There is alarming news. And there are news that are even more alarming because they do not generate alarm. This is what has happened because of the announcement that the United States will send, in the new weapons package to Ukraine, grape bombs. Neither Europe nor NATO have criticized the decision despite the fact that it violates international humanitarian law.
What are fragmentation bombs and what do they mean? Why is it important to talk about it?
Any weapon, used in a context of war, has serious impacts – many not initially foreseen – in terms of human lives. But there are weapons that, due to their characteristics and typology, cause in a special way indiscriminate impacts on the civilian population. It is not because, since 1980, there has been the Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on Certain Conventional Weapons that Can Be Considered Excessively Harmful or Having Indiscriminate Effects (CCW), an annex to the historic Geneva Conventions, which among other weapons includes anti-personnel mines or cluster bombs.
Cluster bombs are bombs that contain many small bombs. When launched, they release dozens or hundreds of explosive charges that generically, and indiscriminately, affect a large area. In addition, a significant portion of these munitions do not explode and, as with mines, remain dormant and can explode years later, even though the conflict has ended. Because of this, we already know something for certain about these cluster bombs that will be sent to Ukraine: they will cause death and damage when they are used, and they will cause death and damage in the future. Also to the civilian population of Ukraine.
That is why the exculpatory statements, without going further than those of the Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, in the sense that these bombs will be used as a defense and not as an attack, show a serious ignorance of what grape bombs are and what are its consequences.
Aware of their legacy of death and destruction, precisely this 2023, twenty years ago, the campaign for the abolition of cluster bombs (the Cluster Munition Coalition) was launched. As a result of this work by international civil society, and the initial impetus of the United Nations, in 2008 the Convention on Cluster Munitions was adopted, which entered into force in 2010 and currently has the signature of 123 states Although there are powers and producing countries that have refused to join it, the Convention is international law, referring to humanitarian disarmament, and has achieved a considerable reduction in the use of cluster bombs and its impact on human lives.
International organizations and European countries have rightly criticized Russia’s attack on Ukraine and its constant violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, including precisely the use of grape bombs It is not at all coherent to have criticized it and now facilitate their use.
Even for those who approve of sending weapons, there should be red lines: the use – and relegitimization – of a weapon that is particularly cruel and prohibited by international humanitarian law.
In this regard, the silence of European countries is frankly scandalous. Especially because according to article 21 of the Convention, of which they are signatories, “each State party (…) will make every possible effort to discourage States not party to this Convention from using cluster munitions”.
