Cluster Bombs - The Facts

• For over 40 years cluster bombs have killed and injured civilians during and after conflict.  Unexploded cluster bombs continue to kill and injure for days, months, even decades after conflict.

• Cluster bombs have been used in at least 30 countries and areas:

Afghanistan, Albania, Angola, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, Chad, Chechnya, Croatia, DR Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Falklands/ Malvinas, Iraq, Israel, Kosovo, Kuwait, Laos, Lebanon, Montenegro, Nagorno-Karabakh, Serbia, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Uganda, Vietnam and Western Sahara.

• 34 countries are known to have produced over 210 different types of air-dropped and surface-launched cluster bombs.

• At least 13 countries have transferred over 50 types of cluster munitions to at least 60 other countries.

• Billions of cluster bomblets are currently stockpiled and ready to be used by some 75 countries worldwide.

• Tens of thousands of civilians worldwide have been killed or injured by cluster bombs.

• Handicap International estimates that 60% of civilian casualties are children.  The small size and curious shapes of cluster bombs make them particularly interesting to young people.

South Lebanon

• The most recent recorded use of cluster bombs was by Israel in south Lebanon.  The UN estimates that of 4 million used, up to1 million cluster bomblets remained unexploded after conflict ended.

• In the 6 months after the 2006 ceasefire in Lebanon around 200 civilians were killed or injured by unexploded cluster bomblets.

• Israel’s use of cluster bombs in South Lebanon was illegal under international humanitarian law according to a recent report by Human Rights Watch.

Laos

• Laos is the most heavily cluster bombed country in the world following the 1965 - 1973 Vietnam War.

•    Some have likened the scale of cluster bombing in Laos to the equivalent of a B52 load of bombs every 8 minutes for approximately 9 years.