Cluster bombs have been used in 25 countries and areas, beginning over 40 years ago in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, and most recently in Lebanon, Israel, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
Cluster bomb casings release hundreds of small bomblets over wide areas, frequently missing intended military targets and killing nearby civilians.
Anywhere from 5% to 20% of modern cluster munitions do not detonate upon impact (up to 30% for older bomblets used in Indochina), leaving a deadly hazard for years to come. Children are drawn to the small, toy-like, metal objects.
The Handicap International report, “Fatal Footprint: The Global Human Impact of Cluster Munitions”, released November 2006, documents that 98% of cluster bomb victims worldwide are civilians, and approximately one third are children.
Commonly used cluster bombs are designed to explode into 100s of pieces of razor-sharp shrapnel that rip through bodies. This makes them deadlier than land mines.

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The Legacy of Cluster Bombs in Laos
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From 1964 to 1973, the U.S. dropped 260 million cluster bomblets over Laos in 580,000 bombing missions--equivalent to one planeload every 8 minutes, 24 hours-a-day, for 9 years.
Up to 30% of the cluster bomblets failed to detonate, leaving up to 86 million unexploded bomblets littering 37% of the land in Laos.
Since 1973 as many as 12,000 civilians, 40% of them children, have been killed or maimed with hundreds of new casualties each year. Cluster bombs hamper basic food production and economic development in Laos, one of the poorest countries in the world.
According to the United Nations Development Program, at current funding levels the cluster bomb removal program may take up to 100 years to complete.

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Recent Use of Cluster Bombs
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2006: Israel fired up to 4 million cluster bomblets into Lebanon; the Hezbollah organization fired 4,407 bomblets into Israel.
2003: The U.S. and Great Britain dropped 1.9 million cluster bomblets in Iraq.
2001-2002: The U.S. dropped 248,056 cluster bomblets over Afghanistan

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In February 2007, 46 countries signed the Oslo Declaration, agreeing to complete an international treaty by 2008 to “prohibit the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians.”
The U.S. did not sign the Oslo Declaration, however, Congress is considering legislation that would restrict U.S. use of cluster bombs in civilian areas and impose performance restrictions on the failure rate of these weapons.

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Visit the Legacies of War website: http//www.legaciesofwar.org to learn more.
Write to your representatives and senators in Congress urging them to support legislation restricting the use of cluster bombs. A sample letter is available on the Legacies website.