FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

  
Washington, DC − Ninety-eight percent of people killed or injured by cluster submunitions are civilians living in the aftermath of war. This is just one critical finding in Circle of Impact: The Fatal Footprint of Cluster Munitions on People and Communities, the new Handicap International report that documents the impact of cluster munitions on the lives of people in 25 countries. The report is the result of several years of research done by HI, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning international organization that has worked for more than 25 years to assist the disabled and eliminate post-war injuries from landmines and cluster munitions.

 
Cluster munitions, which are weapons that release several hundred smaller submunitions when fired, pose an unacceptable danger to civilians both during and long after a conflict. These submunitions often fail to explode as they are spread over an area the size of several football fields, creating a highly lethal footprint.

 
This new report comes just one week before states gather in Lima, Peru to discuss a draft text of a new treaty to ban cluster munitions and create a framework for assistance to survivors. This February, at the Oslo Process convention signing, at least 55 countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany and Afghanistan began taking steps toward prohibiting cluster munitions.

 
A total of 13,306 deaths from cluster submunitions are confirmed. As 96 percent of deaths occur in countries where there is limited or no data collection, however, there are undoubtedly more casualties. In high-use areas such as Iraq, there were more than 1,000 casualties during strikes and more than 4,000 casualties in Lao PDR after strikes.

 
“If we are to put these numbers of casualties during and after strikes together, a chilling picture of the devastating human impact emerges,” says Marc Joolen, the Director-General of HI (Belgium).

 
Children are particularly vulnerable to the threat of submunitions. In Kosovo, 53 percent of casualties occurred in the two months following the end of the conflict. Given the precarious economic situation of most people after a conflict, cluster submunitions also disproportionately affect the poor. More than 60 percent of all deaths occur when people are working, and many people have no choice but to work on contaminated land. In South Lebanon, nearly 90 percent of land used for farming and shepherding is contaminated with unexploded cluster submunitions.

 
Medical costs related to incidents are a heavy burden on poor families. Cluster munitions eliminate educational opportunities, cause unemployment to rise and cause extreme psychological trauma. This, in turn, leads to the isolation of victims, and causes increased poverty as well as a need for greater risk-taking to earn a living. The use of cluster munitions adversely impacts broader development, reconstruction and human security by delaying the return of internally displaced people and blocking land for infrastructure rebuilding.

Full report available here:
Circle of Impact: The Fatal Footprint of Cluster Munitions on People and Communities is the definitive comprehensive study systematically analyzing the impact of cluster munitions on civilian populations through casualty data and socioeconomic impact profiles.  It utilizes information available on casualties of cluster submunitions and cluster munitions strike data to track the human impact from the initial cluster munitions strike, over the short-term emergency phase, to the post-conflict period, which affect the lives of individuals, families and communities for generations.