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France must to take action to ensure the Oslo Convention really does ban cluster munitions!
After a five-year campaign by civil society groups and a number of governments, some one hundred countries, including France, signed the Convention on cluster munitions in Oslo on 3 December 2008.
Ten years after the mine ban treaty, this convention represents an unprecedented advance in international humanitarian law. In the future no country will be able to use cluster munitions with impunity and the rights of their victims will at last be recognised.
However, to ensure this convention marks a decisive victory against human barbarity and irresponsibility, as many states as possible need to sign it. States parties like France also need to allocate the funds necessary to implement it in the field.
That's why Handicap International is calling on France, which ratified the Oslo Convention in September 2009, to:
• Ensure non-signatory states commit to signing the convention (including the US, China, Russia, India, Pakistan and Israel).
• Allocate the necessary resources to assist victims and clear affected countries to remove the threat posed to civilian populations.
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