Crisis Prevention and Recovery

Side event on Convention on Cluster Munitions

Jordan Ryan, Assistant Administrator and Director, Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery, UNDP

21 October 2009, New York

Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

The devastating humanitarian effects of cluster munitions are well known. During and long after conflict, they maim and kill scores of refugees, nurses, journalists, passers-by, women and men working in fields and orchards, and children helping with daily chores or at play. The pervasive effects are real and well-documented.

Fortunately, the convention is holistic in its approach with strong provisions for clearance and victim assistance. Equally promising, the convention is also very much a preventive measure. The devastating effects witnessed from the use of cluster munitions in 36 countries and territories are dwarfed by the harm that sub-munitions still in storage around the world could cause. As such, the convention has a role as a non-proliferation instrument—one that could help prevent a potential global humanitarian disaster similar to that caused by anti-personnel landmines in the 1980’s and 90’s.

Cluster munitions—as other explosive remnants of war—can compromise the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. 
Cluster munitions erode investments in development; destroy property and infrastructure; close schools and clinics; and prevent access to basic social services.  When it comes to economic costs, representatives here today from Lao PDR know only too well the challenges brought by cluster munitions, even 40 years after conflict.

Therefore, it is encouraging to see that Lao PDR is among the first countries to ratify the Convention. The Treaty is about safeguarding the lives and livelihoods of children, families and communities across the world.  It is about the youngsters tending cattle, collecting scrap metal or helping out in rice paddies in their villages. It is about their parents’ right to safely earn a livelihood for their family and walk without fear to sites of religious practice and cultural heritage. It is not their responsibility to be more careful; it is our collective responsibility to clear those fields. That is what this Convention will help to do.

This Convention has the potential to render countless sub-munitions obsolete, dispose stockpiled cluster bombs and – in the same way as the Mine Ban Treaty – stigmatize potential unilateral attempts for future use.  The Convention has strong provisions for clearance, assistance to survivors and for international cooperation in support of all these efforts.  But only full implementation will give it meaning.  This will require national ownership and, perhaps most importantly, national leadership.  Leadership that cannot be written into its provisions, be forced from the outside, or “bought” through international assistance.  This leadership needs to come from within – a determination to sign this Treaty, to ratify it, and to implement it.  We need the kind of determination that will make this Convention mean something for the children playing in contaminated fields. 

Therefore, let me close by warmly welcoming the actions of those Member States that, today, will bring us closer to the required number of signatories that will advance disarmament as a humanitarian necessity. And begin to put an end to the horror of cluster munitions.

Thank you.