My colleague Lord Dubs of Battersea has campaigned for some time for a ban on cluster munitions and is delighted that the recent Dublin conference reached agreement on this.
I think many of you would be very interested to hear his views on this so I am encouraging him to join this blog.
Am I right? Would you like to hear from him?
Absolutely. The more, the merrier.
Yes please. I would like to know Lord Dubs of Batterseas views on cluster munitions, his thoughts about the recent Dublin conference and its conclusions.
I would also like to congratulate all involved with Lords of the Blog on their use of the blog platform, its content and tone. Wonderful, thank you.
Certainly would. If Alf needs evidence of interest to encourage him to start blogging, I’ll start the ball rolling.
It would be interesting to hear what definition of cluster munitions they have agreed to ban, who they have managed to sign up to the agreement, and how they will monitor the situation to ensure that decommissioning of these weapons actually takes place.
Yes let him air his views. The agreement nearly collapsed because the UK’s view was that our cluster bombs were more reliable than others and so a ban was not warranted.
The more the merrier !
As someone who is currently reading ‘As used by the famous Nelson Mandela’, Mark Thomas’s guide to underground adventures in the arms trade, this is good news – although often it is ‘two steps forward, one step’ when it comes to regulating the arms trade…
I would be interested to hear from Lord Dubs: about the campaign; what approaches it took; and why it has now finally succeeded.
Matt, there is a full legal definition starting on page 3 of the final conference document: http://www.clustermunitionsdublin.ie/pdf/ENGLISHfinaltext.pdf
A cluster munition is defined as “a conventional munition that is designed to disperse or release explosive submunitions each weighing less than 20 kilograms, and includes those explosive submunitions”.
The convention also applies to “explosive bomblets that are specifically designed to be dispersed or released from dispensers affixed to aircraft” but “does not apply to mines”.
To paraphrase, it seems to apply to any ‘conventional’ unintelligent explosive device weighing under 20kg, and delivered to the ground by a bomb or airplane.
As Matt says, it would be interesting to read their actual definitions – for example I understand that the Government recently reclassified a number of its more modern cluster munitions, and that these are exempt. I’ve not yet been able to find a copy of the text…
Like Martin, I would really like to hear about de-commissioning too