. It could not be claimed there that it was necessary to use them to protect our troops since the war was fought entirely from the air with continuous bombing raids. No ground troops were used in the operation.
The town of Nis suffered particularly from cluster bombing and a number of civilians were killed and injured, and there were no military objectives there. These munitions have also been used in Iraq, as we have heard, and by Israel in Lebanon. Children are particularly at risk. Small submunitions are often brightly coloured and children playing are attracted to them. In that way, many children have had limbs blown off and other horrible injuries. Moreover, when hostilities are over and the civilian population wants to try to return to normal life, they are often unable to farm their land because of the dangers still posed by these munitions. Incidentally, what has been done to look after the victims of those attacks? What compensation have they had? We must remember that very often the victims in these conflicts are poor people in poor countries. What is done to help them when the conflicts are over?
There now appears to be a real opportunity to get these munitions banned. Our Government seem to have changed their position, although I believe they still want to be able to retain cluster weapons of a more recent type, with a self-destruct device intended to destroy them if they are not exploded on impact. These are smart CM weapons as opposed to dumb ones. I have always been very sceptical of claims about weapons being smart and, therefore, not causing injuries to civilians. I well remember my late husband, who had been an RAF pilot, and I watching a conflict on television. He said, “Smart bombs, smart bombs, don’t you believe it. We are watching people being killed down there”, and so we were. All these weapons should be banned.
There is a further meeting in Lima on 22 May when the intention is to try to draw more countries into supporting a complete ban. I thank the Government for what they have done so far, but they must go further and see that there is a complete ban on these weapons. I ask the Government to do everything that they can to encourage other countries to follow their example. I thank, again, the noble Lord, Lord Elton, for introducing this debate.
12.38 pm
Baroness Howe of Idlicote: My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Elton, on having secured this timely debate. I also congratulate the Government on the action that they have taken so far. I want to take part in this debate, not because I have any technical or expert knowledge of the weaponry, but simply because of the lessons that I learnt some years ago when I had the privilege of preceding the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, as president of UNICEF UK. Those were the years in which the world had almost accepted the inevitability of death and injury for adults and, particularly, children who had the misfortune to live in or on the perimeter of battle zones around the world. Even long after those wars were over, abandoned minefields were allowed to remain as though nothing could or should be done about them. The campaigns against landmines culminated in the 1997 treaty, which sought to ban, or at least to control, them. The treaty now has the backing of no fewer than 153 countries. If that treaty was desirable, as indeed it was, it is clear that similar action against cluster bombs is even more necessary.
It is obviously so for at least two reasons. First, conventional landmines can at least plausibly be described as defensive weapons when laid out in carefully located “fields” to prevent an enemy attack from that direction. Secondly, because of their purpose, landmines are much more easily located, avoided and removed. On the other hand, cluster bombs are exactly the opposite. They are designed for use in attacks, and although intended for the equivalent of military convoys, they can be and are scattered at random over wide and unspecified areas. Each bomb then scatters its own shower of what are usually hundreds of bomblets in an even more random fashion. As we have heard, one bomb can scatter widely enough to cover an area equivalent to two, three or even four football pitches. The case for eliminating these horrific weapons really makes itself—to such an extent that our own Government have at last accepted it. They are the first Government to have done so. I warmly congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, on the considerable part he has played in bringing this about with his Private Member’s Bill and much more since then.
Last week I was in Scotland, helping to award this year’s St Andrews University environmental prize. A fellow trustee, Anita McNaught, is a young freelance journalist who recently went to south Lebanon to make a programme about cluster munitions for CNN. The DVD of her interviews with disposal experts and people injured by these lethal weapons was all too explicit. The life of a young motor mechanic has been ruined after, among other injuries, half of his hand was blown off so that he can no longer continue in any form of work. There is an account of a young woman whose father brought a munition into their house. She picked it up, whereupon it detonated and injured three other members of the family in the same room. Somehow they survived and there is some hope, but one really wonders about the futures they face. Apparently something like a quarter of all the agricultural land is out of production, but still of course producing victims in the form of children for all the reasons outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Elton, and others.
Thankfully, a huge international co-operative operation is under way, which hopes to make the land safe by the end of this year. We must hope that the effort succeeds. Indeed, the only good thing I could find in the whole scene in southern Lebanon is that some young Lebanese women, unable to find employment elsewhere, have become trained disposal experts. Apparently it is quite a well paid job, and one hopes that it may prove useful for any future educative programme the country may hope to run, both for itself and perhaps for other countries.
How the bombing in Lebanon could have been anything other than a quite cynical operation on the part of Israel—the raids taking place as they did during the final week of the peace negotiations—really is hard to believe. But the fact is that it did take place, and of course it is not just Israel. Sadly, many countries have used cluster munitions when they felt that it would be to their advantage against the enemy.
All this illustrates the importance of facing up to the whole situation and banning these weapons once and for all. We have heard the good news that earlier this year the UK Government committed themselves at the Oslo conference,
Her Majesty’s Government have already banned two of their three cluster munitions, but apparently not the M85. I could not put the case against the position more clearly than it has been put by Handicap International, which has stated that the Government have retained the M85, a rocket-launched submunition, on the grounds that it is smart due to its self-destruct device. It is manufactured by IMI, an Israeli company, which claims that it has a 0.06 “hazardous dud rate”. Handicap International works in Lebanon clearing mines and munitions in the region and can testify that this claim is dangerous nonsense. Israeli forces used the M85 in huge numbers just before withdrawing from Lebanon. Failure rates were huge and wide areas have been left with deadly unexploded submunitions.
This munition is the “exception” which the UK Government currently plan to retain in their armoury on the basis that it is smart. I want to quote what was said to me by Rae McGrath of Handicap International. He said:
If the Minister has any remaining doubts at all about the proper way forward, I hope very much that he will indeed take up that offer.
It is for these reasons that I join the noble Lord, Lord Elton and others, many of whom have spoken passionately about this issue, in pressing the Government to go as far as they possibly can—in other words, the whole way. They must take the positive position they adopted in Oslo to the Lima meeting next week and make a clear commitment to an across-the-board ban on the production, transfer or use of all cluster munitions, without any exception in favour of so-called smart versions.
12.47 pm
Lord Low of Dalston: My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Elton, on securing this debate. I had intended to speak briefly, having spoken at perhaps too great length recently on another issue, but having heard the speeches made so far in the debate, I think that I can be even briefer. If I were to go through all my prepared remarks, I would simply be repeating what has already been said with more eloquence and greater expertise.
But I want to underline the importance and timeliness of the debate. It is important because it will maintain the focus of the House on the issue and ensure that it is not just put to bed with the passage of the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs. It is timely in view of the imminence of the next stage of the Oslo process in Lima next week. I also welcome the extent of the Government’s move forward, and I shall use my remarks to focus attention on the residual issues remaining around the retention of smart bombs such as the M85.
However, my main purpose in speaking is simply to align myself with the widespread call in this House for a total ban. The case has been made fully, but I was not able to be present in the Chamber when the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, was debated, so I felt it important to be here today to add my voice in support of a total ban. Of course, my voice is neither here nor there, but I speak from a particular vantage point which may give some significance to my adding that voice. As someone active in the worldwide movement of disabled and especially blind people, I am all too well aware of the devastating impact that these weapons can have, often on the lives of innocent civilians and far too often on children, so I hope that my support can be taken as read. As I said, I was not able to be here to voice it before but I wanted to make it clear that I was doing so today. My point is so uncontentious that I hope that I can say it on behalf of all disabled people throughout the world.
As a member of the Council of St Dunstan’s, I would never wish to see our troops’ ability to defend themselves or to fulfil their lawful mission impaired. However, we all recognise that the use of cluster munitions even in a just war ensures that that war will be followed by a second war, a war against unexploded ordnance, which maims as much as it kills and thus imposes a lifelong burden of care on victims and their families. Enabling disabled people to continue to lead fulfilling lives is a challenge in this country with its relatively advanced health care and disability rights; in some of the countries in which we have used cluster munitions, it must be very hard indeed. Most of the participants in this second war are non-combatants and, as I have said, most of its victims are civilians, far too many of them children. The fact that Hezbollah, a non-state actor, has possession of these weapons and has already begun to deploy them means that it is urgent that we act now, without further delay, to get rid of these weapons for good and all and preclude further proliferation while we still can.
| Next Section | Back to Table of Contents | Lords Hansard Home Page |