Contamination and Clearance

© Sean Sutton/MAG/ICBL-CMC, 2014 -- Educators work with children in the Domiz camp for Syrian refugees to help ensure their safety in Iraq and when they return home.

Summary

A total of 23 states and 3 other areas were believed to be contaminated by cluster munition remnants as of 1 July 2014. Eleven of these states are party to the Convention on Cluster Munitions,[1] two have signed but not yet ratified,[2] while another 10 have neither signed nor acceded.[3] Six states—Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Cambodia, Iraq, Lao PDR, Lebanon, and Vietnam—as well as one other area, Nagorno-Karabakh, are considered heavily affected by cluster munition remnants, each with estimated contamination covering 10km² or more of land.

The Monitor has calculated that in 2013 more than 54,000 unexploded submunitions were destroyed during clearance of almost 31km² of land contaminated by cluster munition remnants in 12 states and three other areas. This data, however, is known to be incomplete due to the fact that reporting by states and demining operators on clearance of cluster munition remnants is partial and inconsistent in content, format, and quality, including among States Parties who are legally obligated to report on clearance activities.

Eight contaminated States Parties and signatories conducted clearance of unexploded submunitions in 2013: Afghanistan, BiH, Croatia, Iraq, Lao PDR, Lebanon, Mauritania, and Norway. Cluster munition remnants were also cleared in non-signatories Cambodia, Serbia, Vietnam, and Yemen, as well as three other areas, Kosovo, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Western Sahara.[4]

Global Contamination

Cluster munition remnants are defined in the convention as covering four types of hazards: unexploded submunitions, unexploded bomblets, failed cluster munitions, and abandoned cluster munitions.[5] Unexploded submunitions and bomblets pose the greatest threat to civilians, primarily as a result of their sensitive fuzing but also because of their appearance in terms of shape, color, and metal content, which often attracts tampering, playful attention, or collection.

As detailed in the table below, a total of 23 states and 3 other areas are believed to have cluster munition remnants, including unexploded submunitions, on their territory as of 1 July 2014.[6] Eleven of the states contaminated by cluster munition remnants are party to the Convention on Cluster Munitions and are legally obligated to complete clearance within 10 years, while another two have signed but not yet ratified.

At the Fourth Meeting of States Parties in Zambia in September 2013, Mauritania stated that it had completed clearance of cluster munition remnants in areas under its jurisdiction or control, and that it was taking the necessary administrative steps to make a formal declaration of completion.[7] At the April 2014 Working Group on Clearance and Risk Reduction in Geneva, Norway similarly stated that it had completed clearance of cluster munition remnants, noting that it would make a formal declaration of completion at the Fifth Meeting of States Parties in Costa Rica.

States and other areas contaminated by cluster munition remnants

Africa (Sub-Saharan)

Americas

Asia-Pacific

Europe, Caucasus, and Central Asia

Middle East and North Africa

Chad

Chile

Afghanistan

Azerbaijan

Iraq

Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)*

Cambodia

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Lebanon

Mozambique

Lao PDR

Croatia

Libya

Somalia*

Vietnam

Germany

Syria

South Sudan

Montenegro

Yemen

Sudan

Serbia

Western Sahara

Ukraine

Kosovo

Nagorno-Karabakh

Six states

One state

Four states

Seven states and two areas

Five states and one area

Note: States Parties to the Convention on Cluster Munitions are indicated in bold; *convention signatories are DRC and Somalia; other areas are in italics.

Contamination is also still suspected, but not confirmed, in another 15 states, including: Angola, Colombia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Georgia (South Ossetia), Iran, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Palau, Russia (Chechnya), Saudi Arabia, and Tajikistan.[8] Both Argentina and the United Kingdom (UK) claim sovereignty over the Falkland Islands/Malvinas, which may still contain areas with unexploded submunitions.

Extent of contamination

The extent of contamination across affected states varies significantly. Six states and one other area have the greatest contamination from cluster munition remnants (more than 10km²), particularly unexploded submunitions: BiH, Cambodia, Iraq, Lao PDR, Lebanon, and Vietnam, as well as Nagorno-Karabakh.

States Parties

Eleven States Parties are contaminated by cluster munition remnants, with the heaviest contamination in Lao PDR and Lebanon:

Signatories

Two signatories are believed to be contaminated with cluster munition remnants: DRC and Somalia.

Non-signatories

Several of the 10 contaminated states that have not joined the convention have active clearance programs in place, including Cambodia, Libya, Serbia, South Sudan, and Vietnam.

Other areas

Clearance of Cluster Munition Remnants

Reporting by states and operators on clearance of cluster munition remnants is incomplete and inconsistent in content, format, and quality, including among States Parties. Based on available reporting and information gathered directly from programs, in 2013 more than 54,000 unexploded submunitions were destroyed during clearance operations of almost 31km² of land contaminated with cluster munition remnants in 12 states and 3 other areas, as detailed in the table below. The bulk of the clearance in 2013 was reported in Lao PDR. To seek to represent actual clearance of cluster munition remnants in that country and not merely of UXO, an estimate has been made of land cleared that contained cluster munition remnants.

Clearance of cluster munition remnants in 2013

State/area

Area cleared (km²)

Submunitions destroyed

Afghanistan

N/R

230

BiH

1.19

214

Cambodia

N/R

3,751

Croatia

1.15

164

Iraq

N/R

50*

Lao PDR

20.00 (est.)

40,287

Lebanon

2.47

4,470

Mauritania

2.44

1,246

Norway

N/R

2

Serbia

2.42

353

Vietnam

N/R

1,925*

Yemen

N/R

440

Kosovo

0.30 (est.)

287

Nagorno-Karabakh

N/R

329

Western Sahara

0.97

1,033

Totals

30.94

54,781

N/R = Not reported; * Only very partial data

Note: States Parties are indicated in bold; other areas are in italics.

Clearance obligations

Under the Convention on Cluster Munitions, each State Party is obliged to clear and destroy all cluster munition remnants in areas under its jurisdiction or control as soon as possible but not later than 10 years after becoming party to the convention. If unable to complete clearance in time, a state may request an extension of the deadline for periods of up to five years. Clearance deadlines for contaminated States Parties are shown in Table 3 below.

Article 4 clearance deadlines for States Parties

State Party

Clearance deadline

Afghanistan

1 March 2022

BiH

1 March 2021

Chad

1 September 2023

Chile

1 June 2021

Croatia

1 August 2020

Germany

1 August 2020

Iraq

1 November 2023

Lao PDR

1 August 2020

Lebanon

1 May 2021

Montenegro

1 August 2020

Mozambique

1 September 2021

In seeking to fulfill their clearance and destruction obligations, affected States Parties are required to:

Norway, as President of the Third Meeting of States Parties to the Convention on Cluster Munitions, submitted a paper entitled “Compliance with Article 4” to the Fourth Meeting of States Parties. The paper’s stated aim was to explain the key obligations that states must fulfill in order to be able to make a declaration of compliance. Ireland and Lao PDR, as Co-Coordinators of the Working Group on Clearance and Risk Reduction Education, submitted to the same meeting a paper entitled “Effective steps for the clearance of cluster munition remnants.” States Parties “warmly welcomed” both documents.[29]

Land release

A set of guiding principles for land release of cluster munition-contaminated areas published by the Cluster Munition Coalition in June 2011, calls for affected states to put sufficient resources into properly identifying cluster munition-affected areas before carrying out clearance. It recommends states conduct a desk assessment (of ground conditions, weapons delivery systems, battlefield data, etc.) followed by non-technical survey to collect field evidence of contamination and, where required, technical survey to define a cluster strike footprint. It notes clearing cluster munitions should not be approached in the same way as clearing landmines and suggests states apply principles detailed in the International Mine Action Standards (IMAS), Battle Area Clearance standards (09.11) for land contaminated exclusively with cluster munition remnants.

To promote more efficient release of land, amendments to IMAS were adopted in April 2013 to the General Assessment standards (formerly 08.10) and set out to simplify and clarify standards on Land Release (now 07.11), Non-Technical Survey (now 08.10), and Technical Survey (now 08.20). They seek to make clear distinctions between SHAs and CHAs and provide more guidance on use of evidence to avoid inflating estimates of contamination where evidence does not justify it. They also seek to clarify basic principles of technical survey, the distinctions between area reduction and clearance, and the requirement to apply “all reasonable effort” in use of evidence to plan and interpret the results of technical survey.

Meanwhile, in a bid to increase productivity, international operators have focused increasingly on evidence-based battle area clearance for tackling cluster munitions and on developing survey methodology better tailored to the particular challenges of this type of contamination. A cluster munition remnants survey approach developed by NPA in Lao PDR, and endorsed or adapted by a number of other operators, including in Vietnam, begins with desk assessment and non-technical survey in order to define start points for technical survey. Clearance only takes place once a CHA is established and reported to the national regulatory authority. Sub-surface clearance is conducted as necessary according to the evidence, and a mixture of surface and sub-surface clearance may be considered sufficient clearance for an entire area to be released. A “fadeout” principle determines the distance to which clearance continues after finding what is perceived as the last target item in a footprint.


[1] Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Chad, Chile, Croatia, Germany, Iraq, Lao PDR, Lebanon, Montenegro, and Mozambique.

[2] Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Somalia.

[3] Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Libya, Serbia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, Vietnam, and Yemen.

[4] As of 1 July 2014, States Parties Chad, Chile, Germany, and Montenegro had not reported any clearance of unexploded submunitions in 2013, nor had signatories DRC and Somalia.

[5] Unexploded submunitions are submunitions that have been dispersed and have landed but have failed to explode as intended. Unexploded bomblets are similar to unexploded submunitions but refer to “explosive bomblets” which have been dropped from an aircraft dispenser but have failed to explode as intended. Failed cluster munitions are cluster munitions that have been dropped or fired but the dispenser has failed to disperse the submunitions as intended. Abandoned cluster munitions are unused cluster munitions that have been left behind or dumped and are no longer under the control of the party that left them behind or dumped them. See Convention on Cluster Munitions, Art. 2(4), (5), (6), (7), and (15).

[6] Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, Chad, Chile, Croatia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Germany, Iraq, Lao PDR, Lebanon, Libya, Montenegro, Mozambique, Serbia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, Vietnam, and Yemen; and other areas Kosovo, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Western Sahara.

[7] Statement of Mauritania, Fourth Meeting of States Parties, Lusaka, 12 September 2013, bit.ly/MonitorCMM14MAf7.

[8] While cluster munition remnants have certainly been present in the past, no specific areas are currently known or suspected to contain such remnants. However, a lack of information on the extent of survey and clearance makes it premature to determine that these states have completed clearance of all cluster munition remnants.

[9] Email from Abdel Qudos Ziaee, Operations, Research and Development Manager, Mine Action Coordination Centre of Afghanistan (MACCA), 11 February 2014.

[10] Statement of Chad, Third Meeting of States Parties, Oslo, 13 September 2012.

[11] Chile, Convention on Cluster Munitions Article 7 Report, Form G, September 2012, bit.ly/MonitorCMM14Banf150.

[12] Email from Silke Bellmann, Desk Officer, Federal Foreign Office, 4 August 2014.

[13] Convention on Cluster Munitions Article 7 Report (for the year 2013), Form F, 15 April 2014, bit.ly/MonitorCMM14MAf13a; and statement of Lebanon, Fourth Meeting of States Parties, Lusaka, 12 September 2013, bit.ly/MonitorCMM14MAf13b.

[14] Statement of Mozambique, Fourth Meeting of States Parties, Lusaka, 12 September 2013, bit.ly/MonitorCMM14MAf14.

[15] Email from Mário Nunes, Programme Manager, Humanitarian Disarmament – Mozambique, NPA, 7 August 2014.

[16] Revised BLS data presented in statement of Cambodia to the Mine Ban Treaty Standing Committee on Mine Clearance, Geneva, 10 April 2014.

[17] Email from Jan Erik Stoa, Program Manager, NPA, 25 March 2014.

[18] The transfer of these weapons by Spain took place in 2006 before Spain instituted a moratorium on the export of cluster munitions and prior to its adherence to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

[19] Statement of Serbia, Mine Ban Treaty Standing Committee on Mine Clearance, Geneva, 21 June 2011; and interview with Petar Mihajlović and Slađana Košutić, Serbian Mine Action Centre (SMAC), Belgrade, 25 March 2011.

[20] Email from Slađana Košutić, SMAC, 22 April 2014.

[21] Email from Robert Thompson, Chief of Operations, UNMAS South Sudan, 12 May 2014.

[22] UNMAS, “Reported use of Cluster Munitions South Sudan February 2014,” 12 February 2014. See also UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), “Conflict in South Sudan: A Human Rights Report,” 8 May 2014, p. 26, bit.ly/MonitorCMM14MAf22.

[23] Email from Robert Thompson, UNMAS, 12 May 2014.

[24] “Syria: New Deadly Cluster Munition Attacks,” Human Rights Watch, 19 February 2014, bit.ly/MonitorCMM14MAf24a.

[25] “Government Forces Use Cluster Munitions in bombing Yabrud,” Syrian Network for Human Rights, 13 March 2014, bit.ly/MonitorCMM14MAf25.

[26] Information provided to Cluster Munition Monitor by email from YEMAC, 19 March 2014.

[27] Email from Ahmet Sallova, KMAC, 20 February 2014.

[28] Email from Gordan Novak, Senior Technical Advisor, AOAV, 25 July 2014.

[29] Final Document, Fourth Meeting of States Parties, CCM/MSP/2013/6, 23 September 2014, p. 4.

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