GENEVA: More than 1,000 people have been killed or wounded by cluster munitions in Ukraine since Russia launched its war, a monitor said on Monday, urging all countries to ban the weapons.
Since Russia began its full-scale invasion of its western neighbour in February 2022, Ukraine has registered the highest number of recorded annual cluster munition casualties in the world, the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) said in its annual report.
It said cluster bombs had been used in Ukraine by both sides and the weapons had killed and wounded more than 1,000 people there since the war began.
The vast majority of casualties were registered in 2022.
But the report stressed that the figure for 2023 was probably a dramatic underestimate.
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Cluster munitions can be dropped from planes or fired from artillery before exploding in mid-air and scattering bomblets over a wide area.
They pose a lasting threat, as many fail to explode on impact, effectively acting as landmines that explode years later.
In Ukraine, more farmland is now contaminated by cluster munition remnants than by landmines, the report said.
Before the war, Ukraine had registered no cluster munition casualties for several years.
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But it recorded 916 in 2022 and it accounted for nearly half the 219 casualties recorded worldwide last year.
“The actual number of casualties is thought to be significantly higher,” the CMC warned.
With both Russia and Ukraine continuing to use cluster munitions, the report said it was not possible to systematically document and attribute which side was responsible for which attacks or casualties.
‘Abhorrent weapons’
It said the use, production and transfer of cluster munitions by countries like Russia and Ukraine was undermining international efforts to ban them entirely.
Neither country is among the 112 states that are party to the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions, which prohibits the use, transfer, production and storage of cluster bombs.
“Actions by countries that have not banned cluster munitions are putting civilians at risk and threatening the integrity and universality of the international treaty prohibiting these abhorrent weapons,” CMC head Tamar Gabelnick said.
The only other two countries where cluster munition attacks were registered last year – Myanmar and Syria – have not joined the convention either.
And the United States, also not a party to the treaty, sparked outcry over its decision in July 2023 to transfer cluster munitions to Kyiv.
In the first nine months after that decision, US President Joe Biden approved five such transfers, the report said.
The CMC also voiced alarm at the Lithuanian parliament’s vote in July to withdraw the Baltic State from the treaty.
That decision, which has yet to take effect, is “ill-considered” and “ignores the risks of civilian harm”, warned Mary Wareham, the deputy crisis, conflict and arms director at Human Rights Watch, which participated in the report.
“It’s not too late for Lithuania to heed calls to stop its planned withdrawal.”
Of the casualties reported globally in 2023, 118 were a result of cluster munition attacks.
The remaining 101 were killed or wounded by cluster munition remnants across Ukraine, Syria and Myanmar and six other countries – Azerbaijan, Iraq, Laos, Lebanon, Mauritania, and Yemen, the report said.
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